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Caden stepped back, let his gaze linger on me a while longer, then turned away and left the rec room. And even though he was out of my sight, he wasn’t leaving my mind. For two years, the guy had just decided to hate me. Why? Because of my trust fund? Because of my excellent sense of fashion? Because of my superior skill on ice?
“Dude,” I growled at Jarred.
“Don’t ‘dude’ me,” Jarred said. “I wasn’t kidding. We’re sick of you two impersonating February tomcats. You have a responsibility to your team, Beck. And Caden’s on that team.”
For one, I found myself without a witty retort. “It’s your responsibility, now,” I said matter-of-factly.
“You think I want it?” Jarred asked, laughing sarcastically, almost desperately. “Because I don’t. I don’t want to captain a losing team next Friday when two of our best players are watching us from the bench.”
“Uh, yeah, I’d like to second that,” Trent said.
“Here, here,” a few more voices rose.
I pouted. I was on the verge of saying Caden was the one who needed to hear this, but everyone here seemed delusional, so there was no point in going against the crowd.
Okay, that wasn’t true. But I would rather be damned than admit any responsibility. My feud with Caden was two years old and he was the one who had started it. Whatever missteps and justices I might have done in the meantime were solely on him.
“Fine,” I said, a fake smile stretching my lips. “I can do that.”
Jarred narrowed his eyes distrustfully. “Really?”
“Yep,” I said. “I’ll be my sweetest self to him. And when this whole plan blows up in your face and he loses us another match, you’ll see it’s not my fault at all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have friendship bracelets to weave.”
I turned on my heels to a ripple of groans and sighs, and marched out of the room.
I could be friends with the guy, especially if only for a little while. Nobody had ever resisted my charm when I bothered to direct it at them. Caden would be no different.
After all, I was almost the model captain everyone liked. Sure, the guys were annoyed right now — even though I’d done nothing to deserve it — but I was friends with all of them. The only one who disliked me was Caden Jones. And while the feeling was mutual, all I had to do was make him like me.
3
CADEN
My eyes kept going over the same line of text again and again, but the words weren’t sinking in. I would probably need to delicately glance at the cover to even remember the title of this book.
It was a regular Caden Saturday. I had no time for friends and hanging out; I needed to keep my hockey scholarship and stay on the team, which meant a lot of studying and a whole lot more exercise and practice.
My room was a boiling pot, stuck in the middle of heated rooms from all sides. I lay on my bed, topless, one hand under my head, the other holding the book inches away from my face.
The knock on my door was followed by the gross intrusion of my privacy by the person I least wanted intruding.
“Oh good, you’re decent enough,” Beckett said, facial muscles flexing into a forced smile. “Shirt fell apart? Don’t answer that. Sorry. Force of habit.”
I dropped the book I’d been trying and failing to read by the pillow and sat up in my bed. All the rooms in our old, colonial boarding house were single-bed rooms with enough space to make yourself comfortable. I had a wooden desk and a spinning chair, a wardrobe, shelves with my trophies from back when I had captained our high school team, and a beanbag on the far side of the room.
Beckett scanned the inventory, then let himself drop into the beanbag.
“Yeah, no, make yourself at home,” I muttered, scanning the room for a T-shirt, then once more for embarrassing stuff. I found neither.
Beckett’s eyebrows wiggled playfully. I couldn’t guess what the hell had gotten into him. Instead, I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t actually been doing anything embarrassing. Always lock the door, I noted to myself, then quickly pushed the thought of the toy in my nightstand’s drawer out of my head. Not that he could read my mind.
Still, if he’d barged in forty minutes earlier, I would have been packing my shit and running away in embarrassment.
“What do you want?” I asked, every shred of me tense as I sat at the very edge of the bed, shoulders set, pecs and abs constricted. If he was still holding a grudge from last night’s shoving, I was wise to be prepared.
But Beckett seemed relaxed in my beanbag. His golden boy face had big dimples when he cracked that practiced smile of his and his absurdly blue eyes shone with amusement and something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. A stray lock of blond hair rested on one of his eyebrows.
The whole image was repulsive, really. It just went to show how cocky the bastard was to stroll in and claim my space with that stupid, innocent smile that sometimes made my heart clench.
