Where The Ice Gives Way Chapter 106

**Blake**

We file back into the locker room, the boys are still laughing, and giving each other shit. I start to take off my gear, and Theo drops onto the bench beside me with a groan and peels off one shoulder pad before hissing through his teeth. He reaches back and rubs at his shoulder, working the muscle there with his hand before dragging his shirt over his head. I clock the red mark already rising where he hit the boards. I let out a breath and shake my head. “Shit, Theo. I’m sorry, man.”

He glances up at me, then snorts. “Again? Mate, how many times are you going to apologise before I’m legally allowed to milk this?”

I don’t smile. Not really. I’m too lost in my head. I know I barely touched him. I can replay it a hundred times in my head, and it still doesn’t make sense that he ended up halfway across the rink. He sits up a little, narrowing his eyes at me, before leaning his forearms on his knees. “Alright. Seriously. What’s going on?” 

I drag my gloves off and toss them into my bag harder than I mean to. Theo watches me. “You alright?” he asks. “I thought you’d be on top of the world today after completing your bond, but you look wound tighter than a bloody snare.” I huff out a breath.

The answer sits there. A dozen answers, actually. My body feels wrong. My head feels too full. Every sound in here is a little too loud, every movement a little too easy to track, and the human boys across the room are all carrying their own little flares of frustration. I can feel it brushing at me in annoying little waves. I glance over at them, then back at Theo.

“Yeah,” I say at last, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck. “I don’t know. We’ll talk about it later?”

Theo’s brows lift. He follows my glance toward the humans, then looks back at me and, for once in his life, seems smart enough not to push.

“Right,” he says slowly. “Later.”

I finish stripping off the rest of my gear and head out to find Charlotte waiting where I left her. The second I step back out toward the stands and find her there by the rail, leaning forward with her arms folded over the cold metal, all that static in me softens. She looks up and smiles, and Christ, that helps more than it should.

“You okay?” she asks as I get close.

No. I nod. “Yeah.” The lie lands flat between us. She doesn’t call me on it straight away. Though I know she can sense it. She studies my face for one quiet second before reaching for my hand. I let her take it and tug me a little closer. Let the calm she carries settle into me in slow, steady pulses through the bond.

We stop long enough to drop Theo at his car, still parked on the school side. He shoulders his bag, shuts the door with his hip, then leans down to look back in through the open window.

“If I can’t lift my arm tomorrow, I’m billing you.”

“You’ll live,” I mutter. Then he straightens, gives Charlotte a little salute, and heads off, still rubbing at his shoulder.

On the drive home, Charlie chatters, replaying practice, reliving Theo’s dramatic brush with the afterlife, and then drops off into scrolling on his phone in the back seat. Charlotte sits beside me quietly, her fingers sliding between mine whenever I reach across the console at a light.

I pull into the driveway, feeling settled enough that I almost think I might be able to get through the rest of the night without having to explain any of it. Then we walk inside. Mum is in the kitchen with her hair half falling out of its tie and a jar of pasta sauce clutched in both hands, clearly losing a one-sided war with the lid. She glances up when we come in and smiles.

“Perfect timing. Come and save dinner.”

“Got it,” I say automatically, reaching for the jar. She hands it over without a second thought and turns back to the stove. I don’t think about it. I just grip the lid and twist, and the whole glass jar shatters in my hands. The sound cracks through the kitchen as sauce splashes across the bench, the cupboard, the floor. Shards of glass rain down in glittering pieces, some big, some small, all of them raining down on my parade. I stand there with half the ruined jar still in my hand, tomato sauce dripping down my fingers, while Mum stares at me and I stare at the mess.

“Oh, my God,” Charlotte says, grabbing a tea towel from beside the sink and stepping in. She’s quick to remove what’s left of the jar from my grip and start cleaning the sauce from my hands. “Blake, don’t move. Did it cut you? Let me see.”

I hold my hand up. Glass dust sticks to my skin in tiny shining specks, and a bit of sauce slides down my wrist to the floor. There isn’t a single cut. Not one.

Mum’s eyes widen. “How…” She looks at the broken glass, then at my hand, turning it over. Charlotte keeps fussing, dabbing at my fingers with the tea towel even as she realises there’s no blood there to wipe away. I let out a long breath through my nose and drag my other hand through my hair. “It’s been a weird day, Mum.”

Charlotte nudges me lightly with her shoulder, silently telling me to stop skirting around and actually say it. I look down at the shattered remains of what should have been a perfectly normal jar of sauce. 

“You want to tell me about it?” she says. 

I lift my head and meet her eyes. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “Yeah, I do.” Because no matter how old I get, no matter what the hell I’m turning into… I still need my Mum.