Chapter 1 UNEXPECTED CLASH

AUDREY’S POV

I don't even like hockey.

I want to make that clear before anything else, because what happened tonight was entirely Matilda's fault, and I refuse to let history remember it any other way.

"You owe me," I said into my phone, squeezing past a guy in a jersey three sizes too big for the entrance of the stadium. “Excuse me. Sorry. Coming through,” I muttered in quick succession.

The stadium smelled like popcorn and body heat. I could practically feel excitement buzzing off the people. Way too much excitement for this simple sport played on ice. Couldn't be me. "I'm literally in the nosebleed section, Tilda."

"Audrey." Her voice crackled softly and I could tell she was about to blackmail me like always. "You're doing me the biggest favor of my life."

"You said that when I proofread your essay."

"This is bigger." I could hear the eyeroll in her tone.

I dropped into my seat— her seat, technically —and looked down at the rink. From up here, the players were tiny. Like little action figures someone had wound up and let loose. I squinted at them, trying to point out the one she wanted.

"Which one is he?"

"Number seven. Audrey. Come on, you've seen his face enough times on my wall." She whined.

I'd seen it, sure. Poster Lewis Jeremy was brooding and sharp-jawed and photographed like he knew exactly what the camera wanted from him. Real Lewis Jeremy, from this distance however, looked like everyone else— helmet, pads and moving too fast for me to track.

"Right," I said. "Number seven."

I held up her camera. The viewfinder made everything worse, honestly. I was not a sports photographer, and this camera cost more than my laptop.

"Please don't drop it," Matilda said.

"I'm not going to drop it." I assured her.

I was not absolutely going to drop it.

By the third period I had figured out which one was number seven. Hard to miss, honestly— not because I was paying attention, but because whenever something happened, the crowd's energy bent toward him like a compass finding north.

He was fast. Stupidly fast. The kind of fast that made you forget you didn't care.

Okay. Fine. I see why they were obsessed a little.

But I didn't say that out loud.

The Beanpot final. That's what the announcer kept calling it— “The Beanpot final, folks, and what a night”— and I gathered from the volume of the crowd that this was a big deal.

The Hartwell Wolves were winning. Number seven had scored twice and people around me were losing their minds in the way sports people do.

When the buzzer went, the stadium went insane.

I stood up because everyone around me stood up and I clapped because it felt weird not to. I even lifted the camera and got a few shots of the celebration— the players hugging, helmets off, the captain throwing his arms up—

And then number seven turned, and even from up here I could see the shift in him. His shoulders were hunched over and he was staring right at the captain.

No one noticed. But I did. He was skating towards the captain with a specific intent that made my stomach coil with unease.

What was he going to—

The punch landed before I understood what I was seeing.

One second the captain was laughing. The next, Lewis Jeremy's fist connected with his face, and the sound— even through the chaos— cut through everything.

The crowd went from euphoria to shocked silence in the span of a breath.

Then everyone started talking at once.

I stood there with Matilda's camera half-raised, staring down at the rink where two teammates were already pulling Jeremy back and I had only one thought. Matilda is going to lose her mind when I tell her.

The cold outside hit me like a punch as I stepped out.

Fuck.

I pulled my coat tighter and called her before I'd even made it to the bottom of the stadium steps. She picked up on the first ring.

"How was it? Did you get good shots? Was he amazing? Tell me everything —"

"He punched someone."

She went silent. Yeah, me too.

"He—what?"

"The captain. He just… right after they won, Tilda, in front of everyone just clocked him." I stepped onto the sidewalk and started walking.

The crowd was still spilling out around me, voices overlapping, everyone with their own version of what they'd just seen. "I got it on camera, I think. By accident."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah."

"Is he okay? Is Lewis okay?"

I blinked. "The captain's the one who got hit —"

"Audrey. Answer the question."

"I don't know, I left." I tucked the camera under my arm very carefully and weaved between a family taking up the whole pavement. "All I know is your precious idol is apparently a violent maniac with a temper problem. I watched him skate for two hours and the man smiled exactly zero times."

"He doesn't smile at games, that's just how he is when he's focused—"

"Matilda, he punched someone on live television."

"There must be a reason —"

"There's always a reason with people like that," I said. "Doesn't make it less of a red flag. He's got anger issues. Big ones. I'm telling you, there's something wrong with him."

I kept walking, still talking, working through everything I'd seen— the coldness of him, the way the celebration hadn't touched him at all, the way he'd looked at the captain right before—

I didn't notice the guy walking beside me until my elbow nearly clipped his arm.

I stepped to the side automatically and didn't look up. I just kept talking.

"Dalia is going to be so disappointed," I said into the phone. "She's had his poster since sophomore year, and now she's going to have to watch highlight reels of her favorite athlete committing assault—"

My foot caught on something. Something that definitely wasn't there a second ago.

Oh shit.

I didn't fall far— stumbled more than fell, one knee down, hands out— but the camera slipped.

I tried to grab it.

And I missed.

The crack of it hitting the pavement was the worst sound I'd ever heard in my life.

Oh fuck.

"Audrey? Audrey, what happened —"

I stared at the camera on the ground. The lens. The way it was sitting at an angle it definitely wasn't supposed to sit at.

"I'll call you back," I whispered and immediately hung up, my fingers trembling.

I crouched down and picked it up. Turned it over. Closed my eyes. Opened them.

Broken. The camera was obviously broken.

I looked up scanning the pavement like the universe might offer me some explanation, some stray pebble I could blame, some crack in the concrete that made me trip —

There was a guy a few feet away, walking like nothing had happened with his hands in his pockets, head down, dressed in a dark hoodie, plain, no jersey. Just a guy in a crowd.

But I caught his profile for half a second before the crowd swallowed him.

The tightness of his jaw. The way his gaze slid to mine coldly for a second.

My stomach dropped.

Lewis Jeremy.

What was he doing out here?

But he was already gone.