Blood on the Ice

Chapter 4: Stuck With Each Other

The whiteboard in the locker room hallway still smelled like dry-erase marker when Coach Harlan stepped in front of it.

Ava had just finished unlacing her skates when the team started gathering. She stayed standing, bag over one shoulder, waiting for the usual post-practice notes. Instead, Harlan uncapped a marker and wrote two columns.

Left side: Mercer.

Right side: Reed.

The room went quiet in stages.

Kai was leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed. His eyes locked on the board the second the names appeared. Ava felt the shift in him from across the space, the same tight control he’d worn in the tunnel an hour ago.

Harlan didn’t look at either of them. “Elite training pairs for the next four weeks. Mercer and Reed. You’ll run every high-intensity drill together. Breakouts, gap control, transition work, board battles. No switching.”

A murmur moved through the team.

Kai pushed off the wall. “Coach.”

Harlan kept writing. “Something to say, Mercer?”

“Pair me with anyone else.”

“No.”

Ava’s voice cut in before she could stop it. “I work better alone.”

Harlan finally turned. His expression didn’t change. “Then learn to work better with him. The scouts watching this program don’t care about your preferences. They care about results. You two are the highest-upside pairing I’ve got right now. You’re stuck with each other.”

Kai’s jaw flexed once. Ava kept her face blank, but heat crawled up the back of her neck. Four weeks. Forced into the same drills, the same timing, the same space. After the tunnel. After the warning. After the way he’d looked at her like she was already standing too close to something dangerous.

Harlan capped the marker. “First session starts in twenty. Full pads. Don’t be late.”

He walked out. The team scattered. No one said anything to Ava or Kai. They didn’t need to. The assignment was already loud enough.

Twenty minutes later the ice was empty except for the two of them and a bucket of pucks.

Kai didn’t speak. He skated to the far blue line and waited. Ava took the opposite side. The distance felt deliberate.

Harlan’s voice came from the boards. “Breakout sequence. Reed, you start. Mercer, pressure. Full contact. Go.”

Ava dropped a puck and moved.

Kai came at her like the last hour hadn’t happened. No warm-up speed. No measured gap. He closed hard, stick active, body angled to cut her off. Ava pivoted, kept the puck on her backhand, and tried to slip past his hip. He matched her edge for edge and drove his shoulder into hers.

The hit landed solid. Not dirty. Not clean either. Enough force to rock her. Ava absorbed it through her core and kept her feet. The puck squirted free. Kai took it and buried it in the empty net without celebration.

He skated back to the line without looking at her.

“Again,” Harlan called.

They ran it eight more times.

Every repetition got uglier. Kai’s gaps tightened. Ava’s exits got sharper. When he caught her along the boards, the impact rattled up her spine. When she forced him wide, her stick checked his with more force than necessary. Breath came harder. Pads scraped. The sound of their collisions carried in the empty rink.

On the ninth rep Ava got a half-step on him, protected the puck with her body, and sent a clean stretch pass up ice. Kai’s stick slashed across her ankles a fraction late, not enough for a penalty, just enough to make the message clear.

She turned on him. “You want to play it that way?”

His eyes were flat. “Keep up or get out of the way.”

Harlan didn’t intervene. He just watched.

The next drill was board battles. Fifty-fifty pucks. Winner keeps possession.

Kai won the first two by pure strength. Ava adjusted. On the third she timed her approach better, got her stick under his, and ripped the puck free while driving her shoulder into his chest. He stumbled half a step. Surprise flickered across his face before he locked it down.

They reset.

By the sixth battle both of them were breathing through their mouths. Sweat gathered at Ava’s hairline under the helmet. Kai’s jersey clung darker along his spine. Every time their bodies collided, heat and force transferred. Every time their eyes met over a contested puck, the tunnel conversation sat between them like a third person on the ice.

Ava hated how aware she was of him. The way he shifted his weight before a hit. The exact moment his edges committed. The controlled violence in the way he closed space. She caught herself tracking the rise and fall of his breathing between repetitions and forced her eyes back to the puck. She was learning him whether she wanted to or not. And he was learning her.

Harlan blew the whistle. “Water. Two minutes.”

Ava skated to the bench alone. She yanked her helmet up and drank without looking over. Her ribs ached where his shoulder had landed twice. Her hands were steady on the bottle. Everything else was not.

Kai stayed on the ice, skating slow circles at center, stick resting across his knees. He didn’t glance her way.

When the whistle went again they moved into transition drills. Defense to offense. Quick support. Reading the other person’s movement without words.

It should have been messy.

On the third repetition Ava cut inside to support a fake reverse. Kai was already there, stick ready, body positioned exactly where she needed him to be. The puck moved between them clean. Too clean. For one split second their eyes met in the middle of the play, and she saw the same recognition hit him that had just hit her. Their timing had clicked without permission. The trap was already closing.

Kai’s expression shuttered. He finished the sequence hard and skated back to the line like the moment hadn’t happened.

Harlan finally called the session. “That’s enough. Same time tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

He left them on the ice.

Ava gathered the remaining pucks without speaking. Her legs burned. Her shoulders were tight. She could still feel the imprint of Kai’s hits like bruises waiting to surface.

She was halfway to the gate when his voice stopped her.

“Reed.”

She turned.

Kai stood ten feet away, stick in one hand, helmet hanging from the other. His face was unreadable again, the same controlled mask he’d worn in the tunnel. Only his eyes gave anything away, still too sharp, still carrying whatever he’d refused to say earlier.

“I don’t care what you think I did,” he said. The words were quiet and precise. “Stay out of my way.”

Ava held his stare. The empty rink suddenly felt smaller.

For a fraction of a second his mouth opened like he might add something else. The words never came. Whatever he’d almost said stayed locked behind his teeth. His jaw tightened instead.

She let the silence sit between them long enough to make it clear she had heard him.

Then she turned and skated off the ice without answering.

Behind her, she heard his stick hit the boards once, hard enough to c***k through the quiet, before the sound of his skates followed her toward the tunnel.

Four weeks.

They were just getting started.