Chapter 6

Raiden

I had a plan for tonight. The plan had steps. Kaleena Donovan had just skipped three of them.

My spine stays locked between the open front door and the heavy velvet curtain concealing the girl whose freezing fingertips were pressed against my ribs five seconds ago. Across the marble threshold, Elijah braces a wet palm against the doorframe, his chest heaving like he sprinted the last six blocks through the storm instead of taking the train.

"Blackwood!" Elijah gasps, rain dripping from his dark curls onto his soaked gray hoodie. "Kaleena----where is she? Did she get here? Tell me she's inside!"

I don't move an inch toward the window alcove. I cross my arms over my chest, letting my face settle into the cold, bored mask the whole campus knows by heart.

"Lower your voice," I say evenly. "And step off my rug before you flood the hall."

The second my eyes flick barely half an inch toward the velvet drape, Elijah's entire posture shifts. The frantic, terrified boy who just burst through my door vanishes behind a sheet of cheap ice. He straightens up, wipes the rain off his chin, and forces a careless shrug.

"Whatever, man," Elijah says, though his chest is still rising too fast. "Just making sure the handoff went clean so she doesn't come banging on my door at midnight."

I log every tell before he finishes the sentence. One: he jams both hands deep into the front pocket of his hoodie to hide the violent shaking in his fingers. Two: his eyes dart to the wet footprints on my marble floor, then lock strictly onto my collarbone, never once drifting toward the curtain where she is standing two yards away. He knows she is hiding behind the velvet, and he is making sure she hears every word. Three: when he says her name, his voice cracks straight down the middle.

"You look like hell for a guy celebrating a new roommate," I say, watching a muscle jump in his jaw. "Where's the rest of her stuff?"

"In boxes by the curb if she doesn't pick it up by Sunday," Elijah says flatly. "We had a deal, Blackwood. I cleared her out of the apartment on schedule, and I gave you her timetable. Hand over the stadium passes and the five a.m. rink access you promised me."

Behind my back, the velvet curtain rustles by a fraction of an inch. My jaw clenches. If she steps out right now, whatever fragile script Elijah is running will blow apart in my foyer.

"Here," I say, pulling the plastic arena vouchers and the laminated keycard from the entry bowl and tossing them at his chest.

He catches them with one shaking hand and shoves them into his pocket without looking down.

"That's it?" I ask, stepping closer until I tower over him. I decide to push the bruise just to see what bleeds. "Fifteen years of playing her hero, and you throw her into a storm on her twenty--first birthday? She has nowhere to go, Eli."

A spasm of raw agony flashes across his pupils before he slams the shutters down again. "Not my problem."

"She had eleven dollars in her pocket and a crushed cupcake on your floor," I say, dropping my voice so it carries clearly to the curtain while keeping my stare pinned to his throat. "What kind of man does that to the girl who trusts him with her life?"

"She's a nuisance," Elijah says, his voice loud and brittle in the marble foyer. "A clingy, suffocating nuisance who doesn't know how to take a hint. I'm twenty--one, Blackwood. I'm done babysitting an orphan with abandonment issues while Hayley waits in my bed. Now we're square."

Something dark and violent snaps behind my ribs.

Before he can turn toward the hallway, my hand shoots out and twists into the wet fabric of his hoodie collar. I haul him forward until his boots skid on the stone and his face is three inches from mine.

"Say that again," I growl, my knuckles tightening against his collarbone until the seams groan.

Elijah doesn't raise his fists. He doesn't even try to break my grip. Up close, his eyes are bloodshot, hollowed out by a terror that has nothing to do with my fist and everything to do with whatever is waiting outside this building.

"She's a nuisance," he whispers, quieter this time, his voice splintering on the last word as he holds my stare like he is begging me to hit him so the lie holds up. "You wanted her at your door. Now keep her safe."

My raised fist stops an inch from his jaw.

I don't swing. For two years I have watched Elijah guard Kaleena like a shadow, and now he is ripping his own throat out in front of her curtain so she will hate him enough to stay away. He isn't trading her for scout ice. He is hiding something that scares him a hell of a lot more than losing her----or getting his jaw broken by me.

I open my fingers and shove him backward toward the threshold.

"Get out," I snarl. "Before I put you through the elevator wall."

Elijah stumbles back into the outer vestibule, turns without another word, and disappears into the waiting elevator.

The heavy front door hasn't even finished clicking shut when the velvet curtain rips backward on its brass rings.

Kaleena comes out swinging.

"You bastard!" she chokes out, her face ghost--white, eyes blazing with wild fury as she launches herself straight at my chest. "You sick, manipulative bastard! You used me!"

Her small fists slam against my ribs before I catch both of her freezing wrists in my hands. She twists and bucks against my hold, her soaked hair whipping across my forearms as she kicks my shin with her wet sneaker.

"Let go of me!" she screams, her voice tearing raw. "You set the whole thing up! You paid him off with stadium passes just to watch me beg on your floor! Let me go!"

"Stop fighting me, Donovan, before you hurt your wrists!" I crowd her back against the foyer wall, pinning her hands safely against my chest so she can't strike the stone. Her heart is hammering so fast through her soaked denim jacket that I can feel it vibrating against my palms.

"I hate you!" A single hot tear spills over her lashes, tracking down her icy cheek, and the sight of it makes my chest constrict like a vise. "Why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to you?"

I can't tell her the real reason. If I tell her why I have spent two years tracking her across this campus, I put a target squarely on her back. So I give her the one true thing I can afford to let go of.

"You think Elijah is the only one who traded pieces of your life in that locker room?" I grit out, my face inches from hers as we both fight for air. "What about the diary pages Hayley stole out of your bedroom two weeks ago?"

Kaleena goes dead still against the wall. The color drains from her lips. "My sketchbook journal? I thought I lost it in the studio. How do you know about that?"

"Because Hayley gave five torn pages of your private entries to the sophomore forwards to project onto the locker--room wall before Friday's game," I say, my jaw clenching as the memory makes my blood boil all over again. "Every word you wrote about missing your parents. Every confession about wishing Elijah would want you back."

Her breath hitches violently, her fingers curling inward inside my grip. "No. They didn't..."

"They had the projector running when I walked in," I say harshly. "I ripped the cord out of the wall, smashed the flash drive under my skate, and paid the equipment manager two grand in cash to delete every copy off the server. Then I promised the entire roster that anyone who kept a single screenshot on their phone would sit on the bench for the rest of the season."

She stares up at me, her chest heaving against my wrists, her analytical eyes searching my face in stunned disbelief.

"Why?" she whispers, her voice trembling. "You hate me, Raiden. Why would you do that for me?"

My throat locks tight. Because the sound of those assholes laughing at her pain nearly put me in a jail cell. Because she has been mine to protect since the day she walked onto this campus, even if she wants me dead.

I can't answer her. Instead, I release her wrists, reach behind my neck, and yank my dry black hoodie over my head in one motion. Before she can protest, I drop the warm cotton over her head and pull it down over her soaked clothes until she is swallowed to mid--thigh.

"Get in the kitchen," I order roughly, turning away so she can't read my eyes. "Before you freeze to death on my floor."

She pushes her wet hair out of the oversized collar and follows me across the hardwood into the kitchen. Swallowed by black cotton with my name stitched across the shoulders, she looks half her size and twice as fierce.

I lean back against the marble kitchen island and fold my arms, delivering the pitch I have rehearsed for days.

"Here is where we stand, Donovan," I say, keeping my tone strictly transactional. "You have eleven dollars and no roof. And I need Elijah watching you walk into that rink on Friday night wearing Blackwood across your back."

Kaleena blinks, hugging the oversized sleeves around her ribs. "What are you talking about?"

"Be my girlfriend," I say. "In public, on campus, and in the family glass behind the bench until the conference championship."

She barks out a sharp, bitter laugh. "Are you insane? Everyone knows you can't stand me."

"Everyone knows I can't take my eyes off you," I counter smoothly, stepping closer to the island. "You get a safe place to live and revenge on the boy who threw you away. Every time Elijah steps onto the ice, he has to watch my hands on you."

Her gaze narrows, searching for the trap. "And what do you get out of this fake dynamic, Blackwood?"

"Elijah is my only competition for the top scouting slot next month," I lie, the words smooth because I have practiced every syllable. "When he sees you with me, Elijah's game falls completely apart. He chokes in front of the scouts, and my team wins the championship. Simple."

Kaleena studies me for a long, tense beat, her sharp mind weighing the stakes. Finally, she lifts her chin, pure steel hardening in her eyes.

"Fine. I'm in," she says. "On one condition."

"Name it."

"I write the rules," she says firmly. "When we show up, when you touch me, and where the line stays drawn. I write the contract, or I walk right now."

A dark pull tightens in my gut at her defiance. "Deal. Now put your shoes back on."

She frowns. "Why?"

"Because Hayley still has the rest of your mother's jewelry in that bedroom," I say, grabbing my keys off the counter. "And we're getting it back tonight."

She doesn't hesitate. As we ride the private elevator down to the underground garage, she stares ahead at the steel doors while I pull a second, encrypted phone from my pocket behind her back and fire off a quick text.

Me: She's in.

The reply from A.V. illuminates the screen two seconds later: Then don't lose her.

I pocket the phone and lead her to my black SUV. When I pull out of the garage ramp into the pouring rain and merge onto the empty avenue, my eyes flick to the rearview mirror.

Two cars back, a pair of low--beam headlights pulls away from the wet curb, matching my speed in the dark.

My hands tighten on the wheel. Telling her I wanted to wreck Elijah's game was the best lie I had left. The truth is two cars behind us----and it has been following me for longer than she has known my name.