Roxy POV
I stared down at the wooden stick resting against my sneakers, my mind racing in a million different directions.
I looked back at the steel exit door that Nate had just locked, then looked down at the dark, frozen surface of the rink.
Five thousand dollars.
The number burned behind my eyelids like a brand.
If I walked away right now, if I let Jaxon intimidate me into quitting, the financial aid office would cancel my enrollment before the week was over.
My family would be crushed under the weight of my failure.
All their sacrifices, all those long nights my dad spent working himself to the bone, would mean nothing.
I couldn’t go back home to Ashenvale with my head bowed, telling them I got kicked out of school because I was too afraid of a spoiled rich boy.
I didn’t have a choice.
I never had a choice.
I bent down, my fingers wrapping around the cold, rough tape of the hockey stick handle.
It was heavy, much heavier than I expected, pulling uncomfortably at the muscles in my shoulder.
I gripped it tightly, forced my chin up, and pushed open the small creaking gate that led onto the ice.
The humiliating loss of balance as rubber soles hit slick ice sent a violent jolt of pain straight up my spine.
My feet shot out from beneath me before I could even take a proper step.
My heart leaped into my throat as my body tilted backward, my limbs flailing wildly in the air.
Desperate, I reached out and slammed my hands against the padded barrier, my knuckles turning white as I fought the gravity pulling me down.
The hard edge of the wall caught my chest, knocking the wind out of my lungs, but I managed to stay on my feet.
My breath came in short gasps as I stood frozen, my legs shaking like water.
Jaxon’s laughter erupted through the empty arena—a cruel, beautiful, booming sound that sliced right through my dignity.
“First lesson, Tutor,” Jaxon mocked, skating backward in a slow, effortless circle around me.
He didn’t even have to look down at the ice to balance.
“The ice doesn’t care about your perfect GPA or your high school attitude. It eats people like you alive.”
Over by the player benches, Nate quietly leaned his large frame against the plexiglass wall, watching my struggle with a slight frown.
He twirled a silver ring around his finger, his eyes tracking my clumsy movements.
He didn’t join in on Jaxon’s laughter, but he didn’t move an inch to help me either.
To them, I was just a stray animal that had wandered onto their playground.
The humiliation of the moment sparked a hot, volatile wave of rage deep inside my chest.
The fear vanished, replaced by an intense, burning fury.
“Shut up,” I muttered under my breath.
I stabilized myself, forcing my weight down into my knees, trying to mimic the low center of gravity I had seen Jaxon use.
I dragged my cheap canvas sneakers carefully across the slick surface, sliding them inches at a time rather than lifting them.
It was exhausting, the muscles in my thighs burning from the tension, but I refused to fall.
I gripped the heavy wooden stick with both hands, using it like a cane to balance my shaking body.
I made it to the center red line.
A black rubber puck was sitting there, looking small and insignificant against the vast white ice.
I tapped the edge of the puck with the wooden blade of my stick, dragging it slowly toward the center face-off circle.
I looked up, my eyes locking onto the net.
Jaxon stopped his arrogant circling.
The lazy, playful smirk finally left his face, replaced by a cold, focused mask that made him look unrecognizable.
He skated backward into the crease, dropping low into his professional goalie stance.
Even without his massive goal-tending pads, his broad shoulders and long limbs seemed to cover almost the entire width of the net.
He lowered his head, his stormy grey eyes locking onto mine through the cold mist rising off the floor.
He looked like a brick wall.
There was no space to score, no gap in his armor.
“Come on then, Brooks,” Jaxon challenged, his voice dropping into that dark, quiet rumble that vibrated right through the soles of my shoes.
“Take your shot. Let’s see what all that talk is worth.”
My lungs burned from the freezing air, and my fingers were already going numb from the cold wood of the stick.
If I stopped to think about the physics of what I was trying to do, or the physical size of the boy blocking my future, I would freeze.
I couldn’t think about the rules of hockey.
I could only think about Mildred’s elitist sneer at the bursar’s office, the red eviction threat on my laptop screen, and the five-thousand-dollar monster standing between me and my survival.
I let out a wild, raw scream of fury, channeling every ounce of my desperation into my legs.
I lunged forward, charging at him with everything I had left.
I drove the soles of my sneakers into the ice, abandoning all caution as I ran-slid toward the net, dragging the black rubber puck along the wood blade.
The wind rushed past my ears, and for a split second, the distance between us shrunk.
Seven feet.
Five feet.
I could see the frosty breath escaping Jaxon’s lips.
I pulled the stick back behind my hip, winding up for a wild, chaotic swing, putting every single pound of my body weight and anger into the motion.
I was going to force that puck through him if it was the last thing I did.
Jaxon moved with blinding, supernatural speed.
Before the blade of my stick could even connect properly with the rubber puck, his heavy stick came sweeping across the ice like a lightning bolt.
“Crack!”
The solid wood of his hockey stick struck mine with an immense amount of force.
The power of the collision sent a violent, shattering vibration tearing straight up the shaft of my stick.
The impact was so sudden it felt like hitting a concrete wall.
The shockwave traveled instantly into my fingers, numbing my wrist, my elbow, and my entire right arm within a second.
The wooden stick was ripped out of my numbed grip, flying through the air and clattering loudly against the ice several feet away.
The black puck slid harmlessly into the far corner of the rink, untouched by my swing.
I stumbled forward blindly, the momentum of my own missed swing throwing me entirely off balance.
My sneakers lost what little grip they had on the ice.
I fell hard, my knees hitting the frozen surface first, before my body slid helplessly across the rink, crashing right into the leather-bound skates of Jaxon Montgomery.