Knox and Greyson lean against the rooftop door, blocking it off for me. The football asshole who had his lips way too close to Aspen’s breasts is on the floor beneath me. His face is a mess—bruised and bleeding and swelling. His eye is already swollen shut, with the other one soon to follow.
I may have broken his cheekbone.
“You get the message, jackass?” I growl, hauling him upright.
He stumbles away from me, his lips pulling in a grimace. “Yeah, yeah—”
“Good.” I point to the door, which Knox hauls open.
My latest victim wastes no time rushing through it and down the stairs, practically falling on his face. There are two more downstairs, tied up in the boiler room, and Greyson goes to fetch another one.
My knuckles are sore, split open, but I don’t give a shit.
The next one isn’t an athlete. I’m not sure why he even thought he had a chance with Aspen, but here we are. He sat next to her and kept his hand on her knee. So that’s where I’ll start.
“Wh-what are you doing?” The guy is already blubbering by the time he comes to a halt in front of me. No doubt he heard another guy pleading and thought it may help.
It doesn’t.
My lip curls. “You remember Aspen Monroe?”
He eyes me. “Y-yeah…”
“You think you deserve to be in the same room as her, let alone touch her?”
“Hey, man, she was flir—”
Crack.
I slam my fist into his mouth, and something breaks. I’m not sure if it’s a bone in my hand or his face, but I’m hoping it’s the latter. Either way, he goes down like a ton of bricks, sprawling out at my feet. Which makes it easy to stomp on his kneecap hard enough to snap it.
He screams.
Knox suddenly appears, his brows drawing together. “You know we’re not trying to permanently maim them,” he mutters. “Especially since this is technically on you.”
I glower at my best friend. He’s right—it is my fault. I should let them beat me up instead. Maybe that would take away some of this rage that’s been hammering at the bars of its cage for far too long.
Aspen ignored me. Fully. Even at lunch, when she and her roommate sat at the end of our table with the dance girls, she didn’t even look at me. Not when I called her name, not when I stood behind her like a giant freaking shadow.
Nothing.
She may as well be a stone wall.
And then I got a phone call from my father. Apparently, he’s taken his new family on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Spain. They’ll be gone until the new year.
Does Aspen know that?
I asked him what she’s been telling him, the lies she’s been feeding to keep herself afloat here at Crown Point University, and he had nothing to say. But he didn’t throw anything in my face either. So I take that to mean Aspen is doing a shitty job of being a spy—or he’s preparing for something big. With a lot of ammunition.
I jerk away from Knox and the idiot on the floor, pulling a joint from my pocket. I don’t smoke during the school year, and especially not the night before a game, but fuck it. I’m so wound up, I can’t even think straight.
“She’s under your skin,” Greyson says. “And the only way to make it stop is to get the whole school to believe she’s yours.”
I nod to myself. That’s how it happened with them, wasn’t it? One minute, his girlfriend’s lips were wrapped around my dick, and the next, he was the only one who could touch her.
“You’ve sent the message you needed to send,” he continues. “Both to her and to the guys… they’ll spread the word that she’s untouchable.” He nudges the idiot in the leg. “Won’t you?”
“Aspen’s untouchable,” he gasps, curling in on himself. “I’ll tell everyone I know—”
“Good enough for me,” Knox says lightly. He hauls him up and shoves him toward the door. “Get the other guy in the boiler room to help you the rest of the way down.”
He hops toward the exit, the door slamming shut behind him.
I light the joint and suck in a lungful of smoke. I hold it, then slowly exhale. I pass it to Greyson, who wrinkles his nose and hands it to Knox. He takes a small hit, then exhales, too. I cross to the edge of the roof and sit on the ledge, looking out at Crown Point.
We’re on top of the Administration building on campus, but it has a great view of downtown. To the right is the lake, and barely visible is the restaurant that serves as a visual marker for the point. We jumped off it once last summer, but we didn’t get a chance to do it again.
And with the way the semester is going, I doubt we’ll have a chance to do it before the lake freezes over.
“Party,” Greyson says, his attention on his phone.
“Where?”
Greyson lifts his head, grinning. “The stadium.”
I shake my head. “Coach is going to murder us.”
Knox slaps my arm. “Coach won’t find out.”
Sure he won’t. We follow Greyson downstairs and across campus, heading directly to the stadium. I guess he’s not worried about drinking. Well, we have a game tomorrow, so we shouldn’t be doing that anyway.
All that body-is-a-temple talk really is true during hockey season. Eating well, sleeping well—it all matters. And yet, I feel like I’m on the edge of self-destruction.
I stub out the joint and return the remainder to my pocket with the lighter. The side door entrance that the players use is propped open an inch, and we slip through it.
Voices draw our attention past the locker rooms, to the ice itself. The stadium is dark, the rink ominous. The ice seems to almost glow from within, catching the moon’s glow through the skylights. The emergency lighting along the aisles is the only other source of light. It doesn’t seem like any sort of party I’d expect. In fact, there’s almost no one here.
Just two—in the center of the freaking rink, of all places.
I recognize Aspen immediately. She stands on the ice in plain boots, her hands planted on her hips. A player circles around her on skates, but I don’t recognize him from here.
Greyson disappears for a moment. A second later, a spotlight flickers on. It hits Aspen, shrouding her in bright white.
She turns and raises her hand, blocking it from her eyes.
The player grinds to a halt, lifting his head to look at us.
“A Knight,” Knox says, his voice hard. He stops in the open doorway, not stepping foot on the ice. “What are you doing here?”
The player shrugs, his grin arrogant. “It was a dare. Wasn’t it, babe?”
He touches her hip, and she lets him.
She stares hard at me, then leans into him.
Greyson reappears, grinning like a Cheshire cat. He steps up beside me. “What are you going to do about that, O’Brien?”
I don’t fucking know.
That’s my problem. Indecision and misery and anger follow me like ugly shadows. The weight of this season is pressing down on me. I just want to kill something, I want to hurt, I want pain.
Pain.
I focus on Aspen’s lips. She’s sucked her lower lip between her teeth, which she does when she’s not sure about something. She’s shivering, too. The asshole beside her doesn’t seem to notice, or care.
Why have all of my attempts to hurt her only made her stronger?
I practically handed her to Chase King—one of the only guys I couldn’t find tonight—and the others at the bar. Now him.
“How about a bet?” I call to the player, shoving past Knox.
Knox is the one who loves bets, not me. He’s still fucking playing one, waiting for the payout.
He leaves Aspen on the ice and skates toward me, stopping just out of reach. The asshole’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, which is more than I can say for Aspen.
“What’s that?”
“You know she’s not gonna sleep with you tonight.” I cock my head. “She only fucks winners.”
His eyes light up. But then he glances over his shoulder. “I don’t know, man. She’s with me right now…”
Her phone rings. We both watch her answer it, and she shakes her head.
“No, I’m not doing anything,” she tells the caller. “Yeah, I’ll be there in fifteen.”
I chuckle and try not to rage. The high is helping a little, dampening the effect. I think. Either that, or I see through her charade, and Greyson’s power move. Everyone wants me to make a damn decision.
This is her payback, and it’s his way of pushing me into her arms. How the fuck he knew she was here, though, is another question entirely.
She strides toward us. She’s like a freaking magician, not slipping or sliding or looking even the slightest bit unsure on the slick ice. She moves between us, not touching him—or me. Even as she squeezes beside me, her gaze flicking up to meet mine.
“See you tomorrow,” she says sweetly.
And then she’s past Knox and Greyson, too, and leaving the four of us with our fucking dicks in our hands.
Metaphorically, obviously.
“Whoever wins tomorrow gets her,” the player says, appraising me.
“Whoever wins tomorrow gets first shot at her,” I counter.
He nods. “Fine.”
We shake on it. And then my friends and I go home. Because, fuck it—I need to be ready for tomorrow.
