Ice Cold Love

Part 15

Shoutout to @_Soulink and @DawnxxDaisy ! Thank you both for your personal feedback, it's been really helpful!

Amelia's POV

If you asked me a day ago to explain why people saw Ronan Harding the way they did, I wouldn't have been able to tell you. I was confused about the matter myself, and why no one put a man like him in his place.

I had the answer now, though.

I arrived at the arena halfway through the game with NSU, and I spent the remaining hour watching Ronan slam men into the boards and onto the ice. Over and over and over again.

No one was as brutal as he was out there. He was mercilessly, taking every opportunity he got to do some damage. He purposely tried to get into fights multiple times, and we all watched the ref send him to the penalty box whenever he did. My eyes stayed glued to player number 32 in blue throughout most of the game.

This was why people didn't mess with him. Why they didn't say anything to him. Why some even feared him. Ronan Harding was a force to be reckoned with, and no one wanted to take their chances, both on and off the ice. I watched him play in a semi-hypnotic state.

I was never a huge hockey fan, but I had a basic understanding of the game thanks to my friends back in New York. They were die hard Rangers fans and spent every minute they could describing the games they watched to me. Sometimes, I even watched a game or two with them, but the occurrence was seldom.

I felt my heart falter in my chest at the memory, and for a second I let myself go back to the nights spent with Naomi, David, and Ezra, huddled together in front of the small TV in the boys' house. The two boys fought for the recliner before every game or movie we watched together, and Naomi would scream at them, telling them to stop and help her order some food. I always had the remote, and Ezra would constantly ask me to increase the volume, even though everyone else's eardrums would be on the verge of erupting. Dave would never stop complaining about Naomi using his shoulder as a pillow, but he still chose to occupy the seat next her whenever we were together. The three of them would throw their pillows at me whenever I changed the channel during a hockey game to annoy them, and because I was bored.

I missed them. I missed us.

I still had their numbers in my phone, but part of me was too cowardly to try to talk to them after I had left out of nowhere and changed all my contact details. Would they want to talk to me? After how I'd left without so much as a warning, would they be relieved to hear my voice, or angry? Did they miss me the way I missed them, or were they too upset at what I'd done to give me a second thought?

I didn't know how to fix the mess I had made, I didn't know if I could, but I missed them more than I realised in that moment.

The shrill sound of a whistle blowing pulled me out of my thoughts. I felt Lily move from beside me and I turned to see that she had stood up, along with Veronica on her left. A quick glance at their expressions told me something was wrong, and I rose from my chair to see what had irked them.

Athletes from both teams had halted on the ice, their attention on 2 players that looked like they were about to fight on the left side of the rink. The real worry and confusion wasn't a fight, fighting was somewhat a part of hockey, it was that the two players that were about to go at each other were wearing the same coloured jerseys.

It took me a beat to read the numbers on their backs, and my jaw unhinged and practically hit the floor when I saw the number 32 on the back of one of the players. Is he really that stupid? I couldn't help asking myself the question. How dumb do you have to be to get into a fight with your own teammate in the middle of a game?