Cold Start
Ellie
The trunk of my six-year-old Civic didn’t close quite right unless you slammed it with the flat of your palm directly over the rusted latch.
Clang.
The sound echoed off the stone façade of Hawthorne University’s East Quad, sharp as a gunshot in the crisp, late-afternoon chill. I didn’t flinch. I grabbed the nylon strap of my heavy rolling duffel with one hand, hoisted my hard-shell skate bag over my shoulder with the other, and stood very still in the shadow of the centuries-old oaks lining the courtyard.
Five years ago, this campus had been ripped apart by athletic scandals and leaked secrets—a cautionary tale of what happened when sports programs operated like sovereign nations. Now, Hawthorne looked picture-perfect. Gothic archways draped in crimson ivy, manicured lawns dusted with the first frost of October, and students moving between lecture halls with the easy, unbothered posture of people who had never had their lives burnt to the ground on the internet.
I adjusted the strap of my bag. Beneath the heavy fabric of my oversized oatmeal sweater and dark denim, my muscles were taut, braced for an impact that wasn’t coming.
You’re fine, I told myself, the rhythm of the words matching my steady breaths. Nobody knows you here. You’re just a walk-on transfer. A nobody.
That was the goal. After nine months of living as a pariah at Westbridge—where Cameron Rourke’s fabricated text threads and polished lies had turned an entire athletic department against me—anonymity felt like oxygen. Cameron had cheated, I had walked away, and Cameron had decided that rather than let his golden-boy hockey reputation take a scratch, he would paint me as an unhinged, obsessive stalker who couldn’t accept rejection. The campus had eaten it up. The figure skating team had frozen me out. By the time the harassment in my DMs turned into whispered laughter in the dining halls, I had packed my life into cardboard boxes and run.
Now, I had Hawthorne.
I wasn’t here to make friends. I wasn’t here to find a collegiate romance or reclaim some fictional golden youth. I was nineteen, my scholarship was gone, and I had exactly one semester of walk-on eligibility to prove to Coach Seraphina Ross that I belonged on this ice.
Twenty minutes later, the chilled, metallic smell of the Hawthorne Ice Arena hit the back of my throat. It was a scent I could recognize blindfolded—shaved ice, rubber matting, cold Zamboni exhaust, and the faint, coppery tang of old steel blades. It was the only place in the world where the ground didn’t shift beneath my feet.
“You’re late, Voss.”
Coach Seraphina Ross stood at the rink barrier, a clipboard tucked beneath her arm and an unyielding titanium rod where her spine should have been. Her steel-grey hair was swept into a flawless French twist, and her sharp blue eyes raked over me with the clinical detachment of a diamond appraiser.
“Road construction on I-84, Coach,” I replied evenly, unzipping my skate bag and setting my custom Jackson boots on the rubber bench. “I have fifteen minutes before your ice cut.”
“Then you have fourteen minutes to show me why I shouldn’t give your walk-on trial slot to a freshman with four years of eligibility left,” Coach Ross said, checking her stopwatch without blinking. “Lace up. No music. Just your edge transitions, your double Axel, and your triple Salchow sequence.”
My pulse ticked in my throat, but my hands didn’t shake. I pulled on my skates, tightened the laces until the leather bit into my instep, and stepped onto the ice.
The surface was hard, crisp, and freshly flooded. The moment my steel touched the sheet, the noise in my head evaporated. The shame from Westbridge, the phantom hum of anonymous messages on my phone, and Cameron’s sneering face—all of it faded behind the clean, razor-sharp bite of my edges.
I pushed off, carving deep, sweeping lobes across the center circle. I leaned into the outside edge until my knuckles nearly brushed the ice, building speed with two fluid crossovers, before snapping into a double Axel. Up, two and a half tight rotations in the dead chill of the arena, and down—landing on a clean, solid right back outside edge that sang against the ice.
I didn’t stop. I transitioned into a backward inside rocker, checked my shoulders, and sprang directly into the triple Salchow. The air caught in my lungs, the ceiling rafters blurred, and when my pick struck the ice on the landing, the friction sent a shower of white crystal spraying against the dasherboards.
When I glided back toward the boards, Coach Ross lowered her clipboard.
“Your entry edge on the Salchow is slightly rushed,” she said, her voice flat, but the slight lift of her chin betrayed her. “Your center of gravity is lower than it was on your Westbridge tape. That’s good. It gives you stability, but you’re guarding your right hip on the landing.”
“Old habit,” I said, catching my breath.
“Break it,” Coach Ross said. She tapped a pen against the clipboard. “Rink B is open for non-varsity hours at five in the morning. Full team practice is at four in the afternoon. Be on the ice fifteen minutes early with your guards off. You have a provisional spot on the roster, Voss. Don’t make me regret signing your transfer waiver.”
Relief washed through my ribcage, cool and sudden. “Thank you, Coach.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” a voice purred from the bench gate.
I looked over. A girl with sleek platinum hair tied back in a silk scrunchie was leaning against the dasher rail, a pristine pink thermal jacket zipped to her collarbone. Sloane Mercer. I had seen her name on the roster sheet—Hawthorne’s top senior solo skater for the last two years.
“Nice double Axel,” Sloane said, offering a bright, camera-ready smile as she stepped through the gate. Her eyes, however, tracked me like a hawk sizing up an intruder in its nest. “I’m Sloane. Team captain. We don’t usually take mid-year transfers, especially not from Westbridge. The rumors about their athletic department are... wild.”
My jaw locked instinctively. “I’m Ellie.”
“I know,” Sloane said smoothly, tilting her head. “Word travels fast when someone leaves a Division I program in the middle of a season. But don’t worry—whatever happened back there stays back there. Hawthorne girls stick together. Come to the hockey house tonight. The guys are throwing their semester kickoff party. It’ll give you a chance to meet everyone.”
“I don’t really do parties,” I said, stepping off the ice and sliding my plastic guards over my blades.
“It’s team bonding, Ellie,” Sloane insisted, her hand coming to rest on my forearm in a gesture that felt less like friendship and more like a tether. “If you want to survive Coach Ross, you need the team behind you. Ten o’clock. Don’t make me drag you.”
I looked down at her manicured nails resting against my sweater sleeve, feeling the faint prickle of unease at the base of my neck.
“I’ll think about it,” I lied.
