Chapter 4 #2
He looked over his shoulder at Cade. “Has she?”
Cade’s mouth curved. “I plead the Fifth.”
I gasped. “Coward.”
“Strategic,” Cade corrected.
Charm pointed at Cade while following us. “Don’t go anywhere, Mercer. She still has to academically interrogate you.”
“Academically?” Briggs asked.
“That word too big?” Charm patted him on the head. “It means school-related.”
Briggs gave her a wounded look. “I know words. Bliss taught me several during our lab-partner era.”
“I taught you the word hypothesis because you kept calling it a science guess.”
“It was a science guess.”
“It was not.”
“It was a guess,” Briggs said, guiding me into the dining room, “about science.”
Cade’s low laugh followed us through the noise, and stupidly, I felt it settle somewhere warm under my ribs.
The dining room had already devolved into chaos by the time we got there.
Somebody had shoved the table against the wall to make room for beer pong while music blasted loud enough to rattle the overhead light fixture.
Bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder around the game screaming at absolutely nothing while Rider stood at one end of the table looking unfairly calm for someone about to weaponize hand-eye coordination against intoxicated college students.
Cade leaned against the doorway watching the room with that same controlled expression, beer bottle loose in his hand while chaos exploded around him.
Our eyes met again instantly.
“This is already rigged,” Rider said.
“Because you’re scared?” I shot back.
“Because Briggs is incapable of losing quietly.”
“Losing builds character,” Briggs said.
“You have no character.”
“That hurt me deeply.”
The game started, and any possibility of an actual project conversation immediately died.
Every time Cade and I tried to speak, something interrupted us.
Briggs yelling. Somebody demanding shots.
Ryan arguing with freshmen. A guy screaming about poker in the kitchen.
Three girls dragging Charm into a selfie. Someone turning the music louder.
“Hot tub!” the upstairs voice screamed again.
“This house feels haunted,” I muttered.
Cade’s mouth twitched beside me. “You get used to it.”
“I genuinely don’t think I would.”
“You would,” he said.
The way he said it settled strangely low in my chest. Like he already pictured me here.
So much more dangerous than the bear.
I sank another cup, and Briggs lost his mind beside me like we’d just won the Stanley Cup instead of a preseason beer pong game.
“Bennett!” he shouted. “This girl is my good luck charm!”
“I was your lab partner, not your emotional support cheerleader,” I yelled back.
“Same thing!”
“I hate that for her,” Aura called from the couch.
Easton sat beside her now. Close enough their knees touched.
Oh, tomorrow was going to be brutal for her after Charm and I roasted her for the flirting.
I pointed immediately. “I saw that.”
Aura looked confused. “Saw what?”
“The flirting.”
“There’s no flirting.”
Easton glanced at her. “Oh, there is definitely flirting.”
Charm nearly collapsed laughing and Aura looked personally betrayed by all of us.
“Get yours, girl!” Briggs yelled toward them.
Aura covered her face with both hands.
“This is why I hate athletes,” I informed Cade.
“Fair.”
“No loyalty. No shame. No indoor voices.”
“That sounds more like Briggs specifically.”
“Same ecosystem.”
His eyes stayed on me another second too long before he said quietly, “You really hate hockey players that much?”
The question caught me off guard.
I tossed the ping-pong ball lightly between my palms. “Hate is the wrong word. I grew up around athletes, so know is more fitting.”
“They’re harmless.”
“Says the athlete.”
That got another small, real laugh out of him.
“I’m serious,” I said. “You all have this thing.”
“What thing?”
“The ego. The addiction to attention. The inability to act normal for more than six minutes at a time.”
“Six is generous.”
“And hockey players are the worst.”
“That feels targeted.”
“It is targeted.”
His smile deepened slightly, and those dimples assaulted me without remorse. “You saying I’m a stereotype, Bennett?”
“I’m saying I’ve met enough hockey players to know better.” I lifted the ping-pong ball and pointed it at him. “And my name is Bliss, not Bennett. I’m not your goalie.”
Something shifted in his expression then. Like I’d finally said something nobody else usually did. Before I could think too hard about that, Briggs shoved another drink into my hand.
“Hydration,” he announced.
I smelled the glass and almost passed out. “This is vodka.”
“Potato water.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Cade looked mildly horrified. “Don’t encourage him.”
“Too late,” I said.
And somehow, despite the noise and the people and the constant interruptions, talking to him still felt weirdly easy.
Natural.
The room exploded again around us after Rider missed the shot, Briggs screaming loud enough to qualify as a public disturbance while somebody somewhere near the kitchen started chanting for tequila like they were trying to summon it from a mythical underworld.
Music pounded through the walls. People shoved past us carrying drinks.
Someone nearly tripped over the edge of the couch and recovered with the unearned confidence of a man who absolutely should not be trusted near stairs.
From somewhere upstairs, the mysterious hot tub guy screamed one more “Hot tub!” before a girl yelled back that nobody trusted him near bubbles unsupervised.
Hockey House felt less like a party and more like a controlled structural failure with neon Fury lights.
Beside me, Cade watched the room with that same calm expression that somehow never fully cracked no matter how loud things got around him.
Like the chaos didn’t touch him the same way it touched everyone else.
Or maybe he was just better at hiding it, because every time I thought I had him figured out, he did something inconveniently quiet and observant that made my brain trip over itself.
Cade Mercer did not move like the rest of them.
Briggs filled rooms by detonating inside them.
Easton watched Aura like his life had quietly rerouted around her existence.
Rider looked like boredom had been carved into a person and given good cheekbones.
But Cade stood in the middle of all that noise like he had been built to withstand impact.
Which was deeply unfair, considering I was trying very hard not to find him interesting.
I turned toward him slightly, raising my voice enough to cut through the music. “Okay, this is officially impossible.”
His eyes dropped back to mine instantly. “What is?”
“This.” I gestured vaguely between us and the disaster surrounding us. “The project conversation.”
The corner of his mouth lifted again, soft enough to be dangerous and sharp enough to be worse. “Yeah. Probably not the ideal interview environment.”
“Unless my subject is alcohol poisoning and emotional instability.”
“That feels more like a Briggs memoir.”
“Fair.”
Another shout erupted behind us as Briggs accused Rider of cheating through psychological intimidation, which probably meant Rider had blinked too slowly or breathed in a way Briggs found personally disrespectful.
I smiled despite myself before looking back at Cade, and the second our eyes caught again, the noise around us dulled in a way I did not appreciate.
It did not disappear.
Nothing at Hockey House disappeared unless it was alcohol, dignity, or someone’s left shoe.
But it softened at the edges, like Cade’s attention had drawn a circle around us and everything else had to exist outside it for a second.
His expression did not change much, but his focus sharpened immediately. “When?”
Like we had been mid-conversation for longer than tonight.
I shook my head. “I’m free Monday night.”
“The Sin Bin?” he asked.
I almost nodded, because that had been the obvious answer. Less screaming. Fewer airborne ping-pong balls. A normal place to talk about a school project without Briggs Lawson attempting to turn beer pong into a war crime.
But then I glanced around Hockey House again, at the noise and bodies and chaos pressing in around us, and for some reason, Monday at The Sin Bin felt like the wrong place entirely.
Too public. Too easy to dodge. Too much like pretending this project was only about clean interviews and neat questions when Simpson had been very clear about wanting access.
Real access.
And Sunday dinner was the most real, terrifying, loud, emotionally unsafe-in-a-loving-way thing I had.
I looked back at Cade before I could talk myself out of it. “Actually, why don’t you come with me Sunday?”
His brows lifted slightly. “To family day?”
“Not right away,” I said quickly, because the way he said it made it sound more intimate than I needed it to sound.
“You can meet me at my apartment before. I’ll go over what to expect with the project, what Simpson wants, what I’d need from you, boundaries, filming, all of it.
Then, if it sounds like something you can do, you come with me to Sunday dinner. ”
Cade was quiet for a second, but not in a bad way. His eyes stayed on mine with that steady, unsettling attention that made me feel like he was listening to more than just the words I actually said.
“Your apartment,” he repeated.
“For the project.”
“And then Sunday dinner.”
“Also for the project.”
His mouth twitched. “Academic barbecue.”
“Exactly.”
“With five brothers and a firefighter dad.”
“Two of those brothers are firefighters, one is a cop, one is in the academy, and the fifth is a single dad who works construction. Oh, and my dad will burn meat and call it flavor—so maybe have a light dinner before.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“They are harmless.”
“You just listed an entire emergency response unit and construction support.”
“They love hockey. That helps.”
“What if I’m a serial killer?”
I gave him a look and shrugged, knowing the truly evil one would already be at that table. “You’re a hockey player.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s enough.”
His eyes warmed with amusement. “You hate hockey players though.”
“I distrust them on principle.”
“And yet you’re inviting me to your apartment and Sunday dinner.”
“For school,” I said immediately.
“Right.”
“Do not say it like that.”
“I didn’t say anything like anything.”
“You absolutely did.”
His smile cut deeper then, quiet and unfair and full of those stupid dimples that should have been illegal in at least three states. “What time?”
“Eleven for the apartment,” I said. “Dinner is at five-thirty, but you can meet me there if—and I do mean if—you decide the project sounds like something you can do.”
“If I agree,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“Oh, I’ll be there five-thirty sharp.”
The answer came easy. Immediate. Like there had never really been a possibility he’d say no.
For some reason, that settled strangely warm beneath my ribs.
I pointed toward the beer pong table where Briggs had now climbed onto a chair for absolutely no responsible reason. “And now I unfortunately have to go stop your friend from becoming a campus safety email.”
Cade glanced over calmly. “Honestly, that could describe any of them.”
“You included?”
His gaze slid back to mine, quieter this time. “Not usually.”
The way he said it made my stomach do that annoying little flip again.
Bear. Bear. Bear. The bear was the safer option, Bliss, you hormonal idiot.
Before I could think too hard about never-minding the whole thing, Charm appeared beside me holding two drinks and looking deeply invested in everyone else’s business.
“Are we scheduling secret little sports meetings?” she asked.
“It’s for the project,” I said immediately.
Charm looked at Cade, then at me, and back at Cade again.
“Mm-hmm,” she said.
Cade’s mouth twitched like he enjoyed my suffering and I hated him a little for that.
Unfortunately, not enough.