Chapter 1 New Teammate

ETHAN’S POV

I was Ethan Drake, number 19, captain of the Ridgewood Wolves, and every single person in that packed arena knew it.

The chant started low in the student section the second I stepped out of the tunnel.

“Drake! Drake! Drake!” Three thousand voices piled on top of each other until it felt like the sound was pressing right against my chest pads.

I didn’t look up at the Jumbotron. Didn’t need to. My face was already flashing up there between periods, same as it was on the back of every jersey in the building.

I took a deep breath of that sharp, freezing rink air and dug my skates in. The cold always cut straight through my pads, and I held on to it. Everything else could lie. The cold never did.

The twenty-two of us in Wolves red and white were spread out on the ice, and every guy was watching me.

“Eyes up,” I called, voice steady the way Coach liked. “We finish the way we started. Nothing sloppy.”

Asher Kane, my right winger and best friend since freshman year, tapped his stick against mine. “You good, Cap?”

“Always.” The word came out smooth, like I’d said it a thousand times in practice. I’d been telling that same lie long enough that it barely even registered anymore.

The ref’s whistle cut through the noise. I lined up for the face-off, won it clean, and snapped the puck back to our defenseman before the Eagles center could even react. We pushed hard.

The crowd roared. My blood did that thing it only does at full speed—every nerve lighting up, stick out, edges sharp, puck moving like it was reading my mind.

Six minutes left in the second period. We were up 2–1 on Eastern Michigan. That score didn’t mean anything. One bad shift and the scholarship letter sitting on my desk at home—the one I’d read eleven times—could turn into a polite no. I’d built this whole season into a wall between me and that letter. I couldn’t let one brick fall.

I fed Asher a perfect tape-to-tape pass. He carried it over the blue line, faked twice, and shot. The goalie kicked it wide. I was already crashing the net, shoulder into their defenseman. When the rebound sat loose in the crease, my stick found it on pure instinct. I jammed it under the bar.

Goal light. Horn. 3–1.

The building exploded.

I didn’t flash them the big poster smile—the one they put outside the athletic center that looks effortless. I just skated to the bench, tapped gloves, jaw tight, already thinking about the next shift.

That was the job: keep the machine running, keep your face straight, don’t give them anything they could use against you.

But underneath all of it, the same thought kept looping through my mind.

What if they knew?

Last summer, I was at a party a few miles off campus. Cheap vodka burning the back of my throat. I’d wandered onto some random back porch without thinking. A guy—dark hair, a little taller than me. I still couldn’t picture his face clearly. Just the way his mouth felt when we kissed.

The scrape of stubble. How it felt both totally wrong and totally right at the same time—like I’d been running on a slightly off track my whole life, and for those twenty minutes someone finally flipped the switch.

I woke up the next morning with a split lip and this cold, electric knot in my stomach. I buried it before I was even fully awake. By the time preseason started, I’d shoved it down so deep I could almost pretend it never even happened.

Almost.

“Drake.” Coach Harlan’s bark cut through the noise. “Line change. Stay sharp.”

I hopped over the boards and dropped onto the bench, legs heavy. Asher handed me a water bottle without a word—he always knew. I drank half of it, wiped my glove across my mouth, and let my eyes drift across the ice.

That’s when the announcement came over the PA.

“Entering for the Wolves—number 7, Ares Cole!”

The crowd’s reaction was more like “huh?” than cheer. Curious, but not sold. The name had been floating around the locker room all week—transfer from some program out west, showed up mid-season, some situation nobody would explain. Coach called him raw talent with an attitude problem. I’d filed it under not my problem. We needed guys who could produce, not guys who needed handling.

Then he stepped over the boards.

He didn’t jog. He glided, like the ice had been waiting just for him. Six-two, maybe a little more, built for contact but light on his edges, like it was effortless. Dark geometric tattoos ran down both forearms under his sleeves. Helmet buckled tight. He didn’t acknowledge the weak applause, didn’t look around the bench. He just took his spot at center like the place already belonged to him.

The ref dropped the puck. Ares won the draw before the Eagles center could even think. He spun, controlled it, and cut right through our defense before they finished setting up. Two strides into the slot—no look, no hesitation—he ripped a wrist shot top shelf, glove side. So clean the goalie’s blocker barely twitched.

Goal light. 4–1.

The building lost its mind.

Ares skated back to the bench at the exact same pace. No fist pump. No helmet tap. Nothing. He’d just scored on a ranked team in his first forty seconds of college hockey, but he looked like he’d done it a hundred times before—in an empty rink, by himself, for nobody.

As he passed our line. His eyes flicked up once—just once—and locked on mine for less than a second.

Something in my chest slammed into the boards.

I looked away first.

“Cole!” Coach clapped sharp over the noise. “That’s the standard right there!”

The bench cheered. Asher elbowed me. “Kid doesn’t mess around.”

“No,” I said. My voice came out a little off, and I caught it right away. “He doesn’t.”

I sat back down. Under my pads my knees wouldn’t stop moving. The scar on my lip—the one from that night last summer, healed smooth for months—tightened up from the cold. I pressed my tongue to the inside of it without thinking. Old habit. One I couldn’t explain anymore.

Ares dropped onto the far end of the bench. Sweat already darkened the hair at the edge of his helmet. He peeled off his glove and flexed his hand twice—knuckles, then fingers. The tattoos on his forearm shifted with the movement. Sharp geometric lines. Maybe a constellation. It’s kinda hard to tell from here.

He glanced up. I hadn’t looked away fast enough. The corner of his mouth twitched. Not a smile—more like a pause, like he’d just filed something away.

My stomach flipped in a way I didn’t ask for. It was not from adrenaline. Not irritation. It was something that felt exactly like that back porch last summer, from the moment I’d spent months trying to forget.

I turned my eyes back to the ice.

The whistle blew for the next face-off. I pushed up off the bench, tightened my gloves, and kept my voice exactly where it needed to be.

“Let’s go, Wolves.”

When I vaulted over the boards and my skates caught the ice, I had forty seconds until the drop. I used every single one of them telling myself the same thing I always did: You’re fine. You’re in control. The mask holds.

But Ares Cole had been in a Wolves jersey for less than a minute, and the game already felt different in a way I couldn’t explain .

I wasn’t going to look into it. I was going to skate harder, play tougher, and pretend harder than I ever had in my life. Because the gold

en boy didn’t break.

Not in public.

Not ever.