Page 2 of Ice Cold, Red Hot (Coldwater Firehawks Hockey #1)

SHEPHERD

Shit.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t been expecting to see her at some point. She’d told me she was a grad student at Coldwater. That was why I’d snuck out like some kind of midnight thief that last night.

But I had definitely not been expecting to see her in my fucking apartment building. Directly across the fucking hall.

“Yo Ren. Catch!” I turned just as Griff threw a beer my way, glad I’d caught it before it smashed to the floor of the apartment we’d just finished moving all our shit into.

Griff and I shared an apartment, and our teammates had the apartments all around us—next door, down the hall, above us. This building was always the hockey team HQ for upperclassmen. I don’t know why I’d expected it to be any kind of sanctuary. Other students lived here too.

Other students including Celeste, the girl I’d met this summer at Miranda Lake. The girl I’d thought might be different—might let me be someone different. Even just for a week.

But the second she told me she was coming to Coldwater, that she was a TA in the psych department…

Well, that was the end. It had to be.

She had been a dream. An escape. A woman so perfect there was no way she could hold up to the challenges of my real world. And she wasn’t supposed to.

Fuck, I still remembered what she felt like in my arms, breathing her in as she arched into me, the way she’d moaned my name like a prayer…

And then she’d told me who she was. And it had ended everything because it had to, even though walking away from her felt something surprisingly like heartbreak.

She was a TA in my department, and I was captain of the hockey team. Anything between us would be seen as totally unethical, and I’d lose my season. And my future. And what little respect my father had left for me.

“Dude, what’s going on?” Griff was in my space. In my face.

I stepped back into the kitchen, twisting the top off the beer and downing half of it. “Nothing. What?”

“You’ve been acting weird since Nat and the hottie with the Tahoe pulled in and told you to move the truck.”

I shook my head at him, hoping he’d drop it.

“Careful with that.” Burns and Hashimoto were yelling down from the balcony at the other students moving their stuff in. “Looks expensive!”

I followed their raucous laughter out and leaned over the railing, glad to be away from Griff’s first degree. But it was no better out here .

Celeste was carrying a huge mirror from the back of the Tahoe to the front doors of the building. She glanced up at us and spotted me, her face going cold.

“Nat’s friend is pretty cute,” Hashimoto said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Got a mouth on her, too.”

I lifted a shoulder and finished my beer.

“Whatsamatter Renshaw, the blond twins tire you out this summer?” Burns was chirping in my ear. I held back the urge to punch him and pushed myself to act normal. Play it off.

I shot a glance down at Celeste, worried she might’ve heard that before I remembered that I didn’t care.

“You know me. In and out. Hit it and quit it.” The guys hooted and slapped my back, but I was exhausted by the usual macho banter bullshit. I hadn’t been with the blond twins except to walk them back to their car after the expo game and wish them a good night.

There’d been only one girl on my mind all summer. At least since we got back from the lake. She stayed there no matter what I did to try to banish her. And she was 100 percent off limits.

When moving day quieted down, and it was just Griff and me in the apartment, I lay in my room staring at the ceiling.

I tried to stop the constant replay on loop in my head, but I couldn’t.

Celeste coming around my truck and calling my name, the hopeful look on her face at seeing me again, and then that look dropping when I pretended I had no idea who she was.

Fuck, she knew it was an act. You didn’t spend the kind of time together we had and just forget about it.

The week we had this summer wasn’t like anything I’d experienced before.

She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before.

She was fierce and tender, sweet and determined…

so fucking sexy. Her body, yeah—that was one thing.

But it was everything else about Celeste Moreno that had gotten under my skin.

The way she fought for what she had, the way she worked for what she wanted…

And then I’d just left.

Before I’d seen her this afternoon, I’d hoped the worst thing I’d ever do would be to just walk away from a girl I could have fallen for.

Maybe did fall for… But now? The worst thing I’d done was treating that same girl like a piece of trash when everything inside me wanted to reach for her and thank heaven and earth I’d found her again.

I thought I’d prepared myself to see her this fall.

But I was wrong.

I was completely fucked.