Icebreaker Read online

  “If we will go with you?” Aaron interrupts, sounding uncharacteristically hopeful.

  “No?”

  Sabrina spins to face me, her chestnut brown curls bouncing around her shoulders and delight written all over her face. “If we mind that Ryan wants to come here?”

  “Yeah. How did yo—”

  “Cough up, Carlisle.” She laughs, holding out her hand. He presses a few twenties into her palm, muttering something under his breath as she counts them out. “We heard about the party, and I didn’t think you’d wanna get railed with drunk freshmen making out on the other side of the door. We’re going to walk there.”

  Our home is one of Aaron’s dad’s better forgive me presents. It was either after his affair with his secretary or before he decided to have sex with the interior designer. Maple Tower is a beautiful condo block on the edge of campus, and our place has a great view and tons of natural light.

  The building isn’t exclusive to students, so it’s a peaceful place to live, but it’s close enough to everyone else that stumbling home from parties is easy.

  Aaron and I aren’t supposed to be at parties, but what Aubrey doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

  I’ve already watched Sabrina try on ten different outfits when Ryan texts to let me know he’s finally on his way up, giving me an excuse to leave her and her ten almost identical black dresses.

  The butterflies I get when there is a knock at the door and I know Ryan is on the other side of it were strange to me at first, but now it’s cute.

  He’s practically filling the doorway when I open the door to let him in. His messy blond hair is still damp, and he smells strongly of orange and something I can’t quite put my finger on, which is now weirdly comforting to me. His head dips to mine, and his lips press against my cheek lightly. “Hello, beautiful.”

  He hands me the bag of snacks he always insists on bringing because apparently, I don’t eat enough, and I don’t have anything good to eat when he’s here. Ryan eats more than any person I know, and his version of good is loaded with sugar.

  For some reason, Aaron and Brin are watching us from the living room like they’ve never seen other human beings before. Ryan laughs when he spots them; fortunately, he’s used to their antics by now, and he offers them a quiet “Hello” as I lead him in the direction of my bedroom.

  “Hey, Rothwell?” Sabrina shouts as we reach my door.

  He lets go of my hand, turning around to face her. “Yeah?”

  She’s leaning over the back of the couch, and I know from the mischievous look on her face I don’t want to hear whatever she has to say.

  “Since my bedroom is next to Stassie’s and I’m going to be listening to your grunting and balls slapping all night,” my eyes widen as far as they can go from behind him, “can I have the code for your room, so I don’t have to fight for the shared bathroom at the party at your place?”

  Campus housing has electronically coded locks on bedroom doors for security. Ryan’s room has a private bathroom, so Brin’s request is a good idea since the bathroom line gets ridiculous the drunker people get.

  It’s her delivery that’s going to require some serious work.

  “Sure, I’ll text it to you. No snooping, Allali. I’ll know if you have.”

  She holds up a peace sign. “Scouts honor. Enjoy all the sex.”

  “Jesus, Brin.” I groan loud enough for her to hear as I drag Ryan into my room away from her. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I like her. She’s funny.” He chuckles, taking my face between his hands and tilting my head up so he can kiss me.

  It’s soft at first, then more urgent as his tongue moves against mine. His hands travel down my body gently until they reach my thighs, scooping me up in one quick motion. My legs automatically wrap around his waist, my body familiar with his after doing this so many times.

  There’s banging outside of my room, which I think is my roommates leaving, but every hot kiss Ryan places on my neck steals my attention away. I should check if it is them going, but it suddenly plummets to the bottom of things on my mind when Ryan lowers me to the bed and climbs on top of me.

  “How was your day?” he mumbles beneath my ear.

  He always does this. He kisses me perfectly, positions his body between my legs, applies enough pressure to have me squirm, scrambles the thoughts in my head, and then asks me something mundane like how my day was.

  The second I try to formulate a response, his fingers journey beneath my T-shirt, and he traces the curve of my jaw with his nose. Every inch of my skin feels like it’s buzzing, and he hasn’t even done anything yet. “It was, uh, uhm, fine, I, mhmm, skated…”

  His body rocks as he laughs. “You mhmm skated? Sounds interesting. Why don’t you tell me more, Allen?”

  I hate him. I really, really hate him.

  I incoherently mumble something about ice and Russians as he strips us of our clothes until we’re both in our underwear. Ryan’s body would make a Greek god weep; tanned skin from his summer home in Miami, and a torso with more abs than I can count.

  Forget a Greek god, it makes me want to weep.

  Gripping my panties on each hip, he waits until I nod before slowly pulling them down my legs, throwing them behind him, and spreading my legs wide.

  “Stas.”

  “Yeah?”

  His forehead creases. “Can Sabrina really hear my balls?”

  TWO | NATHAN

  There’s a hand near my dick that isn’t mine.

  She’s fast asleep, snoring loudly with her hand wrapped around my waist and tucked into the band of my boxers. I gently untuck and examine it—long fake nails, Cartier rings, and a Rolex strapped to her slender wrist.

  Who the fuck is it?

  Even after a night of God knows what, she still smells expensive, and there are strands of long, golden-blond hair draped over my shoulder from where she’s lying behind me.

  I shouldn’t have gone to the party last night, but Benji Harding, and the rest of the basketball guys, are persuasive little shits. As much as I love throwing a party, nothing beats going somewhere else and coming home to a quiet house not full of other people’s mess.

  Unless you’re talking about this kind of mess. The kind where there’s a woman in your bed, and you can’t remember who the hell it is.

  The common-sense part of my brain tells me to roll over and look at her, but another part that remembers all the silly situations we’ve gotten ourselves into keeps reminding me that drunk Nate is a dick.

  That part of my brain has real concerns this is going to be someone’s sister, or worse, someone’s mom.

  “Can you stop moving about?” the mystery guest snaps. “What is it with fucking sports guys and early mornings?”

  That voice. It’s one I wish I didn’t recognize.

  Oh fuck.

  I slowly roll over so I can confirm my own worst fear: that I did have sex with Kitty Vincent last night.

  And I do.

  She looks peaceful when she’s trying to sleep; her facial features are soft and delicate, lips blush and pursed. From how calm she looks right now, you wouldn’t know she’s an absolute raging bit—

  “Why are you staring at me, Nate?” Her eyes fly open, and she disintegrates me with one look, like the fucking dragon she is.

  Kitty Vincent is everything wrong with rich girls with Daddy’s credit card, a subspecies of women at UCMH I happen to be an expert on. Expertise I’ve gained from having sex with practically all of them.

  Except for this one.

  I was never supposed to do it with this one.

  There’s nothing wrong with her visually. To be frank, she’s an absolute knockout. She’s just an absolutely terrible human being.

  “Are you okay?” I ask carefully. “Do you need anything?”

  “I need you to stop staring at me like you’ve never seen a naked woman in your bed before,” she snipes back, pushing her body to lean against the headboard. “We both know you have, and
you’re creeping me out.”

  “I’m shocked, Kit. I, uh, don’t remember how this happened…”

  I remember being at the party and trying to get Summer Castillo-West to give me her number, but tragically being rejected for the fourth September in a row. I also remember playing beer pong with Danny Adeleke and losing, which I’d rather not remember, but I still don’t remember how this happened.

  “Oh shit. Wait, aren’t you dating Danny?”

  She rolls her blue eyes and reaches for her purse sitting on the table beside my bed, cursing when she finds her phone battery is dead. Brushing her hair from her face, she finally looks over at me, and I have never known a woman to look so irritated by my existence. “We broke up.”

  “Right, right. That sucks, I’m sorry. What happened?”

  I’m trying to be polite, a gracious host, some would say, but she raises one of her perfectly sculpted eyebrows at me and frowns. “Why do you give a fuck?”

  I rub my jaw nervously with my palm as I attempt to think of a reason to give her. She’s right. I don’t care, I hate cheaters and panicked, but since they broke up, I don’t have anything to worry about. “Only trying to be nice.”

  She gives me the fakest smile I’ve ever seen, swings her legs off the bed, and struts butt-ass naked toward my bathroom. It’s hard to concentrate on how good she looks because, with one last

  disinterested look over her shoulder, she scowls at me. “If you want to be nice, get me an Uber.”

  Thank God. “Sure.”

  “Exec only, Nate. It’s bad enough I’m going to be seen leaving here. Don’t make me suffer further by being cheap.”

  When the bathroom door slams shut and I hear the shower turn on, I know it’s safe to scream every curse word I know into my pillow.

  I’m standing at the front door watching Kitty climb into her Uber, Exec obviously, because of all the potential shame.

  Raking a hand through my hair, I can’t decipher how I ended up here after swearing this year would be different.

  I distinctly remember saying to Robbie, my best friend, on our drive back to California from Colorado, that senior year was going to be different. I must have said it at least twenty times on our two-day coffee-fueled journey.

  I lasted three weeks.

  I’m quickly dragged from the pity party I’m throwing for myself by the sound of muttering behind me. Robbie and my other roommates, JJ and Henry, are all sitting in our living room sipping their mugs of coffee like the cast of The View.

  “Well, well, well,” Robbie says smugly. “What happened here, you little hoe?”

  Robbie has been personally terrorizing me since we were five years old. Robbie’s dad, who I still call Mr. H sixteen years later, was the coach of our local ice hockey team back in Eagle County, where we grew up. That’s where we met and became friends, and he’s been a pain in my ass ever since.

  I ignore him and head straight past their prying eyes to the kitchen, pouring a mug of coffee and giving him the finger instead of the satisfaction of a response.

  Gulping down my coffee in what feels like two seconds, I can still sense their eyes on me. This is the worst part of living with your teammates—nothing is a secret.

  JJ, Robbie, and I are all seniors who have lived together since we shared a dorm freshman year, but Henry is a sophomore from the team who moved in at the start of term.

  The guy is incredible at hockey but has a bit to go with the whole social pressure side that comes with being on a sports team. He hated living in dorms and struggled to make friends outside the team, so we offered to let him move in here.

  We’ve always had a spare bedroom because our garage was converted into a wheelchair-accessible bedroom for Robbie, and Henry was more than grateful for the offer.

  Even in the three short weeks he’s been here, we can already see him more confident—which is probably why he no longer has a problem helping JJ and Robbie give me abuse.

  “Why did you have sex with Kitty Vincent?” Henry asks over the rim of his coffee mug. “She isn’t very nice.”

  Oh yeah, and the kid has zero filter.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t, buddy. She wasn’t very excited about it, either, and I don’t remember one second of it, so it doesn’t count.” I shrug, walking over to the living room and throwing myself into a recliner. “How the fuck did you three let this happen?”

  Am I old enough to not pass off the blame for my mistake? Sure. Will it stop me from trying? No.

  “I tried to stop you from leaving with her, bro,” JJ blatantly lies, holding up his hands defensively. “You said she smelled nice and her ass felt good. Who am I to stand between you and true love?”

  I groan loudly, making my own head thump from the noise. If Jaiden claims he tried to stop me from leaving, he probably requested the Uber and put me in it with Kitty.

  JJ is an only child from middle-of-nowhere Nebraska, so messing with the people around him was his only source of entertainment when he was growing up.

  His parents always visit in June so they can join the rest of us at LA Pride with JJ, proudly wearing their pansexual flag ally pins. The time they spend at our house has allowed me to get to know them well, which is how I know JJ’s dad is exactly the same, to the point I don’t know how his mom coped with having two of them in the house.

  Mrs. Johal is an amazing woman with the patience of a saint. She always makes sure she fills our refrigerator full of different curries and sides before they leave, and she has amazing taste in horror films, which might be why I love her so much.

  She might be the only reason I haven’t murdered Jaiden yet.

  Robbie maneuvers beside me and wraps what I think is supposed to be a comforting arm around my shoulders. “Your focus on school and hockey lasted longer than I was expecting. Now come on, sort your shit out. You have to drive us to class.”

  I had no idea what I wanted to study when I got accepted by Maple Hills. I’m graduating in less than a year and I’m still not sure studying sports medicine was the right choice.

  I was drafted to the Vancouver Vipers when I finished high school and it was a hard choice to put my education first, especially when joining the NHL has been my dream since I was a kid. All I want to do is play, but I know shit goes wrong in hockey all the time; one bad injury or one unavoidable accident and your career is over.

  Even with a spot on my dream team waiting for me as soon as I graduate, I still wish something I’ve learned in the past three years had stayed in my brain so my backup plan felt worth it.

  My dad wasn’t a fan of me heading out of state for college, and he was even less of a fan about me signing with a hockey team, never mind one in Canada. He wanted me to learn the family business

  and run the ski resorts until I’m old and gray like him. The idea of turning into my father has always been enough to kick my ass into gear and get my goals.

  I’d have better luck understanding cell structures if I wasn’t constantly exhausted from practice, not to mention keeping my clown teammates out of trouble. When Greg Lewinski graduated and handed the captain torch to me last year, he didn’t prepare me for how much babysitting it takes to keep butts on benches ready to play.

  Robbie helps me out since he’s assistant to Coach Faulkner. After a skiing accident in our junior year of high school, Robbie didn’t regain movement in his legs and now uses a wheelchair. He transferred his skill of shouting shit at me on the ice to shouting shit at me from the edge of the ice.

  He loves nothing more than waving his oversized clipboard in my direction and telling me to do better. The guys on the team love that I take the brunt of Robbie’s abuse because it gives the rest of them an easier time.

  A perfect example is days like today. On Fridays, JJ and I have classes in the science building, so we have a tradition of dragging ourselves over to the rink for practice via a Dunkin’ for a pre-workout doughnut.

  It’s our little secret, but JJ knows if we get caught, I’l
l get the blame anyway, so he doesn’t mind the risk. The last class of the day on a Friday is my least favorite thing in the world, so I don’t mind the risk either.

  I’m lazily scrolling through my feed, waiting for JJ outside his lab when I hear his cheery tone getting louder as he approaches me. “You ready to get your hungover ass kicked?”

  “Nothing a rainbow sprinkle ring can’t solve. Sweating out alcohol is good anyway. Will get me fresh for tonight.”

  His brows furrow together. “What are you talking about? Have you not seen the group chat?”

  The last thing I saw was Robbie deciding we were throwing a party tonight. Our first game isn’t for another two weeks and it’s tradition for us to bring in the season with a party or five.

  The second I pull out my phone I can see the messages I haven’t read yet.

  PUCKBUNNIES

  BOBBY HUGHES: Might be dying.

  KRIS HUDSON: God speed, buddy.

  ROBBIE HAMLET: Drinks at ours tonight?

  BOBBY HUGHES: In the words of Michael Scott, I am ready to get hurt again.

  JOE CARTER: I’ll bring the tequila roulette board.

  HENRY TURNER: Email from Faulkner says go to the awards room, not the rink.

  JAIDEN JOHAL: Wtf?

  HENRY TURNER: Sent an hour ago.

  The awards room is a function room in the central area of the sports building. Most of us don’t spend much time over there unless we’re in trouble; it’s where the coaches work outside of practice and games. It’s where ceremonies are held at the end of the year. If we’re being called there it means someone has massively fucked up, and I hope it wasn’t me.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” JJ says as we climb into my car. “Y’know Josh Mooney, the baseball guy in my class? He said their practice has been canceled too. They have to go to the awards room, but they’ve been told to go thirty minutes after us. Fucking weird, man.”