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“No, that’s fine,” I say, stiffly nodding at my father as we walk toward where Carson is perched outside of his dark, fancy car.

They shake hands and speak, as I step to the passenger side and wait for someone to unlock it so I can get in, away from the cold.

I feel him before I look over to where he stands, bag on his shoulder alone, watching me with something like pain on his face, before it melts into a fiery disappointment.

Embarrassment heats my skin as I yank on the door handle again, rough enough that Carson reaches his hand into his pocket and unlocks it without looking back at me.

But the tinted windows aren’t dark enough to shield me from Toren’s ire.

Chapter 15

Toren

As usual with my visits to the Hockey Dorms, I’m greeted rather begrudgingly.

“He’s busy,” says the guy who let me in, a third line winger named Davis I’ve definitely knocked into the boards before. Still, he lets me pass—though I think it had more to do with my hulking insistence and less about truly allowing me in.

There’s a party going on downstairs, but it’s chill—mostly just the guys from the house and a few girls listening to music and playing a game around the coffee table, but they’ve all gone relatively silent at my entrance.

I avoid them all, ducking my head so they can’t see the tinge of embarrassment I’m usually better at smothering and head for the second door on the left. I only knew this one was his because he’d told me so last semester—drunk at a party, texting me that if I wanted to talk that’s where he’d be. I didn’t want to talk. I had just wanted him to leave me alone.

Now, everything feels different.

Tonight, I feel frayed, almost vulnerable, which only makes me pull my protective layer of anger tighter around me. After the initial shock wore off, I’d started to at least attempt to wrap my head around Lily not only being here again—but being in my space again nearly every other day.

But it had never occurred to me that she might not be alone.

That she might be . . . with someone, romantically. It’s a possibility I’ve never had to face.

And then having to watch her stand there, alone, with no one paying a single ounce of attention to her shivering outside that damn shiny Lexus. Like salt in a goddamn wound. I shouldn’t be so worried about her like this. It’s not fair to me.

But I can’t fucking stop.

Holden’s door is covered in posters and photos, scattered between scribbled phone numbers and a ridiculous number of Sharpie dick drawings. I lift my hand to knock.

There’s a long pause before, “Yeah?” from Holden, shouted from the other side of the room.

“It’s Toren.” My face feels hot. “We . . . I need to talk. To you.”

Silence again—and then something that sounds like a crash before a shirtless, red-faced Holden opens the door, only a crack. His eyes blow wide as he takes me in, like he hallucinated my voice and seeing me in the flesh isn’t what he expected.

“Holy shit.” He shakes his head and blinks hard again. But I don’t flicker out into nothing.

“Can you talk?”

He glances over his shoulder for a moment, but nods. “Yeah—I just . . . I have someone here, and—”

“It’s fine, Holden,” a guy says, suddenly stepping up and slipping past us both. It’s hard not to notice that his shirt is on, but slightly askew. “I should go anyway.”

I watch him nearly sprint down the hallway and stairs, shocked he even managed to remember shoes.

“I c-can explain,” Holden sputters, something like horror playing across his features.

I grab the back of Holden’s neck and shove him through the doorway into his messy bedroom. Not surprising. I’ve roomed with the guy at every away game this school year, so I know how messy he is.

Last semester during an away game, I’d walked in on Holden and one of the guys from the other team. They’d both been panicked, but I’d left quickly and Holden never brought it up. I think it was enough that I didn’t say anything.

The idea that Holden would think I gave a single fuck about who he wanted to have sex with was ridiculous, given my own choices in romantic ventures. I knew he’d seen me make a few of those choices, that he’d watched me and Dalton University’s annoying left winger fight on the ice before drunkenly making out at a house party afterward, reopening the wounds on our face. It was messy, bloody and angry—fun too. I knew Holden had seen it.