Skate Fast. Love Hurts.

HAZEL

The sharp scrape of steel carving into ice and the thunderous, violent crack of sticks echoed through the arena as I leaned over the plexiglass.

The air was electric, thick with the scent of frozen zinc, wet gear, and three thousand screaming fans whose collective roar vibrated straight into my marrow.

Right in the dead center of the storm was Knight. He cut across the blue line with that infuriating, effortless glide that made you think he’d learned to skate before he learned to walk.

My eyes tracked his every pivot against my will. I noted the fluid drop of his hips, the precision of his saucer passes, the casual, predatory economy of his movement.

I hated admitting it, even in the private, locked-down vault of my own skull, but the way he owned the ice was mesmerizing.

Every time the black rubber touched the tape on his stick, the game stopped being an athletic contest and turned into the Jace Knight Show. His arrogance was so suffocatingly palpable that it made my teeth ache.

“Show-off,” I muttered. The insult was instantly swallowed by the roar of the home student section.

My allergy to Jace Knight’s ego was a chronic itch, an irritation I tried to scrub raw with logic and pure disdain. He was entirely too loud, too smug, and entirely too pleased with his own reflection.

Every smirk, every triumphant fist pump was a shrine to his overinflated reputation. And yet, there was that gravitational pull, a nuisance of physics I stubbornly refused to honor.

It wasn’t just the highlight-reel athleticism. It was the fleeting split second when the crowd faded out, and his icy blue gaze turned completely lethal. The occasional flash of hunger that cracked through his veneer.

“Earth to Hazel,” Liv said, planting an elbow hard into my ribs. “You’re drooling again.”

“I’m glaring,” I shot back, snapping my eyes toward the digital scoreboard above center ice. “There’s a physiological difference.”

“Right. And that look on your face is purely analytical.”

“Shut up.” But my peripheral vision betrayed me anyway, magnetically dragging my gaze straight back to number twenty-four.

Jace's team was up by one goal, and the game clock was bleeding down to its final two minutes.

My heart hammered an erratic, defensive rhythm against my ribs. The adrenaline in the barn was bleeding into my system, no matter how hard I tried to wall it off.

I needed my brother’s team to pull this off. Eloy had worked himself into the ground all season, running drills until he vomited, studying film until two in the morning.

He deserved this win. Yet a treacherous, quiet corner of my brain, the corner I wanted to douse in gasoline and set on fire, wondered what Jace's grin would look like under the arena lights if he closed this out.

Down on the sheet, the pace detonated. Sticks clattered like gunshots against the boards, bodies collided with sickening, muffled thuds, and the arena held its breath.

My lips were raw from chewing on them through three periods of watching Jace hunt down the puck.

He was a dark jersey, broad shoulders, and pure, concentrated spite, chewing up the neutral zone. He moved with an entitlement that suggested the rink was his personal estate, a stark contrast to Ethan’s disciplined, geometric routes.

“Come on, Eloy,” I breathed. “Find the seam.”

Eloy, always the chess player, anticipated the bounce off the rim, picked off an errant pass, and turned on the jets toward the slot. My stomach leaped into my throat.

He had daylight. For half a second, he had the net.

Then Jace swept in from the blind side with predatory geometry, lifting Eloy's stick with sickening precision and stripping the puck clean. The west bleachers erupted into triumphant screams while a collective groan rattled our side of the glass.

“Ugh, can you actually stand him?” Liv groaned beside me, rolling her eyes until they practically vanished into her skull. “He’s brilliant, fine, but does he have to be so...” She waved a mittened hand, searching for an adjective sharp enough.

“Clinically insufferable?” I offered without blinking.

“Precisely.”

Eloy’s power play was ticking down its final seconds, the red digits on the board mocking the frantic rush in front of the crease.

But Jace, down a man and completely unbothered by the numerical disadvantage, played like consequences were an abstract rumor that only applied to lesser mortals. He absorbed a heavy check along the half-wall, spun off the contact, and cleared the zone with a flick of his wrists.

The final ten seconds dissolved into pure chaos. Eloy charged the net, desperate and relentless, the heartbeat of his roster until the horn sounded.

But even his grit was eclipsed by Jace’s final, dirty exclamation point, a vicious hip check on Eloy’s winger that sent the boy crashing into the boards like a sack of wet laundry.

The siren wailed, drowning out the whistle, but the Jumbotron replay froze the entire arena.

There it was. Jace, skates spraying ice, drove his shoulder through a hit that, to a casual fan, looked spectacular but, to anyone who knew the rulebook, was charging by about three strides.

The zebras huddled near the penalty box, whistles dangling, the game hanging on an official review while four thousand people waited in dead silence.

“Call it,” I whispered, my fingernails biting half-moons through my mittens into my palms. “Call the charge.”

The head referee skated out to center ice, tapped his mic, and signaled a clean hit. No whistle. No penalty.

The play stood. The final buzzer blared again, low and final.

Game over.

My hands balled into tight fists, the burn of injustice far hotter than the sub-zero chill radiating off the ice. Down below, Eloy’s shoulders dropped. He glided off toward the tunnel, his posture stiff with a quiet, hollow defeat that made my chest tighten.

“Unbelievable,” I hissed.

“Let it go, Haze,” Liv murmured, her voice tight around the edges.

“Let it go?” I snapped, watching Jace skate into a sea of gloved high-fives and helmet slaps. “He launched him into the glass after the puck was already in the corner! He’s a menace on skates!”

Yet as the arena speakers blasted their victory track, a tiny, infuriating spark sparked under my anger. It was the athlete in me, the sheer, involuntary respect for the fact that Jace Knight had dragged his entire team across the finish line through raw, unapologetic will.

Next time, I promised myself, watching him skate a flamboyant, theatrical circle around the goal crease, stick raised to salute the drunken student section.

Next time, Eloy puts you on your ass.

Then, because the universe is fundamentally rigged, Jace slowed his glide. Mid-victory lap, his head tilted. He scanned the bleachers, ignoring the screaming coeds and the guys banging on the glass, until his eyes locked dead onto mine.

He knew where our seats were. Of course he did.

He knew I’d be sitting across from him at my parents’ dinner table today, forced to play nice while our families toasted whatever corporate deal our fathers were brokering this month.

I stood completely frozen while the crowd surged around me.

Jace’s mouth curved into that slow, asymmetric, devastating smirk.

I gave him a slow, practiced, dead-eyed blink, followed by an eye roll designed to convey maximum lethal contempt.

“Come on,” I muttered to Liv, turning my back on him and cutting toward the stairs. “Let’s get to the tunnel before the press clears.”

We spent twenty minutes standing on the freezing, salt-crusted concrete of the corridor leading to the locker rooms. The smell of wet wool, gear sweat, and stale cafeteria coffee hung heavy under the industrial lights.

When Eloy finally emerged with his gear bag slung over one broad shoulder, his hair was still damp from the shower, his face pale and drained.

“Hey,” I said quietly, stepping into his space and squeezing his bicep.

He offered a weak, hollow smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Just another sick game, right?”

“Right,” I lied.

We both knew it was bullshit. In this family, and in this town, hockey wasn’t an extracurricular activity. It was bloodline, currency, and leverage.

“Knight is just…” Eloy let out a rough breath and shook his head. “He knows exactly where the line is with the refs. He lives two inches past it.”

My jaw set. I wanted to hand him something profound, something to take the sting out of the scoreboard, but all that surfaced was pure, concentrated acid.

“Let’s go home,” I said, tugging on his sleeve. “I’ll drive.”

Before we could take two steps toward the exit doors, the bass from the home team’s locker room rattled through the concrete floor. The door swung open, spitting out laughter, shouting, and the stench of victory.

I felt Eloy go rigid beside me.

“The Montgomery clan is in an awful hurry,” a low, lazy drawl slid across the corridor.

Jace stepped into the light.

His dark hair was dripping wet, curling wildly at the nape of his neck, a gray team hoodie hanging loose over broad shoulders that still looked pumped from the third period. He threw his hockey duffel carelessly over one arm.

He pulled up a few paces away, his mouth hitched in that familiar, predatory grin.

“Did they tell you there was a game scheduled for tonight, Eloy? Or did you guys just show up to run target practice for our second line?”

The words hung in the narrow hallway, dripping with arrogance.

Eloy’s fists clenched, his jaw working as he tried to swallow the bait. He always took the high road. He was the golden boy, the disciplined captain, the one who didn’t throw punches in the hallway.

Which left the dirty work to me.

I stopped and turned my head to catch Jace’s eye. His pale blue irises locked onto mine, practically humming with the anticipation of my response. He loved this. He fed on the friction like it was oxygen.

I held his gaze, kept my face completely blank, and slowly, deliberately mouthed two words.

Fuck you.

Jace’s grin didn’t falter. It widened, his blue eyes flashing with pure, wicked amusement as he gave me a slow, mock-respectful tilt of his head.