Icebreaker

A trashed arena forces figure skaters and hockey players together

Anastasia Allen is a pair figure skater at UC Maple Hills, training with her partner Aaron under the exacting Coach Brady while juggling a friends-with-benefits arrangement with basketball captain Ryan Rothwell.

A trashed arena forces figure skaters and hockey players together

Anastasia Allen is a pair figure skater at UC Maple Hills, training with her partner Aaron under the exacting Coach Brady while juggling a friends-with-benefits arrangement with basketball captain Ryan Rothwell. Nathan Hawkins captains the hockey team, living with his wheelchair-using best friend Robbie, wisecracking JJ, and quiet sophomore Henry. When vandals from a rival college destroy the hockey arena's cooling system, Director Skinner forces both teams to share the skaters' rink—a logistical catastrophe with regionals weeks away. Stassie confronts Brady in near-tears, furious about lost practice time. Nate approaches her afterward, apologizing and inviting her to a party. She refuses to even give him her name, dismissing his dimples and charm with a coldness that only makes him more curious.

Nate's lie unravels just as Stassie begins to thaw

Nate offers Stassie his private bathroom to skip the party line—their first moment alone. In his room, she snoops through his desk photos while he watches from the bed, and a tentative connection forms between jabs. Meanwhile, Sabrina and Robbie spark an instant, magnetic attraction. The evening shatters when Aaron arrives drunk, catches Stassie descending the stairs hand-in-hand with Nate, and accuses her of collecting team captains. Then he reveals that a hockey player's hookup caused the rink sabotage—information Nate had promised he didn't possess. The truth is Nate lied to protect Russ, a teammate whose scholarship would be destroyed by exposure. But Stassie doesn't know those stakes. Her budding warmth freezes solid. She tells Nate to stay out of her way, and she means every syllable.

Five-minute rounds end with Nate on probation instead of exile

Stassie's reluctant five-minute rounds during mandatory team-building introduce her to JJ, who asks whether she'd prefer a fish head on her body or vice versa, and Henry, a sophomore who buys her coffee, spills every team secret, and calls her skating beautiful before correcting himself to mean her performance, not her appearance. Robbie spends his entire round asking about Sabrina. Even the players she wants to hate—Joe, Kris, Bobby—make her laugh until she's covering her mouth in betrayal of her own grudge. When Nate finally sits across from her, he reintroduces himself as if they'd never met. She tells him he's on probation. The grin he gives her—wide, unguarded, achingly hopeful—makes her cheeks flush with a heat she blames on everything except him.