Chapter 97 Chapter 96
Logan POV
The Ice House is quiet in that strange, half-asleep way it gets after midnight.
Most of the lights are off. Someone left a TV murmuring in the common room downstairs, the sound barely carrying up the stairs. The place smells faintly like laundry detergent and protein powder and something burnt that no one will ever admit to.
Home.
I shut the door behind me harder than I mean to and head straight for the stairs.
I’m halfway up when Cole looks up from the couch.
He takes one look at my face and winces.
“Okay,” he says. “How’d you fuck it up?”
“Not now, Cole.”
I don’t slow down.
I hear him stand anyway.
“Logan.”
“Seriously,” I snap, already moving down the hall. “Not now.”
I push into my room and toss my keys onto the dresser hard enough that they skid. I kick my shoes off without aiming, shrug out of my jacket, and flop back onto the bed like gravity finally won.
The ceiling stares back at me.
I drag a hand over my face.
A beat passes.
Then another.
The door creaks open.
Cole leans against the frame, arms crossed, all humor gone.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “That wasn’t a ‘date went awkward’ walk. What happened?”
I don’t answer right away.
My chest still feels tight. My head is still buzzing. Harper’s voice and my dad’s voice are tangled together in a knot I don’t know how to pull apart.
Finally, I say it.
“My dad called.”
Cole exhales. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
He steps inside and shuts the door behind him. Sits on the edge of my desk chair, spinning it slightly before stopping himself.
“He knew I was out,” I add. “On a date.”
Cole’s jaw tightens. “Of course he did.”
“Sometimes I think he knows everything,” I mutter. “Even when no one else does.”
That’s the thing.
Most people don’t know.
They see Logan Shaw — college hockey player, scholarship kid, potential draft buzz if things go right.
They don’t see the bloodline.
They don’t connect me to him.
Different last name. Different path. Carefully separated lives.
That wasn’t an accident.
“He basically accused me of throwing away my future,” I continue. “Said relationships are distractions. Said that’s what’s been wrong with me lately.”
Cole watches me carefully. He’s one of the few who knows. One of the even fewer who knows what that actually means.
“And?” he asks.
“And…” I swallow. “Part of me thinks he’s right.”
There it is.
Cole doesn’t jump on it. He lets it sit.
“That thing with Harper,” I go on. “It gets in my head. I think about her. I worry about her. I hesitate.”
I laugh once, hollow. “I stopped a kiss tonight because I could feel myself losing control.”
Cole’s brows lift. “You stopped it?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he mutters. “That matters.”
“That’s not how he sees it,” I say. “To him, anything that isn’t hockey is weakness.”
Cole leans back in the chair. “Your dad lived his entire life with one thing in focus. That doesn’t make it healthy.”
“He was great,” I say automatically.
Cole’s eyes soften. “He was famous. That’s not the same thing.”
I look away.
“He says if I want to make it, I can’t afford distractions,” I say. “That this is how guys derail themselves.”
“And you believe him?” Cole asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ve been hearing it my whole life.”
I stare at the ceiling fan, watching it spin slowly.
“She told me fear is my biggest enemy,” I say quietly.
Cole snorts. “She’s right.”
“When he calls,” I continue, “I feel like I’m twelve again. Like I’m being evaluated. Like if I don’t get it perfect, everything collapses.”
Cole nods slowly. “That’s not mentorship. That’s control.”
I swallow hard.
“He built a legend,” Cole says. “But he doesn’t get to decide you have to live inside it.”
“I don’t even carry his name,” I say. “And somehow it still owns me.”
“That’s because names don’t matter,” Cole replies. “Expectation does.”
The room feels very still.
“He told me relationships don’t get you drafted,” I say.
Cole laughs, incredulous. “Yeah? Tell that to half the league. Married guys. Guys with kids. Guys who didn’t let hockey hollow them out.”
“That’s different.”
“No,” Cole says. “You just grew up watching one version of success.”
I turn my head toward him.
“And what if he’s right about me?” I ask quietly. “What if I can’t do both?”
Cole meets my gaze. “Then that’s not because of Harper. That’s because you’ve been taught that caring is dangerous.”
I let that sit.
“You didn’t lose focus tonight,” Cole continues. “You showed restraint. Awareness. Control.”
“That doesn’t win games.”
“It wins longevity,” he counters. “And it keeps you from becoming him.”
That lands hard.
“I don’t want to lose her,” I admit.
“Then stop letting him be the loudest voice in your head,” Cole says. “Because Harper isn’t the distraction.”
I look at him.
“You are,” he finishes. “Every time you let fear make the call.”
He stands, claps my shoulder.
“I’m going to bed,” he says. “Try not to self-destruct before morning.”
I huff a tired laugh.
When the door closes, the room feels heavier.
But also clearer.
I lie there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how few people know where I come from — and how that somehow makes it harder, not easier.
I don’t have his name.
But I carry his expectations.
And for the first time, I wonder what it would look like to put them down.
Not forever.
Just long enough to choose something for myself.
Harper’s face flashes through my mind.
Her words.
Her steadiness.
Her patience.
I don’t text her.
Not yet.
But this time, it’s not because I’m afraid.
It’s because I want to be someone who shows up without running.
And that feels like the beginning of something dangerous.
And real.