The Hockey Playing Alpha and His Human Ice Princess

Georgia

I’m sprawled across my bed on a Thursday evening, staring at a lit textbook page I haven’t actually read for the better part of ten minutes, when Mandi bursts through our door holding her phone like it’s evidence in a trial.

”Okay,” she announces, kicking the door shut behind her with her heel. ”So I was doing a completely normal amount of internet stalking, and I need you to explain some things to me.”

”That’s not ominous at all,” I reply, deadpan.

”Georgia Steele.” She says my full name slowly, deliberately, the way you’d say a magic word you’re testing out loud for the first time to see if it does anything. ”Why didn’t you TELL us?” she demands.

She crosses the room and drops onto the end of my bed without waiting for permission, turning her phone toward me so I can see the screen. There I am, three years younger, mid-spin at Regionals in a costume I’ve since donated to a younger skater back home, sequins catching the arena lights. She scrolls. More photos follow in quick succession. Competition scoresheets. A grainy local news clip from Sectionals. An old interview where I’m standing next to Mollie with her hand on my shoulder and her smile doing all the talking neither of us actually meant.

”Tell you what?” I ask, even though I already know exactly what.

”That you’re an actual competitive figure skater! Like, ranked! With medals!” Mandi’s voice climbs half an octave with every word. ”I looked up your name because I was bored and curious, and I fell into an internet hole for forty-five minutes. Forty-five, Georgia. I missed an entire episode of something I was supposed to be watching.”

”I’m sorry for costing you screen time,” I say.

”You should be. This is a tragedy.” She sets the phone face-down on the comforter, finally, and looks at me properly, something shifting in her expression from delighted shock into something quieter, more genuinely curious. ”Sectional silver. Regional bronze. Do you know how many people at this school would absolutely kill for that? And you’ve just been sitting here for two weeks letting me ramble on about my cousin’s ice sculpture scandal like it was the most interesting thing either of us had going on.”

”It was interesting,” I offer.

”It’s not the point, and you know it’s not the point,” she insists. She pulls her knees up onto the bed, tucking them under her, settling in like she’s not going anywhere until she gets a real answer. ”Why didn’t you say anything?”

I don’t have an easy answer for that, or at least not one I’m used to putting into actual words for someone who isn’t Arthur. I look at the ceiling instead of at her, buying myself a second, tracing a crack in the plaster that I’ve already memorized from three nights of insomnia.

”It’s not that I was hiding it,” I say slowly, feeling my way through it as I go. ”It’s just. At my old rink, being a skater wasn’t my thing. It was my mom’s thing. She built the whole plan around it, the whole schedule, the whole identity. If I bring it up first here, before anyone asks, it feels like I’m inviting all of that back in on purpose. Like I’m handing you the version of me that belongs to her, instead of getting to be just Georgia for a minute. Before anyone decides what that means.”

Mandi’s quiet for a moment, actually quiet, which for her is rare enough that I glance over just to make sure she’s still in the room and hasn’t been replaced by someone else entirely.

”That’s kind of sad,” she says finally, her voice gentle, none of her usual bounce in it. ”In a real way. Not a mean way.”

”Yeah.” I let out a breath. ”Kind of.”

”Well.” She sits up straighter, and whatever softness crossed her face a second ago gets folded back into something more declarative, more Mandi. ”For the record, I would have been your friend either way. Medals or no medals. Ranked or unranked, whatever. I liked you before I knew any of this. I just like you slightly more now because it’s objectively very cool and I get to brag about my roommate to literally anyone who’ll listen.”

”Thanks. I think,” I say, half-laughing.

”I mean it,” she insists, fast and sincere, no performance in it at all this time. Then she hesitates, something crossing her face that looks almost like she’s deciding whether to say the next part out loud or swallow it back down. Her fingers pick at the edge of my comforter. ”Puck already knows who you are, by the way.”

That gets my full attention, fast enough that I sit up a little straighter myself. ”How?” I ask, sharp.

Mandi’s smile tightens at the edges, doesn’t quite match the easy, bubbly tone of everything she’s said so far tonight.

”Everyone knows everything at Rosethorne.” She shrugs, too casual. ”You’ll get used to it.”

”That’s not an answer,” I press.

”It’s the only answer I’ve got,” she says, reaching for her phone again, scrolling through something unrelated, angling her body slightly away from me. ”This place is small. Word travels fast. People talk about a fifteen-year-old’s regional bronze medal from three states away before she’s even unpacked her suitcase.”

Her thumb keeps moving across the screen, not really reading anything, just needing somewhere else to look.

I watch her for a second, turning it all over slowly in my head. The way Bianca looked at me during registration, cross-referencing me against some invisible file. The way Puck’s hand splintered a desk before he could have possibly known anything real about me. The way information about me seems to have arrived at this school before I ever did, the same way the invitation itself arrived before I even thought to go looking for a place like this in the first place. Nothing here has ever quite waited its turn.

”Is this school haunted or something?” I ask, half joking, testing the water to see what kind of ripple it makes, watching her face carefully now the way she wasn’t watching mine a second ago.

Mandi laughs, the sound arriving a beat too late to be real, a fraction of a second delayed, like she had to reach for it instead of it coming on its own the way real laughter does when something is actually funny. The pitch is right. The timing is wrong. And once I’ve heard it, I can’t unhear it, sitting there in the space between her question and mine like one more thing I don’t have an explanation for yet.