Karter held his ground. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Do you?” I stepped closer to him. “Because guys like you have no idea what having nothing actually looks like. One mistake means I go back to exactly where I started. You think you’re a fun distraction for me?” I scoffed. “You’re a damn risk.”
I fully expected him to look around my empty room and run. I stood still and waited for him to back away, but he refused to move.
“You are full of shit,” Karter said quietly. “You are using this room as a massive excuse.”
Pride kept my feet firmly on the floor. “It is my reality.”
“It is a wall. You want me to look around and feel sorry for you,” Karter said. He closed the remaining distance between us. “Or do you want me to get scared and bolt?”
“You should bolt,” my voice dropped to a low warning.
“I am not going anywhere.” Karter poked a finger at my chest. “You’re just terrified because you actually want me.”
A hot spike of panic flared behind my eyes. He found the one truth I had spent weeks trying to avoid, making the tiny room feel suffocating.
Desperation forced my hands up. Grabbing the front of his shirt, my momentum drove him backward until he slammed hard against the closed door. The cheap wood rattled under his weight.
He did not even try to fight back. Hands relaxed at his sides. Waiting. The same way he’d waited on the bus with his teeth sunk into my palm, trusting me to finish what I started.
That thought should have satisfied me. Instead, it made confusion and frustration burn at the back of my throat.
His eyes locked on mine, then my gaze dropped to his mouth. For one insane second, leaning in and kissing him seemed like the only logical next step.
Sanity violently kicked back in. Shaking my head to break the trance, my grip tightened on his shirt. Dragging him forward just enough to clear the doorframe, my hand reached around him to turn the knob. I ripped the door open and shoved him backward into the hallway.
“Get out.”
Karter caught himself against the far wall. “Aleks.” That nickname again, nothing else. The sound of it hit harder than his finger poking at my chest ever had. No one called me that. Not my mother, not Perez, and not anyone who’d ever mattered enough to try. Karter had been doing it for weeks now, slipping it in like he had some claim to it, and I’d never once told him to stop.
“Don’t.” The word came out strangled.
“Then stop making me.” Karter pushed off the wall, steadying himself. “Stop shoving me out of rooms every time I get too close to the truth.”
The door slammed shut between us.
As I slumped back against the solid wood, I let loose a breath at the sound of his retreating footsteps echoing down the hall.
Karter was absolutely right—I wanted him. And knowing that terrified me a hell of a lot more than losing my place on the team ever did.
Chapter 11 - Karter
Memorizing my roommate’s library schedule had officially become the most important part of my week.
Sitting on my bed in the attic of the Ice House, I shivered as the draft of the old building cut right through my sweater. Matt wouldn’t be back from the library until ten, so I waited in the dead quiet for a knock on the door that probably wasn’t coming.
My color-coded notes and neatly stacked textbooks sat exactly where I’d left them on my desk. And while the pristine setup used to help ground me, now it just felt like another empty expectation I maintained because I was supposed to.
If my dad told me my game wasn’t aggressive enough, I just nodded. If my mom got stressed the second a conversation got too real, I shut my mouth and smiled. And when Elliot gave me another pep talk I didn’t ask for, I just said,‘Yeah, man, you’re right’.
That was the Johnston brand: wear the expensive gear, don’t cause drama, and never give a shit loud enough for anyone to hear.
But keeping up that act was draining the life out of me.
Four nights ago in the back of the team van, Aleksey pinned me down and said,“He touched you,”like it was the only explanation that mattered, then spent the entire drive back to the hotel staring out the passenger window in silence.
The next night, after the bus dropped us back at Ridge Cross, I waited outside his room in the Ice House. He dragged me inside just long enough to show me his empty walls and singleduffel bag, then shoved me into the hallway and slammed the door.
