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ONE

EASTON

It burned.

The searing, scorching sensation pulled my thoughts back from wandering, and I slammed the tiled wall with my open palms, one hand fumbling to turn off the pouring water. My skin was pink and raw, and my breaths were shallow as steam filled my lungs with each inhale.

It wasn’t so much the heat and the steam of the small shower cabin that crushed my chest with unbearable pressure. I had struggled to inhale before setting a foot in here.

Despite the fatigue in my muscles from two hours of drills out on the ice, my body had unlocked a kind of terrifying energy I didn’t know how to spend. I had nowhere to channel the abrupt surge of power that had my muscles swell and lock. In an instant, I would have crossed the locker room and slammed Kyle against the wall. I could have tightened my hand around his short neck and lifted him off the ground with this new strength.

We had just taken off the jerseys and pads, all twenty-six of us bantering and forming loose plans for whatever smaller groups among us would do tonight. Kyle had eyed me all day, furious glares sent my way to make me uncomfortable.

The summer break had lulled me into a false sense of safety. He hasn’t told anyone yet. Maybe he won’t . I had convinced myself that Kyle had moved on. He’d cut all contact with me, naturally, on the day he moved out in June, and we hadn’t spoken at all in the two months that followed.

I was stupid to think he would have let go. He’d been my roommate for two years, and I knew what he was like when he held a grudge. I’d seen him get back at people for much lesser transgressions.

Coming face-to-face with him before our first practice of the season, I immediately knew he hadn’t forgotten. My performance on the ice had been shit all day, earning me a conversation with the coach about my lack of focus after the drills. Although Kyle wasn’t in my group in any of the drills, he seemed to always exist somewhere at the edges of my vision, looking.

When we had undressed down to our underwear, Kyle nudged Bobby with his elbow and said, “I wouldn’t wanna drop a soap around here.”

Hatred for Kyle boiled instantly, but it was only the surface of it. I hated the stupidity that had gotten me here more than I could ever hate that fucker. How the fuck had I ever thought he was into me? How the fuck had I imagined, in the haze of summer heat back in June, that Kyle’s devastatingly short shorts—and nothing else—signaled his willingness?

I was my own worst enemy. I’d put myself squarely on Kyle’s hit list, and he wasn’t going to let me get away.

So I drew a deep breath of air and grinned in return. Fighting him would only give him more of what he wanted, but ignoring him would be admitting defeat. I had no choice but to risk it. “You’re paranoid,” I said. “Oh, I mean, unless you’ve been keeping secrets I don’t know about, I wouldn’t worry about dropping anything.”

He glared at me while I clenched my fists. I wasn’t preparing to hit him; I was doing my best not to strangle him.

“Say, is that a balled-up sock down there?” I squeezed through my teeth. Laughter rippled around me as I turned away from the fucker and strolled into the shower. Kyle definitely didn’t wear any socks down there, but the suggestion had been shocking enough that it shut him up. It was lucky that Kyle wasn’t the cleverest nut around here.

The unexpected strength had helped me get into the shower, but it failed me as soon as the door shut behind my back and the hot water splashed my body. He had come close to saying things I never wanted anyone to hear. Maybe he’d even told Bobby already. The guys had been roommates since Kyle had moved out of my place. But I doubted it. Bobby didn’t act any differently today. Well, not differently than his usual low-eyebrow glares he shared with everyone else.

I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked back to the locker room. Kyle’s duffel wasn’t on the bench, and the relief was so instant and powerful that I almost stumbled. I hadn’t realized just how tense I had been.

So what? You only got yourself another day , I thought. He would taunt me, and then he would spill it, ruining everything for me. He was like that.

“Captain?” Patrick said from the far corner of the locker room. He had just pulled a T-shirt over his head, turning to face me, unrolling the lower edge down his marble torso. “Are you good?” He ran his fingers through his honey-brown hair, shook his head, and slung his backpack over one shoulder.

“I’m good,” I said, my voice dark but not bitter. “Just…distracted.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Patrick said. “What about that asshole?” He gestured with his head to the spot where Kyle had stood half an hour ago.

“Ignore him,” I said.

Patrick looked like he was about to say something else, but my words stopped him. Wanna kick the living shit out of him? If he’d suggested it aloud, I would have struggled to dismiss it right away. At best, I would have considered it. Someone would eventually put Kyle in his place, but it couldn’t be me.

I wasn’t that kind of guy.

Patrick saluted me with two fingers on his way out, and I sat on a bench in the empty locker room with a storm brewing inside of me. This had not been a good way to start a new season. It was always easier to turn an ally into an enemy than the other way around. And I had proved it with Kyle two months ago.

I got up and dressed, the taste of failure still strong on my tongue. My team had witnessed me blundering on the ice, making rookie mistakes, and getting baited by pretend rivals like an amateur.

You’re better than this, Easton , I told myself and immediately named myself a liar. Was I better than anything? Or was I fooling myself and everyone on the team? A few lucky streaks didn’t make me a pro.

My duffel got the worst of my anger—or what I let off, at least—when I yanked it up and threw it over my shoulder, wanting to punch it to pieces if only I could. Holding a breath of air like a razor’s blade deep in my lungs, I forced myself to walk out.

Maybe I should have offered him to take it outside. If we had faced off in a parking lot after midnight, I would have had an even chance against Kyle. He was shorter and much more compact. I’d seen his musculature plenty when he lived with me. I’d seen the way his abs were carved so deep that a melting ice cube would have nowhere to go but down the ridges between the muscles. Not that he’d ever melted ice with the heat of his body—or at least not around me.

I shook my head as my ears grew hot with embarrassment.

My apartment was not too far from the campus. A thirty-minute walk was a breeze in the gentle respite of the northern wind blowing over me, coming off Lake Michigan. As luck would have it, my parents were proud enough of me—proud of what I let them see—to keep paying my rent even after my roommate’s abrupt departure. I promised to find a new roommate soon, but I hadn’t put out any ads yet. The place was in a run-down, redbrick, three-story apartment building on West Chestnut Street, surrounded by modern high-rises and the buzz of the twenty-first century. You wouldn’t know it once you entered the building with its creaking door and the single flickering light until you climbed to the first landing.

After dropping off my duffel in the hallway of my apartment, I let out a frustrated sigh. How was I supposed to find a roommate after the disaster that Kyle’s presence here had caused? He had seemed like a good fit because he was rarely around at first. It was only when he started spending time with me that problems emerged.

I put it out of my mind. It was irrelevant now. What I needed to do was whip up a dinner for myself with a single tomato and an aging pack of pasta that had been in the cupboard since June. I looked around the small kitchen that doubled as a dining room and prepared a shopping list for later. First, I needed to shut my eyes for a hot minute.

The minute turned into an hour, and I woke up groggy after an unexpected nap. I hadn’t realized how tired I had been. The living room was almost completely dark, the last of the light fading from the sky. I dragged myself off the couch where Kyle had sat on that terrible night, grabbed my wallet, and stretched my legs to the small grocery store a block away.

It was a good place to live. The campus was nearby and equipped with everything I needed, from the rink to the gym and the library. Around the campus, bars and cafes served students with enticingly affordable prices but the sort of quality that only a student would put up with. You could have cheap shots, but you couldn’t complain about the headache the next day.

Around my shabby buildings, others were well-kept. Down the street, a park offered some basic equipment for outdoor exercise, although the workout aficionados were gone by nightfall, and less athletic-oriented crowds occupied the park. It was like that already; small groups stood in circles or sat on swings, exchanging joints and watching passersby as if we wore clown makeup. I didn’t look.

I bought the stuff I needed for tonight, not bothering to plan my morning. Although I normally thought about things in advance, the day had drained me in ways that had been foreign to me until now. I paid and dragged my ass back down the street.

In the park, some mess was going on. A couple of guys were pushing each other with all the telling signs of a brawl taking place between one heartbeat and the next. I didn’t want to be around when one of them undoubtedly pulled out a knife. As I picked up my step, one of the observers leaned against a streetlamp. He was with the crowd, I assumed, but he didn’t move to separate the two who were disagreeing. Instead, he folded his arms, let the back of his head touch the pole, and grinned.

My gaze was intent on the observer in the short time it took me to pass by the fighters. As I entered his field of vision, the observer turned his head, his gaze locking onto my face and his eyebrows flattening as he looked into each other’s eyes. My heart raced as I looked away, forcing my legs to move faster.

That face…

His cheekbones were as sharp as shards of broken glass. His neck was long, sticking out of the hoodie and sporting a murky streak of ink right over his throat. His eyes were like dead coals of last night’s fire.

I had known a face like that in another life. I’d seen eyes that were drawn to fire and destruction. I knew what trouble looked like—I had known since I was a kid. Hell, I lived with trouble sleeping in the room next door. Until the fire…

It must have been seven years since they’d taken him. I didn’t remember the details, and I didn’t want to. Father’s hands trembled. Mother’s lips pressed into a white line. His deadly dark eyes were on me as he shook his head, cocking a corner of his mouth like he found it all so very amusing.

But he was gone. They’d sent him away. Away.

I didn’t look back at the stranger. I didn’t need to. It couldn’t have been him. I was just tired and angry. I was seeing things. Besides, I didn’t know what Jace looked like anymore. This person, whoever he was, could have been anyone.

There was no room for doubts in me. My certainty that I had imagined a ghost from a past long gone simply because of my tiredness was unshakable.

Even so, my feet carried me home a little quicker.