Crosschecked By The Wrong Twin(A Hockey romance)

Chapter 4: Paper cuts 📞

Juniper POV

I walked back to the dorm with a tight, clenched purpose that didn’t match how rattled I was underneath. Every step felt loud, Tristan’s words kept overlapping each other in my head.

When I got inside, I didn’t even bother pretending I was okay.

The dorm door clicked shut behind me, and chaos greeted me before I could breathe. Noah and Mabel’s voice drifted through the hallway like a curse—no shame, no consideration, the kind of loud moaning that made my skin crawl. Their voices rose and fell in sickening rhythm, thick with heat and entitlement, as if the building itself belonged to them.

I rolled my eyes so hard it practically hurt. Groaned. Covered my ears with both hands like I could physically block the sound from burrowing into my skull.

Then I managed to open my room door.

I slipped inside like a thief and slammed it shut, the impact rattling the hinges. For one blessed second, silence.

That second didn’t last.

Mabel’s laugh came through the door, bright and mocking, like she could still hear me even when I was behind a lock. Like she was pleased with herself for ruining something she didn’t even understand.

My jaw tightened until it ached.

Fine, I’ll ruin it back.

I crossed to my desk, grabbed my Bluetooth speaker, and fumbled on my phone with clumsy anger. My fingers were shaking—not from fear, but from that ugly mix of humiliation and rage that never made sense when it was convenient.

The beat kicked on loud enough to shake dust off the shelf.

I turned my room into a private club the moment the music started—throwing my body into the rhythm like I could replace my thoughts with motion. My hands stayed in my pockets. I didn’t care how ridiculous I looked. I didn’t care if the walls thought I was unhinged.

I danced anyway.

The bass thumped through my bones, drowning out Mabel’s laugh and Noah’s smug, stupid grunts. The sound ridiculously soothed me in a way. Don’t ask me why, but it did for a while.

Until—

My back pocket brushed against something that wasn’t fabric.

I froze, the music still blasting, my weight shifting wrong as my mind suddenly caught up. For a second, I thought I imagined it—maybe a random receipt, maybe a tag from a bag I’d shoved in too fast.

But the shape was too flat. Too… paper.

My stomach tightened.

Suspicion is a loud feeling. It grows teeth in your chest and gnaws until you check. I reached back slowly, keeping my face neutral as if I wasn’t about to go spelunking for evidence in my own pocket.

My fingers brushed the edge of a folded sheet. I pulled it out just enough to feel the paper catch the light. My pulse ticked faster.

What the hell?

Who put this in my pocket?

And why?

Before I could unfold it all the way, my phone began ringing.

The sound cut through the music like a blade. The speaker kept thumping, but the ringing demanded attention anyway—my screen lighting up across my desk like a warning sign.

I stared at the caller ID.

It was a number with no name attached, unsaved. My throat went dry.

Noah and Mabel were loud enough outside to qualify as background noise. Tristan had been in my head all day. This call wasn’t any of that.

I answered.

“Hello?” I said, voice flat. No politeness, no warmth.

A breath.

Then Tristan’s voice slid through the speaker of my phone—low, tight, distressed in a way I didn’t think he was capable of. The edge in his tone hit me first, like a bruise forming.

“Juniper,” he said.

I rolled my eyes so hard it was practically a reflex. “What now?”

His silence lasted half a beat too long.

Then: “I’m at the door. Open up.”

My stomach tightened at the phrase ‘open up’. Like he owned the air in my room.

“Why should I do that?” I asked, already angry at the question I didn’t even want to consider. “You don’t live here.”

His voice sharpened—frustrated, bordering on strained. “Did you—by any chance—see a paper in your back pocket?”

I looked down at the folded sheet in my hand like it could defend me. “Yes.”

Another pause from him. Then, quieter—relief and something else twisted together. “Okay.”

I should’ve felt calm.

Instead, heat rushed up my neck. “Were you the one that put it there?” I snapped, because anger was easier than confusion.

Tristan didn’t answer right away.

Silence stretched long enough to fill the room with uncertainty. The music kept thumping in the background, and my speaker seemed too loud now, like it was mocking me for trying to control the noise.

Then Tristan exhaled, slow. “Juniper—come open the door first.”

His tone told me there was more to it than a piece of paper. Something he didn’t want me to discover alone. Something he didn’t want me to see when I unfolded it.

That should’ve made me feel trapped. Instead, it made my spine straighten.

“I’m not your secretary,” I muttered, but my hand was already moving toward the door.

I didn’t unlock it yet. I opened my mouth like I could demand answers and stop the drama before it escalated.

But when I looked down, my fingers still held the paper. I realized, with a cold snap of clarity, that whatever was written on it could be dangerous. Not in the dramatic movie sense. In the real-life sense—someone setting a trap and calling it a game.

“How low can you go, Tristan?” I asked into the phone, voice sharp enough to cut. “Playing some childish game.”

(And yeah, maybe I was louder than I meant to be. Maybe I was furious enough to make my voice carry.)

Another sigh—frustrated this time, but not careless. “Come open the door.”

Fine.

I stepped closer to the door and unlocked it with more force than necessary. I pulled it open.

Tristan stood in the hallway like he’d been carved out of impatience. His expression was tight, his eyes searching mine like he couldn’t decide whether I was a victim or a threat. For the first time, he didn’t look smug.

He looked… ready to fix something before it exploded.

He walked into my room without waiting for permission, the kind of move that used to piss me off even when he did it casually.

Today it pissed me off more, because something about the urgency made him feel like danger with intent.

He didn’t bother looking at the music. Or the fact that the room smelled faintly like my shampoo and sweat. His focus zeroed in on the paper in my hand.

“Where’s the paper?” he asked.

I stood in the doorway like a barrier. “In my hand.”

Tristan’s gaze flicked to it, then to my eyes. His jaw tightened.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded. “Entering my room without invitation.”

He ignored me.

“I asked where the paper is.” His voice lowered, firmer now, like he was trying to keep control of the situation with sheer will.

I lifted my hand—slowly, dramatically, like I was giving him what he wanted while still refusing to surrender fully. “Right here.”

His eyes locked onto the sheet.

Something in his face shifted—alarm, maybe, or a kind of controlled panic that tried to hide behind irritation. He looked like he could smell what I might find on it.

That made me angry all over again.

I could’ve unfolded it right there. I could’ve read it out loud and forced him to explain himself or whatever. My body buzzed with the urge to know, because knowing felt like power.

Instead, I raised the paper higher and started to pull it open.

“What’s even—” I began, but Tristan moved.

Fast.

He lunged—not to grab my wrist, not exactly, but to shove the paper out of my line of sight, like he was trying to prevent my eyes from seeing what was on it. Like the content mattered more than his pride, more than my privacy, more than everything he usually acted like.

I flinched backward, startled by the sudden motion.

My foot caught on the edge of my rug, and the room tilted.

The desk vibrated with the beat from the speaker, still stupidly loud, still clinging to the moment like it didn’t understand this was real.

My standing lamp sat just beside me, upright, perfectly in the way.

Tristan’s shoulder collided with mine and everything jolted at once. The lamp wobbled, then crashed down with a sharp, sudden sound that cracked the air.

The impact wasn’t graceful. It was heavy and final.

Tristan and I went down with it, both of us collapsing onto the floor as the lamp fell between us.

My breath punched out of me. My head bounced once against the ground and I tasted dust instantly. Tristan’s weight landed awkwardly, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, the tension in his body, the way his arm braced to stop himself from going too far without actually being able to stop.

The paper fluttered out of my grip and skidded across the room, edges catching on the carpet like it wanted to stay hidden.

For a second, I couldn’t tell what was where—him, me, the lamp, the sound ringing in my ears like a threat.

Then the hallway exploded.

The dorm corridor door slammed hard enough to shake the frame. Followed by fast heavy footsteps.

“Juniper?” Noah called, sharp and confused.

“Mabel, I think she’s—” Noah started, then his words snapped into silence the instant the door to my room flew open.

Noah’s voice—wrecked, stunned, louder than any moaning outside ever was—hit the room like a hammer.

“Juniper!”

The door swung wide.

Noah and Mabel burst into my room like the world had taught them the worst timing possible. Both of them froze mid-step when their eyes landed on what they found:

Me on the floor, Tristan on top of me.

The lamp shattered beside us, music still thumping faintly through my speaker like it hadn’t gotten the memo that everything went wrong.

Mabel’s face went blank in the exact way people do when they’re trying not to react, and failing.

Noah’s mouth opened.

And the only thing he could manage—only thing his brain allowed through—was raw disbelief.

“What the f**k!”

The words hung in the air, loud and ugly, swallowing every other sound.

Tristan’s breath hitched above mine, tense and tight like he’d been running the moment before this collision happened.

And my stomach dropped, because the second Noah saw us like this, stopped being mine to control.

It became their problem too.

And my room, my safe, private mess of noise—had officially turned into a scene.