Icing The Heart

Chapter 8 Rory's Pov

Victor Shaw sat at the head of the table like a king who had personally invented oxygen. Coach stood near the window. Marcus was there too, relaxing against the wall with his arms folded, warm brown eyes meeting mine with concern that would have comforted me a month ago.

Now, it made my skin crawl.

Jaxon was not there.

The relief I felt was profound. So was the disappointment and it scared the hell out of me. Why the hell was I feeling disappointed?

I hated myself for both feelings.

“Callahan,” Coach said.

“Coach.”

Marcus pushed off the wall. “Rory, hey. You okay?”

I looked at him.

For two years, Marcus Hale had been the closest thing I had to a friend on that team. He had brought me water after brutal drills. Sat beside me when no one else would. Made jokes in the locker room when silence got too ugly. Told me to be careful with Jaxon like he had been protecting me from a fire he knew he helped set.

My chest went cold as I looked at him.

“I’m fine,” I said without a hint of the emotions I was feeling inside of me.

He flinched in response.

Good.

Victor placed both hands on the table. “Your unexplained absence has complicated our media position.”

“My mistake,” I said dryly. “Next time I have a personal crisis, I’ll submit it for brand approval.”

Coach made a low warning sound.

Victor smiled like he found me unpleasant but manageable at the same time. “You are still under contract.”

“I am aware.”

“And while we have been generous with this so-called holiday, we need clarity. Are you mentally prepared to return to full public obligations?”

Mentally prepared.

That phrase sat beside the performance metrics already locked into place in my head.

Subject demonstrates heightened emotional response.

Subject remains socially isolated.

Subject shows vulnerability.

I stared at Victor until his smile thinned.

“I’m prepared to play hockey,” I said. “Everything else is your circus.”

“The circus pays your salary.”

“No. My labor does.”

The room went still. Lena lowered her eyes to her tablet but I saw the corner of her mouth move in something I couldn't really tell if it was a smile.

Victor’s gaze sharpened as it remained locked on my face. “Careful, Miss Callahan.”

I smiled then but it was not a nice smile. Even I knew that.

“I have been careful for two years. Look where it got me.”

Marcus took a step forward. “Rory—”

“Don’t.”

The word cracked across the room and he stopped. Something passed over his face. Hurt, maybe. Confusion. Guilt as if there was any justice left in the universe.

Victor watched the exchange closely. Too closely.

I realized then that I needed to leave before the nausea crawling up my throat became impossible to hide.

“I’ll be at practice tomorrow,” I said. “That is all the clarity you need.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed. “We are not finished.”

“I am.”

Then I walked out.

No one stopped me.

Maybe they were too shocked.

Maybe they were finally learning.

I did not really care.

***

The apartment still smelled like him.

That was the first cruelty I faced when I came back to my apartment.

I had expected silence. Dust. Staleness. The strange emptiness of a place abandoned in anger.

Instead, I unlocked the door and walked into Jaxon Kane.

Not physically. He was not there. But he was everywhere.

His black hoodie lay over the back of the couch. His watch sat on the kitchen counter beside a stack of unopened mail. His spare skates were near the hallway closet, polished and waiting. One of his ridiculous skincare bottles still occupied the bathroom shelf like it paid rent.

I stood in the doorway for too long while my stomach twisted. Not from nausea this time but from memory.

The first morning he moved in with coffee he had no right to know how I drank. The way he had cooked breakfast like it was nothing. The sound of his laugh when I insulted his music. His laptop glowing on the coffee table with my destruction neatly organized in legal language.

I shut the door behind me and the apartment answered with silence.

Good.

Silence I could handle.

I began packing what I had missed the first time. Training clothes. A spare charger. My father’s old hockey puck from the dresser drawer. The notebook where I had written every drill Jaxon corrected because I hated him enough to learn from him anyway.

I was in the bedroom, folding a sweatshirt into my bag, when someone knocked.

It was not Jaxon. I knew that immediately.

Jaxon did not knock like that. Jaxon knocked like a man trying not to break down a door.

This knock was elegant. Soft. Certain.

It was the kind of knock made by someone who had never been denied entry in her life.

I moved slowly to the living room.

For one wild second, I considered not opening it.

Then the knock came again.

Two polite taps.

A command dressed as manners.

So I opened the door.

Evelyn Kane stood in the hallway.

I knew it was her before she said a word.

There was no mistaking the architecture of Jaxon’s face in hers. The same pale blue eyes even though hers were colder. The same precise bone structure, refined into something elegant and terrifying. Silver-blonde hair swept into a flawless twist. A camel coat that probably cost more than my first signing bonus. Leather gloves. Pearl earrings. A woman assembled entirely from money, control and generational power.

Her gaze moved over me. It was not the way men looked at me.

It was worse.

Men often looked at me and saw a challenge, a joke, an inconvenience, a body they could measure against their idea of what strength should look like.

Evelyn Kane looked at me and saw a variable.

“Rory Callahan,” she said.

Her voice was smooth, expensive and completely empty of warmth.

“Mrs. Kane,” I managed to say.