The Hockey Playing Alpha and His Human Ice Princess

Georgia

We didn’t touch, and it still felt like something happened.

I go to the library on Tuesday afternoon, telling myself it’s purely about the project. Our deadline for the next section of the outline creeps closer, and somebody needs to organize our notes into something coherent before Mr. Alderman starts asking pointed questions about our progress. I don’t examine that reasoning too closely. I’ve gotten used to not examining a lot of my own reasoning lately, especially anything involving Puck.

He’s already at our usual table when I arrive, the same corner near the window, books spread out in some careful, deliberate arrangement that makes it look like he’s been here a while. He glances up when I sit down across from him, and something different flickers in his gaze today, something warier than usual, like he’s bracing for a conversation he’s already decided to lose.

Since the hockey game, since the twins’ comment I still haven’t fully worked out how to feel about, things between us have settled into a new kind of careful. Not cold exactly. Cautious, like we’re both circling something neither of us wants to name out loud.

We work for a while in relative quiet, dividing up which sections of the essay we’re each responsible for, trading the occasional clipped comment about structure or thesis statements. It’s not our usual sharp, sparring rhythm. It’s smaller than that today, more guarded, both of us keeping some invisible distance between our words that wasn’t there before.

At some point he reaches for the anthology sitting between us, the one we’ve been sharing all semester, its spine cracked soft from use, to find the story he wants to reference for his section. My hand moves on instinct before I’ve fully thought it through, reaching for the same spot at almost the exact same moment, his hand and mine closing the distance from opposite directions.

Neither of us pulls back.

His hand stops maybe two inches from mine, hovering there in the space above the open book, close enough that I feel it immediately: a heat radiating off his skin that has nothing to do with the temperature of the library around us. It’s not like the burn of actual contact, sharp and sudden the way it’s been every other time we’ve touched. This is different. Softer somehow, but no less real, a warmth reaching across the gap between us like the air itself has started carrying it.

I don’t move my hand away.

I should. Some rational part of my brain tells me exactly that, tells me to pull back, to laugh it off, to make some easy joke about needing the book first, anything to break whatever this is before it gets any stranger. I don’t do any of it. I just sit there, my hand hovering two inches from his, watching the small, careful way his fingers have gone rigid, like he’s holding himself back from closing that final gap with everything he’s got.

The whole library seems to have gone quiet around us. Somewhere behind us someone’s still turning pages, and a printer hums steadily in the reference section, but none of it registers. It just feels that way. The space between our hands has become the only thing in the room that matters, some private, charged pocket of air that neither of us is willing to disturb by moving first.

My own heartbeat pounds too loud, too fast, and I think about that night in this exact library when he told me my heart was racing before I’d even fully felt it myself. Distantly, I wonder if he can hear it now too, if that’s some part of what’s keeping him frozen in place just as much as I am.

His eyes aren’t on the book anymore. They’re on my hand. Then, slowly, they move up to my face, and something raw surfaces in his expression, something he’s usually so careful to keep locked down and controlled, want and fear tangled together so completely that I genuinely can’t tell where one stops and the other begins.

"Georgia," he says, my name rough and low, like it costs him something to say out loud in this particular moment.

I don’t answer. I don’t trust my own voice right now, not with the way my pulse hammers, not with the way the air between our hands feels like it’s practically humming with something I don’t have a name for.

Neither of us moves for a long beat. Long enough that I become hyperaware of every small detail: the exact angle of his fingers, the faint furrow between his brows, the way his jaw works like he’s fighting something down, the same way it did that very first day on the cobblestones. Long enough that I start to wonder if this is it, if whatever’s been building since I first got here finally has to become something real instead of something we both keep circling and retreating from.

Then he pulls his hand back.

It happens fast, decisive, like he’s forced himself to do it before he can change his mind, his fingers curling into a loose fist as he draws his arm back to his side of the table. The warmth that had been building in the space between us dissipates almost instantly, leaving behind a strange kind of cold in its place, like something’s been taken away that I didn’t realize I wanted until it was gone.

His jaw goes tight, his eyes fixed somewhere just past my shoulder instead of on my face.

"This is a bad idea," he mutters, the words low and rough, like he’s reminding himself of something he already knows and keeps forgetting anyway.

"What is?" I ask, my voice finally working again, though it comes out smaller than I want it to. "What’s a bad idea?"

He doesn’t answer.

He’s already gathering his books, moving fast now, shoving papers into his bag with none of his usual careful precision. Before I can ask again, before I can even fully process that the moment’s already over, he stands, slinging his bag over one shoulder and pivoting toward the exit without meeting my eyes.

"Puck." I say his name sharper this time, trying to catch him before he’s fully gone.

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t look back. He walks fast and controlled, weaving between the library shelves toward the exit, leaving me sitting there alone with the anthology still open on the table between us, the page he’d been reaching for still marked, his half of our project still spread out across the wood like he might come back for it any minute.

He doesn’t come back.

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