I could hear the laughter echoing in the hallway, even with my door shut. My traps ached, and the sweat on my back that had dried from my earlier workout was now beginning to form again as anger gnawed on my nerves.
“I’m Claire. Your new roommate.”
My head swung to the tiny but mighty brunette standing off to the side, who was fully dressed and not at all your typical puck bunny. It pleased me that she was so perturbed when I labeled her as such that I kind of wanted to do it again, just to see her tiny nose scrunch and her cheeks blaze with an angry heat, but I was honestly too blinded by the words that had just spewed from her mouth that I couldn’t do anything but gape.
“Excuse me?” I said, fully ignoring the huffs and puffs coming from the actual puck bunny. She sounded like the fucking wolf from The Three Little Pigs.
“This”—Claire waved her hand over to the naked chick—“isn’t going to work if I’m going to be rooming with you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’d like to know the same.”
My voice turned to ice as I pointed to the blonde. “Get out. You and the rest of campus knows that you don’t get to come into my room unless invited, and I didn’t invite you.”
Her lips parted, and usually, I’d feel bad at the sign of hurt on a girl’s face, or I’d sugarcoat my words, but it seemed she needed a little dose of humility. Thankfully, a moment later, she threw on her clothes and took her lack of self-respect with her when she rushed out the room. Before the door shut again, I heard a couple of guys yelling, “Good choice, Wolf!” which indicated that every guy on the floor saw both girls go into my room, and not a single one of them had warned me.
Assholes.
I kept my eyes pinned on Claire, wondering what the mix-up was. Roommate? She was out of her fucking mind if she thought she was my new roommate.
“You obviously have your signals crossed if you think you’re my new roommate, babe.” I pulled my sweaty shirt over my head and tossed it in the hamper in the corner of my room, putting my back to her. I bent down and pulled out a fresh black tee from my bag and spun around, holding the cotton in my hand. “You’re far too tiny to be a male.” I slid my attention away from her heartbreaker eyes and landed on her small waist. Definitely not a penis in those tight jeans.
When I raised my gaze back to hers, I prepared myself for the punch that would soon follow with it. I wouldn’t deny it—she was pretty in the way that most girls weren’t. Subtle, delicate features but eyes that made your chest tight. Not my type, though. She was the type of girl that hated guys like me. It was obvious in the way she was glaring.
“My signals aren’t crossed. Admissions switched my first and last name—instead of Claire Bryant, they have me as Bryant Claire—so they put me in a male dorm, and I’ve already talked to them. There isn’t anything else available, so yeah, I’m your roommate.”
“No.”
Her arms crossed over her chest, and that was when I read her shirt. The Bex. Did she work there? Why hadn’t I noticed her before?
“Do you think I’m lying? First, you assume I’m a puck bunny, and now you think I’m lying. Do you think I want to room with you?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but her little mumble caught me off guard.
“Typical fucking jock.”
“What was that?” I asked, inching closer to her.
“Listen.” Her hands flew to her hips, and her cheeks were pinker than before. “I’ve gotta go to work, so you’ll have some time to adjust. I’ll be back later if you’d like to insult me some more.”
Damn, she’s feisty.
I laughed as I finally snapped back to attention and pulled my shirt over my head. Her eyes dipped to my defined stomach before she quickly looked away and grabbed her phone and keys off the desk opposite of mine.
“This will be taken care of by the time you get back from your shift.”
She paused with her back to me. “I’ve already tried to take care of it. There are no more open rooms. It is what it is.”
Apparently, she was used to accepting things even if they weren’t going her way.
“Not to be arrogant, but I have some pull in this school, Bryant. This will be taken care of.”
Her eyes sharpened into diamonds. “My name is Claire, and I know you’re used to getting your way, but I’m pretty sure there is nothing you can do to fix this except move into your own place. So, I will see you later.”
Then, the door opened, and she left, leaving me standing there in surprise because, for the first time in my life, I met a girl who didn’t fall over her own feet to talk to me.
The cool air of the hockey rink always brought out a side of me that I kept hidden until the ice was beneath my skates and my hands were holding onto my hockey stick. Everything else faded away. The only thing I focused on was the little black puck that moved effortlessly against the slick glaze of the rink, and I felt comfortable, even if there were thousands of people’s eyes on me.
I broke away from the play and stole the puck from Landon, who was the last man standing between me and Emory, our starting goalie. At the very last second, I slipped to the right before lifting the puck up, glove side, just out of his line of sight. The sound of the puck on the post was like a drug to me. I continued skating, circling behind the net before heading back toward center ice.
“Nice, bro.” I tapped gloves with my best friend and teammate, Aasher, as he complimented my goal. “What’s all the anger for, though?” he asked. “The puck pretty much had fire on it.”
I took my helmet off as Coach blew the whistle, ending practice. I skated toward the bench beside Aasher to head into the locker room. “I’m not angry. Just annoyed. Found a puck bunny in my bed after conditioning earlier.”
“Nice, did you tap that?”
I shot him a glare. “No, I told her to get the fuck out of my room. Now, every puck bunny is gonna know where my room is. I was trying to keep that shit on lockdown this season.” This was easily the most important season of my college career. I didn’t need any extra drama.
“You need to move into an apartment—one with a security guard.”
I shot him another look. Aasher knew why I wasn’t living in an apartment off campus. Sure, I was at Bexley U on a full scholarship, and I had basically built the hockey team from my freshman year up until now, but it wasn’t like Bexley U paid me a salary for playing. My name was known, but I didn’t have a paid scholarship as a college student, and under no circumstances would I ever allow my parents to pay for me to live off campus just so I could get away from the girls who were desperate for a way to fame by hanging off my arm or being naked underneath me.
“Or…I don’t know. Maybe these girls need to have more self-respect.”
He laughed, beginning to remove his pads in the locker room along with the rest of the team. “Can’t blame them. You’re the Wolf.”
“Ow oww.” Landon took his towel and slapped my padded ass, and I grabbed it out of his hand and threw it in his face.
“That’s not the whole reason I’m annoyed, though. On top of this chick being naked in my bed, there was another girl in my room too.”
“I heard. It’s all over campus. Not one but two puck bunnies in your room on move-in day.”
My upper pads were off, and I sat down to remove the snow from the blade with my fabric skate guards before putting them in my stall. “Oh, is that what people are saying?”
“Who was that, anyway? The other girl? The one who walked down the hall and didn’t look a single one of us in the eye?” I glanced up to Dax, who stayed a few rooms down from mine. “She didn’t seem like a puck bunny. I’ve never seen her before.”
“Was she hot?” Aasher asked.
Dax answered, “She wasn’t just hot. She was the type you took home to Ma and Pops.”
I interrupted Dax and Aasher’s conversation. “She isn’t a puck bunny. She said she’s my new roommate, which is exactly why I have to go talk to Coach. I guess admissions fucked up and switched her last and first name.”
Nearly every one of my teammates laughed. Landon blew a breath out of his mouth before smirking. “I would room with her. Wanna switch roommates? I’m down.”
“Down to fuck,” Aasher grunted.
“If you saw her, you’d say the same.”
Like a rubber band being snapped, I glared at my teammates. “How about this is our senior year, and instead of thinking about fucking girls, you think about winning the championship.”
“Wolf!” I turned at the sound of Coach’s voice bellowing out my campus nickname. “Let’s go. I’m late for dinner, and you know my wife hates it when I’m late.”
I finished throwing on my regular clothes, pulled my black beanie down on my head, and walked into Coach’s office. “What’s the problem, Wolf? Is this about the puck bunnies? I can’t do anything about that, and honestly, maybe it would do you some good to let off some steam, son. Not that I don’t enjoy you flinging pucks like you have your own personal vendetta against them, but you seemed distracted today.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised at how quickly the news spread around Bex U. This was my senior year, and it had been like this ever since we won the championship three years ago. But fuck, it had only been a few hours.
“No. Well, yes.” I flung myself into the chair at the foot of his desk and glanced at the whiteboard behind his head with his messy dry-erase scribbles all over it. “One of them wasn’t a puck bunny.”
For the second time in the last ten minutes, I explained the situation to Coach, and he immediately called the dean and set up a meeting. Then, he called his wife and made me explain the situation so she wouldn’t yell at him for being late to dinner.
I understood the logic. Karen loved me and the team like we were her own sons.
“Stop at your room and grab the girl. I want her there for the meeting so we can sort this out.”
“I believe she’s at The Bex, working.”
Coach didn’t even look at me as he began pulling on his Bexley U windbreaker. “Well, then go get her. I’ll meet you both at the dean’s office.” Coach was a no-bullshit type of guy. He got the job done when it needed to be done. That was why he was ranked as one of the best coaches in the NCAA hockey division. Before leaving his office with his keys in hand, he turned and looked at me. “We will get this sorted. I have a good angle for this problem. The dean isn’t going to let our star hockey player get distracted.”
“I don’t get distracted that easily,” I countered, agitated that he even implied such a thing.
“Let’s go, Wolf.”
Sighing, I jumped up from the chair, adjusted my beanie, and followed him out the door.
