The Ice King Regrets

CHAPTER 4

Aria's POV.

The press conference had barely settled into rhythm when I raised my hand, my pen already resting against my notebook like a small weapon I had been sharpening for years.

"Captain Kade," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "There have been reports of internal tension within the Titans' organization. Has that affected the team's preparation for the finals?"

For a moment, the room seemed to hold its breath alongside me.

Noah's eyes lifted, and for one unbearable second I thought he might actually answer me. Then his gaze slid past my face as though I were simply another body in a room full of strangers, and he turned to a reporter two seats away, answering a question about power play statistics with the kind of practiced ease that made my stomach twist.

He had heard me. I knew he had. The slight tightening at his jaw told me everything his silence refused to.

I kept my expression even, the way I had trained myself to during a hundred smaller humiliations, but I felt the room notice anyway. A rival journalist beside me let out a soft huff of amusement, the kind that didn't need words to sting. Someone else glanced my way and then quickly looked down at their notes, as if pity were something you had to hide before it touched you. I had forgotten how loud silence could be in a crowded room.

I told myself it didn't matter. I told myself I had walked into that arena as a journalist, not as the girl he once loved, and journalists did not flinch when a source refused to look at them. But some humiliations settle deep, quietly, the kind that don't announce themselves until much later, in the dark, when you're alone with your own thoughts and nothing left to distract you from them.

The conference dragged on for another twenty minutes. I asked no more questions. I simply watched him instead, studying the way he answered everyone else with an openness he had denied me, memorizing the practiced calm he wore like armor. It was strange, seeing him like this. Older. Sharper around the edges. Still, somewhere beneath the composure, I could see traces of the boy who used to laugh so easily it embarrassed him.

When the conference finally ended, people rose in a slow wave, gathering their bags and murmuring to each other about deadlines and quotes. I lingered near the back, pretending to review my notes, giving myself a reason to stay a little longer than necessary.

That was when I felt it.

His stare landed on me before I even lifted my head, a weight pressing against my skin the way it used to years ago, back when a single glance from him could make my whole day rearrange itself around him. I turned toward the exit and found him watching me from across the room, his expression unreadable to anyone who hadn't spent two years memorizing every version of his face.

But I had.

And what I saw in that moment nearly stole the air from my lungs. It wasn't indifference. It wasn't the practiced blankness he'd worn all afternoon. It was something rawer, something that looked dangerously close to longing, as if losing me had become the one wound fame could never quite close.

For a single heartbeat, I let myself remember him the way he used to be, sitting cross legged on my apartment floor, laughing at something stupid I said while noodles went cold in his lap. I let myself remember the boy who promised the world would never make him forget the sound of my voice.

Then reality came rushing back, and with it, anger arrived like an old, reliable friend.

He didn't get to look at me like that. Not after everything. Not after the silence that swallowed five years of my life whole.

I broke the eye contact first, forcing myself to gather my things with hands that were far too steady for how hard my heart was pounding. But before I could reach the door, his agent stepped smoothly into my path, blocking the space between us with the practiced grace of a man who had spent years cleaning up messes before they became headlines.

"Miss Vale," Daniel said, his smile as polished as I remembered. "Welcome back to hockey."

Something about the way he said it, so casual, so rehearsed, made my skin crawl in a way I hadn't expected. It was the same voice that had once told me Noah didn't wish to be contacted. The same voice that had convinced me, in the quietest and cruelest way possible, that I had never mattered enough to fight for.

"Mr. Price," I said evenly. "Still doing damage control, I see."

His smile flickered, just barely. "Just being courteous."

"Of course," I said, stepping around him without giving him the satisfaction of a longer response.

As I walked out of the arena into the cool evening air, I told myself the ache in my chest was nothing more than old muscle memory, a reflex from a heart that hadn't yet learned the difference between longing and warning.

But if I was being honest with myself, and I rarely allowed myself that luxury anymore, I knew the truth was more complicated than that.

Noah Kade had looked at me like I was the only unfinished thing in his life.

And despite every promise I had made myself to stay guarded, some small, reckless part of me wanted to know why.