Chapter 2

I pushed the door open.

It swung wide, hitting the wall with a dull thud.

The movement on the bed stopped instantly.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I just stared.

Finley was on his knees behind Amber. He was thrusting into her from behind. Sweat glistened on their bodies, the room thick with the scent of sex and cheap beer.

He whipped his head around, his eyes wide, looking like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi-truck.

Amber didn't flinch. She was leaning back against Finley's headboard, her blonde hair messy. She looked past Finley's shoulder, locked eyes with me, and actually smirked. She raised a perfectly threaded eyebrow, as if to say, Well, you finally figured it out.

"Chazzer!" Finley scrambled backward, nearly falling off the mattress. He grabbed wildly at a crumpled t-shirt on the floor, holding it over his crotch.

"Chazzer, wait, baby, listen to me!" he stammered, his face pale. "It's not what it looks like!"

"You're naked inside my sorority sister," I said, my voice stripped of all emotion. "It looks exactly like what it is."

"I was drunk! We were—it just happened!"

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't throw anything.

I just looked at the boy I thought I loved. The boy I defended. The boy who couldn't even pretend to care when his best friend sexually harassed me last night.

"We're done," I said quietly.

I turned around and walked out.

"Chazzer! Wait! Chaz!" Finley yelled from the hallway, but I heard the door slam shut. Amber probably pulled him back to bed.

I walked out of the building. The autumn wind hit me like a physical blow.

I had no idea where I was going. My brain was completely blank. Two years. Two years of my life, a thousand plane tickets, a million texts. All a lie.

Six hours later, I was back at Weston.

I walked blindly across campus, past the athletic complex. There was an outdoor pool next to the hockey arena, mostly used for summer training. The concrete deck was covered in dead, wet maple leaves.

My foot hit a slick patch of wet leaves.

The world flipped upside down.

I didn't even have time to scream before I hit the water.

CRASH.

The cold was absolute. It was late November. The water felt like a thousand tiny knives slicing into my skin. I gasped in shock, inhaling a lungful of chlorinated ice water.

Panic set in. My heavy clothes were dragging me down. I thrashed, trying to find the surface, kicking wildly.

Suddenly, a hand clamped around my forearm.

The grip was like iron. With one massive heave, I was yanked upward.

I broke the surface, coughing and sputtering, water streaming from my hair and eyes. Strong hands grabbed my waist and hauled me up over the concrete edge of the pool.

I collapsed onto the hard ground, shivering violently, gasping for air.

"Jesus, Chaz! Are you okay?"

I blinked the water out of my eyes and looked up.

It was Orion.

He was dripping wet. And completely, entirely naked.

My brain short-circuited for the second time today.

Orion's body was a goddamn masterpiece. Water sluiced over his tanned skin, highlighting the dark trail of hair leading to his big guy. He was built like a fucking god, and he knew it.

"What the hell are you doing?" I choked out, my teeth already chattering.

"What am I doing? You just took a dive into a freezing pool!" Orion snapped, grabbing a heavy wool team jacket off a nearby bench. He wrapped it tightly around my trembling shoulders.

He quickly stepped into a pair of sweatpants, ignoring the fact that he'd just been completely exposed.

"Why are you naked in a pool in November?" I demanded, my voice shaking from the cold, trying not to stare at the outline still visible through the thin fabric.

"It's a pre-game superstition," he said, crouching down in front of me. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead. "The co-captain has to do an ice plunge the day before a rivalry game. But seriously, what the hell happened? You look like you've seen a ghost."

I pulled the heavy jacket tighter around myself. It smelled like cedar and expensive cologne.

"I went to Lockhart," I said numbly. "I caught Finley with Amber."

Orion's hands paused where he was holding the edges of the jacket together for me. His jaw tightened. He looked away, staring at the dark, rippling water of the pool.

He knew. Of course he knew.

We sat there in the freezing wind for a long minute. The silence was heavy, suffocating.

Then, Orion looked back at me. The arrogant, smirking playboy from the text messages was gone. His eyes were dead serious.

"That voice note I sent last night," Orion said quietly, his voice cutting through the wind. "I meant it to go to Finn. But I wasn't joking around."

He reached out, his thumb brushing a wet strand of hair off my cheek.

"I actually like you, Chazzer."

I stared at him. My boyfriend's best friend. The guy who sent me a dick pic twelve hours ago.

I slapped his hand away.

I pushed myself up off the concrete. I didn't say a single word. I pulled his jacket tight around my chest, turned my back on him, and walked toward my dorm.

Thirty minutes later, I was standing in my dorm room.

I was still wearing Orion's jacket. Underneath, my clothes were damp and freezing. I looked like a drowned rat.

My roommate, Chloe Park, was sitting cross-legged on her bed, her thick glasses reflecting the glow of her dual monitors. She typed at the speed of light, pausing only when she heard the door click shut.

She looked up. Her jaw dropped.

"What happened to you?" Chloe asked, abandoning her keyboard. "Did someone die?"

"Finley," I said, my voice hollow. "I caught him with Amber Holloway."

Chloe's expression shifted from shocked to dangerously cold. She pushed her glasses up her nose.

She didn't offer me platitudes. She didn't tell me it was going to be okay.

Instead, she pointed a finger at her laptop screen.

"Go take a hot shower," Chloe said, her voice low. "And when you get out, come look at this. You know those idiot hockey players think they're tech geniuses?"

I stopped at the bathroom door, looking back at her. "What did you find?"

Chloe turned her monitor slightly so I could see it.

"They have a private Discord server. It took me ten minutes to bypass their admin privileges."

I squinted at the screen. The neon interface of Discord glowed in the dim room. My eyes locked onto the title of the channel Chloe had pulled up.

It was named: #locker-room-bets.