Chapter Two
981 Words
Ace
"You're actually letting her move in."
Reeves says it like a question he already knows the answer to. We are in the locker room after morning skate and I am not in the mood.
"Mason asked," I say.
"Mason’s sister." This from Park, who has never in his life known when to stop talking. "The one who reported you. The one who almost torched your draft. That one. Moving into your apartment."
I pull my shirt over my head. "Your footwork was sloppy today, Park. Focus on that."
He shuts up.
Here is what neither of these idiots understands, and the part I am not about to explain to either of them.
Wren Cole did not just report me. Half this school has done something worth reporting at one point or another and nobody ever says a damn word. I have spent four years being the most untouchable thing on this campus.
She touched me.
So when Mason called me this afternoon telling me the building was on fire, asking me to take his sister in because he had nowhere else to put her, the smart move was no. The clean move was no.
I said yes before he finished the sentence.
"You said yes pretty fast," Reeves says, watching me with that look he gets, the one that means he already knows the answer and just wants to see if I will lie about it.
"Drop it."
"I'm only saying. For a girl you supposedly hate, you cleared out the good room."
I did clear out the good room. I am not going to think about that one either.
I get both of them out of my apartment by half past seven. Park takes a sleeve of my crackers on his way out the door because he was raised by wolves, and Reeves claps me on the shoulder and says, "Be nice to her," in a tone that means the exact opposite, and then it is just me and the quiet and the clean spare room I keep telling myself I cleaned out of pure obligation.
She knocks at eight on the dot.
Three times. Hard.
I open the door.
And there she is, two bags at her feet, chin up, dark hair pulled back tight, swimming in an oversized hoodie and wearing the same expression she has been building since she was a kid. The one that says I am not afraid of you. She has never once managed to sell it, but I have to give her credit, she keeps trying.
"Calloway," she says.
"Cole." I lean against the doorframe so I am taking up the whole thing, because I know it forces her to look up at me and I know exactly how much she hates that. "You actually came."
"I had a gun to my head."
I let my eyes go down to the bags and back up to her face, slow, the same way I did it at the party, because I know precisely what it does to her. "You can put the claws away. I'm not going to touch you. You're not really my type."
"That's funny. From what I walked in on the other night, your type is anything with a pulse and a flat surface."
"Cute." I step back and leave the door open. She picks her bags back up and walks past me, and she smells like something clean and warm that has no business being in my apartment, and I shut the door a little harder than I need to.
"Spare room's on the left," I tell her. "Bathroom's right across from it. Don't touch my stuff, don't eat my food, and don't bring anybody back here without telling me first."
"I wasn't planning on throwing parties, Ace. Throwing parties is your thing. Drugs off girls' stomachs, the whole traveling circus." She drops her bags in the doorway of the good room and turns around to face me. "Speaking of which, you should really thank me. Two games off is basically a paid vacation."
I cross the room before I have decided to. Just enough that she has to tilt her head all the way back to keep her eyes on mine, and to her credit she does not step back. She never steps back. We end up close enough that I can watch her pulse going in her throat.
"Let's get something straight, Cole." My voice comes out low and even, and I mean every single word of it. "You cost me two games, a review, and a line in my file that is going to follow me into every interview I will ever sit in for the rest of my life. I let your brother put you here because he asked me to, and because I would rather have you somewhere I can see you than out there running your mouth somewhere I can't. But do not for one second mistake a roof over your head for me forgetting what you did to me."
She looks up at me, and she does not blink, and when she finally speaks her voice is every bit as quiet as mine was.
"Good. Because I am not sorry. And if I walked in on the exact same thing tomorrow, I would report you again." She picks her bags back up. "Sleep with one eye open, Calloway."
She walks into the room and shuts the door.
I stand in my living room a lot longer than I want to admit, looking at the closed door of the good room, my heart going hard for a reason I am refusing to name.
This was a mistake.
She is going to be a problem.
And the absolute worst part, the part I would not say out loud if you paid me for it, is that I have not felt this awake in months.
- Writer
