CHAPTER 3 - NEW BOY, OLD FLING

Three days later, I still couldn't stop touching the bruise on my collarbone. It had turned purple, then blue, then a sick yellowish green that I covered with concealer every morning and checked every night like a secret I was keeping from myself. The bite mark sat just below my collarbone – low enough to hide under a crew neck, high enough that anything with a wider neckline was a confession. I wore crew necks for three days straight. Sienna noticed. Sienna noticed everything. "You've worn that same hoodie rotation since Wednesday," she said, eyeing me across our dorm room. "You hate that grey one. You said it makes you look like a depressed librarian." "I'm cold." "It's heated in here." "I'm emotionally cold." She let it go. Temporarily. Sienna always let things go temporarily – she stored them like ammunition and fired when you least expected it. *** The game was Friday night. The whole campus was buzzing, and for once it had nothing to do with Caleb. Everybody was talking about the transfer. I'd heard the name in fragments all week – in the dining hall, in lectures, whispered between girls in the bathroom like a prayer. Former captain of Redmond – the best hockey program in the country. Transferred to Thornfield after his father relocated. Details were scarce but the rumors were loud: he'd been expelled from Redmond for violence. He'd hospitalized someone. He was dangerous, unpredictable, the kind of player coaches either worshipped or feared. The hockey groupies were already feral. Someone had found a photo from his Redmond days – dark hair, jaw like a blade, grey eyes that looked like they'd been designed to ruin women's lives – and it had circulated through every group chat on campus by Tuesday. I didn't look at the photo. I didn't need to. I'd been avoiding thinking about grey eyes all week, and I wasn't about to start now. The arena was packed. I found my usual spot – fourth row, center ice, between Sienna and Zara. The seats were the same ones I'd sat in for four years screaming Caleb's name. Tonight felt different. Everything since Valentine's Day felt different – like someone had shifted the furniture in my life two inches to the left and nothing fit right anymore. Caleb found me before the game. He appeared at the end of our row in his warm-up jersey, hair pushed back, looking exactly the way he always looked – golden and easy and certain of his welcome. The captain. The boy everyone loved. The boy I'd spent four years building a shrine to. "Hey, Nomes." "Hey." He leaned against the railing. Casual. His eyes dropped to my neck – and stopped. I'd worn a wider neckline tonight. Not on purpose. Okay, maybe a little on purpose. Maybe some reckless, newly hardened part of me wanted him to see it. The concealer had worn off during the day and the bite mark was visible – faded but unmistakable. A mouth-shaped bruise sitting on my collarbone like a signature. Caleb's jaw tightened. Something moved behind his eyes – not jealousy, exactly. Something worse. Surprise. Like the idea of someone else's mouth on me hadn't occurred to him as a possibility. "What's that?" "What's what?" His eyes stayed on the mark. "We need to talk after the game." "Sure." He looked at me for a beat longer than necessary – searching for something, the old Naomi maybe, the one who would have blushed and covered the hickey and rushed to explain. That Naomi was sitting on the porch of the hockey house three blocks away. This one held his gaze and didn't flinch. A whistle called from the tunnel. He pushed off the railing and jogged toward the locker room without looking back. Sienna waited exactly four seconds. "Was that a HICKEY?" "No." "That is a hickey. That is a massive, aggressive, somebody-was-trying-to-eat-you hickey. Zara – Zara, look at her neck." Zara leaned forward from my other side. Looked. Raised both eyebrows. "Girl." "It's nothing." "That is not nothing. That is evidence." Sienna grabbed my chin and tilted my head. "That's a bite mark. Who bit you? When did someone bite you? Why wasn't I informed of a biting?" "It was Valentine's night. After the party. I went to a bar. Met someone. It was a one-time thing." "A one-time thing that tried to consume you alive, apparently." "I'm never going to see him again. He was a stranger. I don't even know his name." "You don't know his NAME?" Sienna's voice hit a pitch that made the people in the row ahead turn around. "You let a man whose name you don't know leave that on your body? That's not a one-night stand, that's a crime scene." "It was one night. One bar. One–" I waved vaguely. "Moment of temporary insanity. It's done." Zara was watching me with that quiet, knowing look she had – the one that saw through every wall I built. "Was it good though?" I thought about the bathroom door. The way he'd lifted me like I weighed nothing. The way he'd said good girl like a benediction and eyes open like a command and still with me like a promise. "It was fine." "She's lying," Sienna said immediately. "Look at her face. She's lying and it was life-altering and she's going to tell us everything later." "The game's starting," I said. "Shut up." "Fine." Sienna settled back in her seat, but she was grinning – the dangerous grin that meant she was storing this for later. "But imagine – just imagine – if the hot new transfer IS your mystery bar stranger. The one everybody's losing their minds over." I laughed. Actually laughed – the first real one in days. "That would never happen. I'm not in a fairytale." "I'm just saying. Campus is small. Coincidences happen." "Sienna. I hooked up with a random guy in a dive bar bathroom on Valentine's Day. That is the opposite of a fairytale. That is a cautionary tale." "The best love stories start as cautionary tales." "Please stop talking." The lights dimmed. The announcer's voice boomed across the arena – starting lineups, sponsors, the usual. The Thornfield Wolves took the ice first, Caleb leading them out with his stick raised and that easy, camera-ready smile. The crowd erupted. I clapped. My hands felt mechanical. Then the announcer said it. "And starting in tonight's lineup – number seventeen, transfer from Redmond – making his Thornfield debut–" I don't remember hearing the name. I remember the way the arena lights caught the number on his jersey. Seventeen. I remember the way he skated – fluid, predatory, like the ice was afraid of him. I remember the dark hair visible under his helmet and the stick gripped in hands I'd watched wrap around a whiskey glass three days ago. Then he turned. Looked directly into the stands. Fourth row. Centre ice. Like he knew exactly where I was sitting. Steel grey eyes. Scar through the left eyebrow. Bruised knuckles wrapped around a hockey stick. My heart didn't drop. It fell – straight through my ribs, through the seat, through the concrete floor of the arena, through the earth itself. Every nerve in my body fired at once. The bar. The bathroom. The way he'd pushed my hair off my face afterward like I was something worth being gentle with. Number seventeen. The stranger. The bar. The bathroom door. Good girl. Still with me? Eyes open. He was here. He was on the ice. He was a Thornfield Wolf and he was looking directly at me with those grey eyes and that bruised face and he– He winked. One slow, deliberate wink. Like he'd been waiting for this exact moment. Like the entire week had been a countdown to the look on my face right now. The whistle blew. I couldn't breathe.