Hating The Captain Who Broke Me

Chapter Two

"Explain to me," Harlow said, bursting through our dorm room door before I even gotten my shoes off, phone held up like evidence in a trial, "why my entire group chat is losing its mind over the words Josie Calloway and Rhys

Calder being in the same sentence."

"It's a class project," I said, dropping my bag on my bed like that.

"A class project." Harlow flopped onto her own bed, still scrolling. "A class project with the actual captain of the hockey team. The guy Delilah Marsh has had a full shrine since freshman orientation. People are already calling you two a ship name, Jo. A ship name. Within four hours."

"That's insane."

"That's college." She looked up at me, and for one unguarded second, something sharper moved behind her eyes. "You okay, though? You've got your face on."

"What face?"

"The one you get when something's actually wrong and you're deciding whether to lie to me about it."

I busied myself with my notebook so I wouldn't have to answer that directly. Harlow knew the broad strokes that I used to play, that something happened my last season that ended it for good, that I didn't talk about the specifics and she'd stopped asking two years ago out of love, not disinterest. She didn't know his name. Nobody outside my own head knew his name. I made sure of that.

"I'm fine," I said. "It's a study session. Fourteen weeks, then I never have to think about him again.”

Harlow didn't look convinced, but she let it go, because that's what she did, she pushed exactly as far as I could stand and then backed off before I broke. I loved her enough that it terrified me sometimes.

By the time I got to the library Thursday, I made a plan. Get there first. Claim the table. Set the tone before he could set it for me. I picked the corner spot in room 214, spread my laptop and color-coded folders out like territory markers, and had exactly nine minutes of feeling in control before the door opened and Rhys Calder walked in eleven minutes late like time simply didn't apply to him the way it applied to the rest of us.

"You're late," I said, not looking up.

"I'm efficient." He dropped into the chair across from me, backwards, arms folded over the top of it like he was watching a game instead of attending a study session he was mandated into. "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing. Because you weren't here."

"Feisty." He said it like a compliment, which somehow made it worse. "Okay. Lay it on me. What are we even doing for this thing?"

I slid the assignment sheet across the table. "Case study. Semester-long. We pick a real psychological phenomenon in competitive athletics and build a full research presentation around it."

He scanned it, some of the swagger dropped out of his face. Just for a second. Just long for me to notice.

"Great," he said, too flat. "Sounds thrilling."

"You could try not sounding like I'm forcing you into hard labor."

"You kind of are." He tossed the sheet back down. "No offense, but I've got a full season, a draft profile people won't shut up about, and now apparently a mandatory tutor because my GPA scared somebody in the athletic office. This isn't exactly how I pictured senior year."

Something in his voice cracked open like exhaustion and against every instinct I had, I felt a stupid flicker of sympathy for him.

I killed it immediately.

"Must be so hard," I said, "being good at one thing."

His eyes snapped to mine, something sharp and interesting flaring behind them. "You've got a real mouth on you for someone who didn't say a word to me before Tuesday."

"I didn't have a reason before Tuesday."

"So? How about now?"

"Now I'm stuck being your babysitter for fourteen weeks, so I figure I've earned it."

The corner of his mouth twitched,not quite a smile. "Fine," he said. "Pick a topic, then, genius. Since you clearly have opinions about how this is going to go."

I opened my mouth to answer,I already had three ideas ranked by strength, obviously, because I'd been prepared for this exact moment since Tuesday night. When the door banged open again and Micah Doyle strolled in with two coffees and zero concept of a library's inside voice.

"There you are," he said to Rhys, then his eyes landed on me and narrowed, working something over. "Hey…. wait." He pointed at me with his free hand, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim. "You're Josie Calloway, right?"

"That's me."

"No way." He grinned, delighted, dropping into the chair beside Rhys without asking. "Damn, I didn't even clock it at first, you used to play juniors, right? I swear I watched your highlight reel like a hundred times when I was like fifteen, you were unreal on the blue line.."

My whole body went still.

"...what happened, did you…"

He stopped himself mid-sentence, some late instinct finally catching up to his mouth, glancing between me and Rhys like he just walked face-first into something he couldn't name.

Rhys wasn't looking at Micah anymore. He was looking at me, and something behind his eyes had changed, like a door easing open on a room he hadn't been in for years.

"Wait," he said quietly. "You used to play?”