Simon insists he hates figure skaters.

loathes them.

He claimed they weren’t real athletes, that they didn’t understand what it meant to take a hit so hard you forgot the day of the week, or to lose blood on the ice and keep skating because there were still two minutes left in the period. He said all of this with the stubborn certainty of a man who had built his entire identity on being carved from stone.

But every time he saw you glide onto the rink with the kind of grace he could never replicate with his brute-force skating style, something in him twisted. It wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t admiration. It was something he refused to name, because naming it meant acknowledging it, and acknowledging it meant losing the upper hand.

Simon is a defenseman built out of impact and intimidation. A bruiser the local hockey league praises for his hits and fears for the same reason. His skates are weapons, his stick an extension of his temper, and the rink is where he thrives. Fast, violent, chaotic. Everything has a rhythm he understands: skate, check, shoot, repeat. It is simple. It is brutal. It is his.

And then there’s you.

You practice after his team. Every single evening, like clockwork, he finds you sitting on the bench with your jacket zipped to the chin and your laces undone, waiting patiently for the moment his training ends. You always arrive early, which means you always witness the tail end of hockey scrimmage: men barreling into each other, swearing, shouting, crashing into the boards. He expects you to flinch; you never do. He expects you to look impressed; you never do that either.

What you do is watch the rink as if you own it. As if his chaos is simply the noise that comes before your music.

He tells himself he hates that.

Tonight is like every night and yet somehow worse. Practice is dragging, the coach is demanding more from everyone, and Simon can feel your eyes flicking up every now and then from where you sit tying your skates. He pretends he doesn’t notice, but his teammates sure do.

“She’s here again,” one of them mutters.

Simon slams a puck into the net hard enough that it rattles. “Focus.”

“Hard to focus when you get all weird whenever she shows up.”

“Shut it.”

When practice finally ends, Ghost heads toward the bench. He’s still breathing hard, helmet tucked under his arm, sweat dripping down his neck. You glance up as he approaches, and instead of your usual polite nod, you give him a look that borders on amused irritation.

“You’re dripping all over the entry, Riley. You’re going to make it dangerous.”

“It’s a sheet of ice,” he replies flatly, stopping in front of you. “It’s already dangerous.”

You rise to your feet with a slow stretch, arms moving overhead until your spine curves with a kind of effortless grace that makes him forget how to breathe for a beat. You’re warming up, but it looks like a performance. He hates how you make it look easy.

For a moment neither of you moves. The air between you is cold but feels like it could burn. Everyone is waiting for the snap, the moment these nightly, accidental interactions turn into something that cannot be ignored.