Silver left Blue State Coffee with her jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth and her literature notebook containing exactly zero useful insights about their American authors project. She'd spent the better part of an hour trying to navigate Eli's conversational landmines, every attempt at productive academic discussion ricocheting off the impenetrable wall he seemed to construct around himself. His responses had been either maddeningly cryptic or coldly dismissive, leaving her feeling like she was playing a game where only he knew the rules.
By the time she crossed back onto Old Campus through the wrought-iron gates, her pulse was still hammering against her ribs with the kind of frustrated energy that used to fuel her most aggressive training sessions.
Americus and Riley had claimed a sunny patch of grass near the base of Harkness Tower, taking advantage of one of those perfect early autumn afternoons when New England remembered it could be beautiful instead of punishing. Americus was sprawled dramatically across her jacket, waving a tube of what appeared to be holographic lip gloss like a conductor's baton while she narrated some elaborate story that involved theatrical hand gestures. Riley sat cross-legged beside her with a thick philosophy textbook open in her lap, somehow managing to actually study despite her roommate's performance art.
"How'd the academic summit go with hockey boy?" Americus called out the moment Silver came within earshot, apparently abandoning whatever story she'd been telling in favor of more immediate gossip opportunities.
Silver dropped down beside them with less grace than usual, her knee protesting the sudden movement as she set her notebook on the grass with enough force to scatter a few late-season dandelions. "Fine."
Riley looked up from her reading, eyebrows climbing toward her hairline in the universal expression of someone who recognized a lie when she heard one. "That sounded convincing."
"Okay, painful," Silver admitted, running both hands through her hair until it probably looked like she'd been through a windstorm. "He's completely impossible to read. One second it feels like he's studying me under a microscope, watching every reaction. The next, he's delivering arctic-level cold shoulder treatment."
Americus's eyes lit up with the kind of delight usually reserved for discovering half-price designer shoes. "So basically, textbook enemies-to-lovers setup. The tension, the push-pull dynamic, the unresolved sexual chemistry disguised as academic collaboration..."
"We're partners for a literature project, not starring in one of your romance novels," Silver protested, but she could feel heat creeping up her neck that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun.
Americus just hummed with the satisfaction of someone who'd already written the final chapter and was simply waiting for reality to catch up with her predictions.
Silver leaned back against the soft grass, letting herself sink into the earth beneath Yale's Gothic towers. Above them, Harkness's medieval spires sliced into the cloudless blue sky like stone prayers reaching toward something higher. For a fleeting moment, surrounded by her friends' easy laughter and the distant sounds of other students enjoying the perfect weather, it almost felt normal. Like she was just another Yale freshman worried about literature projects and whether her roommate's matchmaking theories held any water.
She let her body relax into that illusion, her shoulders finally releasing some of the tension she'd been carrying since breakfast.
Then her phone buzzed against her hip.
The sound cut through her temporary peace like a blade through silk. Silver's stomach immediately clenched with the kind of dread that came from months of conditioning, because she already knew—with the certainty of someone who'd been disappointing the same person for seventeen years—exactly who was texting her.
She didn't want to look. Every instinct screamed at her to leave the phone in her pocket, to pretend she hadn't heard it, to maintain the fragile bubble of normalcy she'd been building around her new life at Yale.
But her eyes flicked down to the screen anyway, drawn by the same compulsive need that made people slow down to stare at car accidents.
Leona Preston.
The contact name glared up at her in stark black letters, and the text preview beneath it made her chest constrict: How's the knee? Back on the ice yet?
Silver's vision blurred slightly around the edges. The warm grass beneath her suddenly felt cold and unforgiving, like the unpadded ice she'd crashed into at Nationals. Her friends' voices faded into background noise as her entire world narrowed to the small screen in her hands.
Americus, naturally, had radar for drama. She leaned over, trying to get a look at Silver's phone. "Who's that? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Silver flipped the phone facedown against her thigh with enough speed to probably look suspicious. "No one important."
Riley glanced up from her philosophy textbook, concern creasing her features as she took in Silver's sudden tension. "You sure you're okay? You went really pale."
Silver forced what she hoped was a reassuring nod, but her pulse was hammering in her ears loud enough to drown out the ambient sounds of campus life around them. "Just spam. Nothing worth worrying about."
But even as she said it, she was lifting the phone again, thumb hovering over the message notification like someone poking at a fresh bruise to see how much it still hurt.
She opened the conversation.
How's the knee? Back on the ice yet?
No greeting. No "how are you settling into college" or "I hope you're making friends." Just expectation compressed into nine words, sharp and cutting as freshly sharpened skate blades.
The message was so quintessentially Leona that Silver could practically hear her mother's voice delivering it—clipped, professional, focused entirely on Silver's utility as a competitive athlete rather than her wellbeing as a human being. Her mother's mantra echoed in her head with perfect clarity: Pain is temporary. Champions push through. Don't waste everything we've built together.
Silver's thumb hovered over the reply field while her mind cycled through possible responses. She could type I'm fine, just focusing on school right now. Or Still in physical therapy, taking it slow. Or, if she was feeling particularly honest, I deleted my skating Instagram and haven't set foot on ice since I left Atlanta.
Instead, her thumb moved higher on the screen, guided by an impulse that felt like self-preservation wrapped in defiance.
She pressed Delete conversation.
The entire message thread vanished into digital nothingness, taking with it months of increasingly desperate texts from Leona about training schedules and comeback timelines and the importance of not letting one setback define her entire career.
For the first time all day—possibly the first time since she'd arrived at Yale—Silver felt like she could breathe all the way down to the bottom of her lungs.
The autumn air tasted like freedom.