The words carried all too easily through the cheap wooden door.
“But locks don’t last here,” he added.
The muscles in my abdomen tightened. He was testing me. My eyes locked on the handle, waiting for it to rattle. Part of me wanted him to push it, just to get the confrontation over with right now.
“Keep hiding, legacy. Just like a good boy,” Aleksey said bluntly as the brass handle snapped back into place. His words dripped through the cheap wood like oil. “Guess you’re following the rules already.”
Heat climbed the back of my neck, but I didn’t answer. Instead, I held my breath as I listened to him walk down the hall. The old wood groaned under his weight until I heard his own door shut. Only then did I step back and sink back onto my bed.
The lock had done its job, but the drop in my stomach wasn’t relief.
Chapter 2 - Aleksey
Two hours of sleep wasn’t enough to fix the ache in my shoulders, but the alarm vibrating against the floorboards didn’t care.
I swiped the cracked screen of my phone to shut it off. And my back ached as I pushed myself up from the mattress on the floor.
It was five in the morning. The attic was freezing, and my bare skin stung in the sharp, cold air as I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and pulled them on.
The phone screen was still glowing in the darkroom. I opened my banking app.
Forty-three dollars.
I glared at the green numbers. That was all I had to my name until next week. My hockey scholarship covered tuition and the dining hall, but every dollar of my stipend went straight to Detroit. Forty-three dollars wouldn’t even buy a decent pair of skate laces and a tank of gas.
I turned away from the phone and caught sight of the framed photo of my mother on the stand next to my bed. She was smiling in the picture, but exhaustion lined the corners of her eyes. She worked double shifts at a nursing home and cleaned offices at night just so I could play hockey.
The feeling of guilt in my stomach pulled tighter. I was taking her money while scraping by on zero sleep, and forty-three dollars was a pathetic return on her investment. I reached down and flipped the picture face down. The wooden frame hit the tabletop with a small tap.
“Sorry, Ma,” I muttered.
I then grimaced. Hiding her away sucked, but looking at her tired smile ripped my focus to shreds. I closed my eyes, forcing the image out of my head, locking the guilt behind a mental door so I could get through the day.
Morning lifts, team drills, and another brutal night shift at the Food Mart were waiting. My muscles were already sore from yesterday’s workout, and the damn day hadn’t even started.
I grabbed my duffel bag and shoved my phone into my pocket.
I stepped out into the narrow hallway. A sliver of bright yellow light bled out from under Karter’s door next to mine.
I hadn’t heard that brass handle budge at all since I’d tried it.
Testing that flimsy lock last night was supposed to rattle him, maybe send him running back to his brother’s fancy apartment. Instead, the kid had stayed quiet, and now his light was on like he’d never once considered leaving.
“Fucking tourist,” I muttered to the empty hall.
My fingers dug deep into the strap of my bag. The legacy kid had just left the light burning as if electricity was free. He had never worried about a bank account in his life. From the rumors going around the house, I’d heard that he grew up in a mansion in Boston, never having to work for shit. Which figured. After all, his brother lived in a brand-new apartment complex down the street, which meant that Karter could be over there right now, warm and comfortable.
Instead, he was slumming it in a broken-down house that guys like me had no other choice but to live in. I was twenty-one years old, a senior fighting every single day just to keep a roof over my head and my mother fed, and this kid was treating my everyday reality like it was a fun little vacation away from his mansion.
The sheer arrogance of it pissed me off. And the designer clothes he wore around the place were a constant insult.
But a different fear bothered me underneath the anger. My life at Ridge Cross was entirely borrowed. One bad grade or one blown knee would send me straight back to Detroit with nothing. Meanwhile, Karter treated this whole setup like some tourist attraction, happily playing games in my reality just for kicks.
I stood in the freezing hallway and glared at the yellow light under his door. Part of me wanted to kick it open just to see the expensive luggage and designer clothes he had left strewn around.
He wanted to pretend he belonged down here with the rest of us? Fine.I shoved my hands into my pockets, heading for the stairs.
The rich kid was going to regret stepping out of his luxury bubble when I caught up with him at morning lifts.
