Chapter 97 Home Ice
Chapter 97 Home Ice
Chloe
At eight o’clock on Sunday morning, nothing happened.
No notification appeared on my phone. No anonymous voice slipped into dorm rooms across campus. No new secret raced through group chats before most people had finished breakfast.
For weeks, Sunday mornings had belonged to Penalty Box Transgressions. I had measured them in downloads, comments, and the electric dread of waiting to see how quickly another person’s life would unravel.
Now the account was gone.
I stood in the kitchen with a mixing bowl tucked against my stomach, trying to rescue pancake batter from the lumps Daniel insisted were perfectly normal.
Daniel leaned over my shoulder and dipped one finger into the bowl.
I slapped his hand away. “That is unsanitary…and gross.”
“We live with hockey players. This kitchen crossed the border into unsanitary years ago.”
He stole another taste before I could stop him, then kissed my cheek when I glared. The affection came easily, though the week since my confession had not been effortless. There had been questions, quiet moments, and a few conversations that ended with both of us emotionally exhausted. Daniel still loved me, but rebuilding trust meant allowing him to admit when something hurt instead of expecting forgiveness to erase it.
We were learning how to do that together.
James stood at the stove attempting to make bacon while Annabelle supervised from a safe distance. She had informed him twice that turning the heat higher would not make breakfast happen faster. He had ignored her twice, and the first batch had already come dangerously close to becoming charcoal.
Blake sat at the table with Shannon in his lap, despite several empty chairs surrounding them. They had been officially dating for one week and had apparently decided personal space was now an outdated social custom.
“You know,” James said, glancing over his shoulder, “some of us are trying to cook.”
Blake rested his chin on Shannon’s shoulder. “You’re burning pork. I don’t think that counts.”
James pointed the tongs at him. “You want breakfast, Thornton?”
“I want edible breakfast.”
Shannon laughed and stole a strawberry from the bowl in front of her. Blake immediately opened his mouth until she fed it to him, which earned matching groans from almost everyone else in the room.
“They’re unbearable,” Annabelle said.
“You encouraged this for months,” I reminded her.
“I made a mistake.”
Blake kissed Shannon’s cheek. “Now you know how the rest of us feel watching you and James.”
The front door opened, and Billy appeared with Leah beside him. She carried two cardboard trays of coffee while he balanced a bakery box against one hip, looking happier than I had ever seen him during his relationship with Maya.
“We brought reinforcements,” Leah announced.
Leah passed drinks around before settling beside Billy at the table. Their relationship was still new, but there was an ease between them that made it feel less fragile than something only a week old. Billy listened when she spoke. Leah looked at him without measuring herself against anyone who had come before her. They had none of the constant tension that had followed him and Maya into every room.
Max entered the kitchen last.
He had returned to the house three days earlier, carrying no explanation beyond telling Daniel that he and Liam were over and that he did not want to discuss it. No one had pushed. The others remained clueless, despite the shadows beneath his eyes and the way he occasionally stared at his phone before turning it facedown.
Daniel had started leaving a seat open beside him without making the gesture obvious.
This morning, Max took it.
“Coffee?” Leah asked.
He nodded. “Please.”
She passed him a cup without asking any other questions. Max murmured his thanks and wrapped both hands around it, allowing himself to remain part of the room even if he was not ready to offer more.
That mattered.
The pancakes came out uneven, the bacon survived James, and Billy’s bakery box contained enough cinnamon rolls to derail every training plan in the house. We crowded around the table and kitchen island, talking over one another while Daniel kept sliding the least misshapen pancakes onto my plate.
Annabelle caught him doing it. “Favoritism.”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
“That doesn’t make the round ones legally hers.”
Daniel placed another perfect pancake in front of me. “Take it up with management.”
“You are not management,” James said.
“I’m the only person here qualified to treat the food poisoning you’re about to cause.”
James looked down at the bacon. “It’s fine.”
“It’s black,” Blake said.
“It’s crispy.”
“It has entered a new state of matter.”
Laughter moved through the kitchen, filling the spaces where suspicion and anger had lived only days ago. No one had forgotten my confession. James was still cautious around me, and Shannon had asked pointed questions about the thesis until she was satisfied I had removed every identifying detail. Annabelle remained kind but watchful. Their forgiveness had not arrived as a grand declaration. It existed in smaller choices, including inviting me to sit with them and allowing ordinary conversation to return.
My thesis advisor had not been pleased when I requested a complete change in methodology. Rebuilding the project would delay my graduation if I could not finish the new research in time, but I had accepted that possibility. For once, I was collecting information from volunteers who knew exactly what they were agreeing to share.
Nothing hidden. Nothing stolen.
Daniel nudged my knee beneath the table. “You okay?”
I looked around the room before answering.
James was feeding Annabelle a piece of cinnamon roll. Billy and Leah were arguing playfully over whether coffee counted as breakfast. Blake had wrapped both arms around Shannon as if she might vanish if he loosened his hold. Max listened quietly while Daniel drew him into a conversation about the next game, giving him somewhere to place his attention without demanding anything personal.
The Hockey House was not what I had once believed it was.
It had protected people who did not deserve protection. Some of the men who wore the jersey had caused real harm while others stayed silent. The loyalty I had hated could become dangerous when it was used to shield cruelty.
But the house was also made of individuals.
They could fail one another, tell the truth, make amends, fall in love, walk away, and choose to become better than the traditions they inherited. They were not innocent, and neither was I. Maybe that was why the forgiveness in this room mattered. None of us had earned it by being perfect.
We had earned the chance to try again by finally being honest.
“I’m okay,” I told Daniel.
He studied me for a moment, then smiled and threaded his fingers through mine beneath the table.
For the first time in weeks, Sunday morning did not belong to Penalty Box Transgressions.
It belonged to us.