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“Yes,” she croaks, reminding me to let up on my grip. “Did you give yourself that shitty haircut or did you feel guilty for fucking mine up?”

“My dad did this,” I reply, not expecting to say it. “Do you know why I want to destroy you, Nope?”

“Is this your villain's origin story?” she quips. “You’re not bad, you’re just drawn that way?”

Fuck, she’s quoting Jessica Rabbit to me. In any other life, she’d be my damn dream girl. It’s one of my favorite movies.

“Something like that,” I mumble. “My mom drinks and my dad beats me when I piss him off. My mother used to be my champion. She got me into hockey, cheered me on, and convinced my father Chesterfield Prep was the best school for me so I could stay with my friends. My father hates anything about me that stands out unless he can find pride in it. Everything has to be the way he wants it, and it started when my brother went to prison for unethical hacking.”

“It is you,” she spits out. “You fucking bastard!”

I clench my hand around her throat again, mesmerized by the way it feels as she swallows and the panic that fills her dark eyes. Yeah, that’s what I want.

Her fear. I want to fucking own her.

“Cry me a river,” I snarl. “Your foster parents are on your side, even if you are a dirty whore. Do they know you fucked three guys in this locker room?”

Noor fights me even harder, and all I can do is offer her a broken laugh.

“My father saw my blue hair and decided to shave it clean off. He realized too late the only way to fix this impulsive behavior was to buzz it all,” I recount. “My mother hits me when she drinks too much too. The only safe place for me is to stay at Alastair’s house, and even then Kelsie will try to climb into bed with us.”

Her gaze narrows at me, but I don’t care if she knows I sleep in Alastair’s bedroom more often than not. It’s the only way to keep away the nightmares.

“All while you have this cushy life that you don’t deserve, I suffer,” I growl. “Listening to your story on the voice notes made me realize how similar we are and it made me feel sorry for you.”

My hand opens again and she sucks in oxygen as she kicks at me again. This time, she manages to catch my stomach, making me grunt in pain. We’re fucking toxic, but I can’t help myself.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she rasps. “My stories aren’t for public consumption or so you can sit in your room and stroke your cock to my pain, Ciaran. Half the time I have to talk myself out of giving in to my dark thoughts. All this bullshit does is make me want to walk into traffic.”

“You’d leave the people who love you?” I ask, angry. “The coward’s way out is everywhere. It’s why it was so easy for the school to believe you could have killed yourself.”

“And that’s why I didn’t,” she says. “I have very few tethers to hold me to a reality where I’m not better off dead. You just make it harder for me to hold onto it. It’s why I’m continually zoning out and in my head.”

“I won’t accept a world where you aren’t around,” I decide, knowing my time is running out.

This conversation is so odd. I both loathe her and want her. It’s very confusing. I’m jealous of her life, and I wish mine was different.

My hand moves from her throat to her short spiral curls, fisting them to fuse my lips to hers. I want to see her curls wild around her face instead of pulled back the way it is. If they were pinned, I’d pull them out, but I don’t have the time to fuck with it.

Noor bites down on my lip until I feel it split and I struggle to keep myself from shaking her like a dog.

“You don’t get to decide that,” she says, releasing me. “If my crazy health shit doesn’t kill me, you just may.”

My hands drop from her because that sounds like some sort of fucked up prophecy, and I walk back out the door to rejoin my team. Noor slips into the crowd to watch the game, but I can’t keep checking on her when there are scouts in the stands tonight.

I fucked around enough by knocking pucks into the protective glass to get her attention. Now, my eyes are on the prize as I work as enforcer, bruiser, and chirper as I play. I give the team everything, protect my teammates, and throw down when necessary.

I wouldn’t say I’m playing safe, because that doesn’t win games. Instead, I’m saying I’m strategic. When the buzzer goes off at the end of the game with one last goal in our favor, I finally allow my eyes to crawl over the stands to find Noor, only to find she’s gone.

She did her usual skating on the ice before the third period, but I noticed she didn’t do any jump turns. Her energy wasn’t there tonight, and I don’t know why. She seemed fine enough to fight and bite me in the locker room.

I wrap my arm around Draven’s shoulder, kissing his helmet.

“You did good tonight,” I praise.

“Fucking beast!” Eamon yells.

D really did kick ass. There were a lot of shots taken at him, and he managed to keep all but one out. We won by three goals. I’m pretty happy with that.