Blood on the Ice

The skate was covered in blood. Ethan's blood. It soaked through the white tape and spread in a dark, widening circle across the ice. Ava dropped so hard her knee pads cracked against the surface. She grabbed the front of his jersey with both hands and hauled him toward her. "Ethan… look at me." His face was already losing its color. "No. No, stay with me." She had seen Ethan take hits that would have dropped other players, broken sticks, bruised ribs, a split lip and he always got back up. He was supposed to get back up now. He had to. His eyes were open, but already losing focus. Blood kept pulsing between her fingers no matter how hard she pressed against his thigh. Too fast. Too much. This was Ethan's ice. As the team's star forward, he'd spent years owning it, turning impossible passes into goals and making defenders look slow. He'd scored less than a minute ago. He was still supposed to be celebrating. A player crashed into him before the celebration could even settle. The impact looked wrong. Ethan's left leg twisted beneath him, and he hit the ice hard. Ava was already skating toward him before the whistle shrieked. It was Ava's ice too. At twenty, she was already the team's elite defenseman, already drawing scouts, the first woman in the program with a real shot at the men's pipeline. Tonight was supposed to be another step toward making history. Instead the arena noise collapsed into one long, ugly roar. Skates scraped. Someone screamed for a trainer. A whistle shrieked somewhere far away. Ava didn't look up. She locked both hands over the wound and put her full weight on it. "Stay with me. You hear me? Stay with me." Ethan's eyes kept slipping shut no matter how hard Ava tried to keep him focused. "Come on, Ethan. The trainers are coming. You just have to hold on until they get here." His lips parted. A faint sound came out. "Ava…" "I'm here." She leaned closer, trying to catch his voice over the noise. "I'm right here. Just keep looking at me." He swallowed hard. His fingers moved against hers, searching, until she caught his hand. "Keep…" His voice faded. "Keep what?" He tried again, barely more than a breath. "Skating." Ava shook her head, tears finally spilling over. "We're going to skate again. Both of us. So stop talking and hold on." He looked at her for a long moment, like he wanted to believe her. Then his eyes closed. "Ethan?" She shook his shoulder. "Ethan, open your eyes." He didn't move. "No." Her voice broke as she pulled him closer. "No, no, no. Ethan!" She screamed his name so loudly it tore through the noise around them. Her twin brother, who had grown up beside her, fought with her, laughed with her, spent his whole life on this ice, was suddenly gone beneath her hands. "Please!" she cried, pressing harder against the wound. "Somebody help him! Don't let him die!" A stick clattered beside them. Ava's head snapped up on pure instinct. Kai Mercer stood directly behind Ethan, barely three feet away. She knew him instantly. Everyone in the arena did, the captain, the player scouts talked about, the one who could change a game with a single shift. Ethan's biggest rival. For two seasons, they'd pushed each other to the limit, on and off the ice. She had never seen him look like this. He wasn't moving or helping. He just stood there with his gloves still on, staring down at Ethan like he already knew how this ended. For one split second their eyes met over her brother's body. Something cold and sharp passed between them. His jaw tightened. His eyes flicked toward the skate, then back to Ethan. Ava didn't know what it meant yet. But she knew it mattered. Then the medical team slammed into the space and shoved Kai back. Ava barely felt the hands dragging her away. She kept her eyes on the ice, on Ethan's left skate, turned at a wrong angle. The blade was too long. Wrong curve. Wrong edge. She'd helped him tape his skates that morning; she knew every pair he owned, the way he checked and rechecked his laces until the tension was exactly right. That blade did not belong to him. Someone had changed the skate. "He's my brother." Her voice cracked as she tried to push past a trainer in the tunnel. "I need to know what's happening." "Ava, you need to let them work." "Then tell me what's happening!" The doors shut before she could get through. She stared at the concrete wall until the noise dissolved into a single dull hum, her hands still shaking, her mind already assembling the pieces. The wrong blade. Kai standing there, doing nothing. His eyes dropping to the skate. The way Ethan's body had gone still beneath her hands. She didn't know who had done it, or why. But she knew her brother, and she knew hockey. This was not an accident. By morning, the university had already started calling it exactly that. Six months later, Ava stood outside the same arena with a different last name and a bag that held almost nothing. Her hair was shorter now, cut in a style no one at Westbridge had ever seen on her and darker than the shade scouts and reporters used to photograph under the rink lights. She'd stopped wearing the team gear that used to be a second skin. No warm-ups with her name stitched across the back, no gear bag with her number on it. Just a plain black hoodie and a cap pulled low, and a version of herself that kept her head down instead of leading a locker room. Six months was long enough for the story to settle into something simple: an accident, a tragic night, a promising player gone too soon. Long enough for everyone else to move on. Ava hadn't. The lights over the main entrance hummed the way they always had. Students streamed past without a second glance. No one recognized the girl in the plain black hoodie. That was exactly how she wanted it. Ava Callahan had walked out of this building with blood on her hands and a name everyone knew. Ava Reed was walking back in with nothing but questions and no one who'd think to ask her any. She had expected fear when she came back. Instead there was only a hard, steady anger sitting beneath her ribs. She tightened her grip on the strap of her bag. Whatever happened that night had started here. She was going to find out how. Ava stared at the glass doors for a long moment before walking inside.