Trapped On The Ice With My Obsessed Captain

CHAPTER 2

Wren

You're joking."

Coach Maddox didn't look up from his clipboard. "Housing budget got cut. Billeting families are maxed. You either share with a teammate or you sleep in your car, Calloway."

"I'll take the car."

"You won't." He flipped a page. "Insurance liability. And before you ask, I already reassigned rooms. You're in 4B with Thorne."

My blood stopped moving.

"Absolutely not."

"It's a two-bedroom suite. You'll have your own space. Lock on the door. Thorne already agreed."

"He agreed?"

"He didn't argue."

"Since when does Kael Thorne not argue about me?"

Maddox finally looked up. He had the expression of a man who had coached for thirty years and had stopped caring about feelings roughly twenty-eight years ago. "Since I told him the alternative was rooming with Petrov, who snores like a chainsaw and leaves protein shakes in the shower drain. Thorne picked the lesser evil. His words."

"I'm the lesser evil."

"Congratulations. Keys are at the front desk. Move in by six."

I stood in the doorway of his office for five seconds, running every possible alternative through my head. Sleeping in the locker room. Commuting from three towns over. Quitting.

I didn't quit. I don't quit. That's the thing about me that people like Kael Thorne can't break no matter how many five a.m. sessions they weaponize.

I picked up the keys at four-fifteen. Suite 4B was on the top floor of the team residence, a converted college dorm that smelled like old carpet and ambition. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen the size of a parking ticket. I opened the door, dropped my bag, and heard the shower running.

He was already here.

I started unpacking. Clothes in the dresser. Gear bag in the corner. Laptop on the desk. Normal. Fine. Roommates. People did this every day without it meaning anything.

The shower stopped.

The bathroom door opened.

Kael Thorne walked into the shared kitchen in grey sweatpants and nothing else. Water tracked down his chest, across the tattoo on his ribs I'd never seen before, some kind of tally marks, four clusters of five. He was towelling his hair and he stopped when he saw me.

Stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Stopped being a person and became a wall of wet skin and bad decisions.

"You're early," he said.

"You're undressed."

"My apartment. My rules."

"Our apartment. Shared rules."

He dropped the towel on the counter. Walked toward the fridge. Walked past me close enough that the water on his skin left a cool trace against my bare arm.

"Rule one," he said, opening the fridge. "Don't touch my food."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Rule two." He pulled out a water bottle. Closed the fridge. Turned to face me. "Don't bring anyone here. I don't want to hear it."

"Hear what?"

"Anything. From your room. At night."

My face went hot. "That's not going to be an issue."

"Good."

"Because I have standards."

His jaw tightened. "Meaning?"

"Meaning I don't bring home hockey players. They're all the same. Arrogant, emotionally stunted, and obsessed with their own stick handling."

He stared at me. I stared back. The kitchen was too small. He was too close. And the water was still sliding down his chest in paths I was memorizing against my will.

"Rule three," he said quietly.

"What?"

He leaned in. Not all the way. Just enough that I could smell soap and skin and the particular cruelty of someone who looked like that saying something like this:

"Lock your door at night, Calloway."

My breath caught. "Why?"

He pulled back. His expression was sealed. "Because I walk in my sleep."

He took the water bottle to his room. The door closed. The lock turned from the inside.

I stood in the kitchen with my heart in my throat and the very clear, very dangerous understanding that Kael Thorne had just told me to lock my door.

And he hadn't been talking about sleepwalking.