Unsteady

Rhys Koteskiy lies face-down on the ice, helmet cracked, vision gone.

Rhys Koteskiy lies face-down on the ice, helmet cracked, vision gone. A devastating hit during a college hockey game has left the Waterfell University captain blind and seizing while trainers scramble around him. His best friend Bennett kneels beside him; his father screams from somewhere beyond the boards. Rhys manages only to repeat that he cannot see before the darkness swallows him. Three months of recovery follow: vision returns slowly, but panic attacks replace it, night terrors wake his mother nightly, and a creeping numbness erases every emotion Rhys once felt. The boy who loved hockey now cannot lace his skates without his hands shaking.

A numb hockey star lectures the wrong exhausted sister

Three months after his injury, Rhys volunteers at his retired NHL father's charity hockey program, hoping to feel something besides numbness. He spends the afternoon teaching a gap-toothed six-year-old named Liam to stay upright on skates, but the boy's delight produces nothing in him. When both Liam and his talented older brother Oliver wait long after every other child has been collected, a breathless girl named Sadie sprints in—their sister, not their mother, though she carries the weight of both. Rhys lectures her about showing up for the boys. Sadie seizes his wrist and bends it backward, tells him never to grab her again, and vanishes with both brothers in tow. Rhys stands frozen. The flash of her grip was the first thing he'd felt in three months.

A figure skater talks down a panicking hockey player at 5 AM

Sadie arrives at the ice complex before dawn for stolen practice time, only to find Rhys collapsed and hyperventilating on the rink. She recognizes him from the Foundation—sweating through his jersey, pupils blown, unable to breathe. Rather than calling for help, she kneels beside him and talks him down with the calm of someone who has managed her brother Oliver's anxiety attacks for years. She unlaces his skates when his shaking fingers can't grip the laces, then guides his weight off the ice. Before leaving, she extracts a promise of mutual secrecy—neither of them was here this morning. She returns to the rink to practice but his sad brown eyes won't leave her mind. She vows to steer clear of the boy with the broken interior, a promise she is already failing to keep.

A playlist with a dejected beagle becomes their private language Their pre-dawn encounters become ritual. They split the ice each morning—Sadie rehearsing figure skating routines, Rhys relearning the sport that nearly killed him. They strike a deal: no questions about each other's damage, just shared ice and shared music. Sadie creates…