Chapter 54 Chapter 53
Logan POV
Practice is supposed to clear my head.
It doesn’t.
It makes everything worse.
The rink is cold and bright and loud with the scrape of blades and the crack of pucks against boards, but none of it is loud enough to drown out the noise in my head. I hit the ice like I’m trying to break it. My strides are too hard, my stops too sharp, my checks a half-second late and a full step too angry.
The puck comes to me. I rip it down the ice. It slams off the boards instead of landing clean on Cole’s stick.
“Shit,” Cole mutters.
“Again,” Coach yells.
We reset. Same thing. Too much force. Not enough control.
I chase the puck like it owes me money. I take a corner too tight, shoulder-check Jimmy harder than necessary, and he goes down in a sprawl of sticks and curses.
“What the hell, Shaw?” he snaps, scrambling up.
“Get up,” I bark. “It’s a contact sport.”
“Not a murder sport,” he shoots back.
The drill keeps going. I keep skating like I’m trying to outrun something that’s welded to my spine.
Harper’s face flashes in my head.
I don’t want it there.
I want numbers. Angles. Lanes. The simple geometry of hockey.
Instead, I get her voice. Her eyes. The way she looked at me in the lecture hall when she said she had respect for herself.
Like I was something she’d stepped in and scraped off her shoe.
The whistle shrieks.
“Shaw!”
I coast to a stop, chest heaving, sweat already soaking through my gear.
Coach Ryland skates onto the ice, eyes like flint. “Did you get into a fight with a woman?”
A few guys snort.
I stare at him. “What?”
“Because you’re skating like you’re trying to take your bad mood out on my rink,” he barks. “So what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I say automatically.
“Wrong answer,” he snaps. “You’ve been a wreck all week. Your timing’s off, your decisions are worse, and today you’re playing like you want to punch somebody instead of win a game.”
He points his stick at me. “Knock it off with this shit and get your head in the game. Or you can run suicides until you remember what sport you’re here to play.”
My jaw tightens. “Yes, Coach.”
“Again,” he yells to the team. “And somebody tell Shaw this isn’t a boxing ring.”
The drill restarts. I force myself to rein it in. Just a little. Enough to stop getting yelled at.
It doesn’t help.
My head’s still full of Harper.
The way she said, Then act like it.
Like I was failing a test I didn’t even know I was taking.
By the time the final whistle blows, my lungs are on fire and my nerves are worse.
We skate off toward the locker room in a pack, steam rising off us like smoke.
Marco pulls up beside me. “Dude, Coach is right. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’re acting like you got a girlfriend and you just got into a huge fight with her.”
I open my mouth to tell him to shut up.
Cole scoffs before I can. “Yeah, right.”
Everyone looks at him.
I snap, “Don’t start, Cole.”
He lifts his hands. “I didn’t say a damn thing.”
Marco’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wait. You got a girlfriend? Since when?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I explode, stopping so fast Marco almost crashes into me. “Jesus Christ. I’ve just got a lot going on between school and this damn auction, okay?”
The words come out harsher than I mean, but I don’t care.
I turn and stalk the rest of the way to the locker room.
Behind me, I hear Marco say, “Okay… so if he’s not seeing anyone, why’s he losing his mind?”
Zack snorts. “Because he’s Shaw.”
Then, quieter, as I round the corner, I hear Marco again. “Alright, Cole. What do you know? Who is Shaw seeing?”
I don’t hear Cole’s answer.
The locker room is loud with showers turning on and gear hitting the floor, but I tune it all out. I sit on the bench and start ripping off my gloves, my helmet, my pads.
My hands are still shaking.
I tell myself it’s adrenaline.
It’s not.
Cole sits down a few lockers away, watching me like he’s deciding whether poking the bear is worth it.
“Rough practice,” he says.
“Mind your business.”
He snorts. “It is my business when my captain’s playing like he wants to fight the ice.”
I don’t answer.
He leans back against the lockers. “You talk to her?”
My shoulders go stiff. “Who?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
I keep unstrapping my pads. “Yeah. I talked to her.”
“And?”
“And it went great,” I say flatly. “She told me she has respect for herself. Which is apparently code for ‘you’re an asshole.’”
Cole winces. “Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
I stand, grab my towel, and head for the showers. The hot water pounds against my shoulders, but it doesn’t loosen anything.
When I come back, dressed and still irritated, Cole’s waiting.
“You know,” he says, “from the outside, it really does look like you got into a fight with your girlfriend.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I repeat.
He tilts his head. “You sure about that?”
I glare at him. “Don’t.”
“Logan,” he says, quieter now, “you’re walking around like someone kicked your dog. You’re playing like your head’s somewhere else. And the only time you look like that is when it’s about her.”
I grab my bag. “Drop it.”
He doesn’t.
“You don’t have to call it a relationship for it to matter.”
“That’s not what this is,” I snap. “She’s just… complicated.”
He laughs once. “So are you. Difference is, she’s not pretending otherwise.”
I shove my bag over my shoulder. “I’ve got a meeting. About the auction. Since that’s apparently my life now.”
He watches me for a second. “You’re not mad about the auction.”
I stop at the door.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re mad because she’s treating you like you treated her.”
I don’t answer.
He sighs. “Get your head straight, Captain. Coach isn’t wrong. You can’t play like this.”
I leave before he can say anything else.
The hallway outside the locker room is quiet, but my head isn’t.
Harper’s voice keeps looping.
Then act like it.
I don’t even know what it is.
All I know is I’m skating like hell, getting yelled at by my coach, and my own team thinks I’ve got a secret girlfriend I’m fighting with.
And the worst part?
I don’t even have a good argument to prove them wrong.