A loud crash came from the front hallway.
“Are you kidding me?” someone shouted from the front of the house. “Get the hell out!”
Trenton pushed off the counter, his smirk vanishing. “The fucking charity cases actually showed up.”
He shoved his way through the crowded kitchen, the rest of the guys following him toward the front hall to watch Trenton kick them out.
With everyone rushing toward the hall, I just turned around and slipped out the side door. The second the door shut behind me, the sudden quiet was a massive relief.
I stood alone on the dead grass, shivering as the freezing air cut right through my jacket. Pulling out my phone, I opened a new text thread with Aleksey.
I typed out:“Where did you go?”and hit send.
A minute passed before my screen lit up with a new message.
Aleks: Weight room. Had to burn this off.
Of course, he went straight to the athletic facility. It was the only place I’d ever known him to go to when he was pissed off.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I typed my reply and hit send.
Me: Recovery room. Now.
I shoved the phone back into my pocket and started walking. The bitter wind sucked during the dark trek across campus, but the adrenaline kicking in pushed my pace faster.
By the time the massive athletic building came into view, the anticipation had drowned out the cold.
I swiped my badge at the facility entrance and headed straight for the varsity recovery room. It was just past midnight when I pushed the large soundproof door shut behind me, the lock catching with a solid click.
I knew the security system logged every swipe, leaving a digital trail right to us, but I did not care anymore. I just needed to see Aleksey.
The recovery room was dead at this hour. The glare from the ceiling panels bounced off the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, lighting up the seamless black rubber floor. Aleksey was already standing right in the middle of it. He had ditched his winter coat, and hischest was heaving as if he had sprinted from the weight room to beat me here.
He watched me walk in, his eyes immediately zeroing in on my tense posture.
“Bad night?” Aleksey smirked.
“Trenton made a joke about me being gay,” I blurted out, the incident still fresh in my mind. “And I just stood there and laughed with him.”
Aleksey’s whole body stilled. A moment passed, and the next thing I knew, he was closing the distance between us in long strides. “What the hell did you say to him? Did someone see us?”
“No, no one saw anything,” I said quickly. “He was just talking shit. And I just played along.”
Aleksey let out a sharp exhale, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders. The panic faded, but his expression shifted into something much darker. He looked down at me with an intense stare that sent a hot spike of arousal straight to my groin.
“I just feel like garbage for not defending myself,” I muttered, genuinely wanting to talk this out. “We should probably figure out what we are actually doing.”
“Stop talking,” he said flatly. “I don’t want to hear it right now. I just want to shut you up.”
Common sense told me to push back, to make him have a real conversation with me for once. But the heat flooding my veins overpowered my brain. I swallowed hard.
“Okay, then,” I breathed out. “Shut me up.”
I walked straight over to the center of the mirrored wall. My breath caught in my throat as I dropped to my knees on the rubber floor.
Aleksey stepped up right behind me. He grabbed my shoulders, his rough hands gripping my shirt, and turned me sideways so our profiles reflected in the glass. I was still kneeling, and he stood tall over me. He then let go of myshoulders and moved to stand in front of me, his body still framed perfectly in the mirror.
“Look at yourself,” he ordered.
