Chapter 9 – Trace
chapter
nine
Trace
I was about to parade Lena in front of thirty hockey players and sell the biggest lie of my life. Which meant when it blew up in my face — not if, when — I had no one to blame but myself.
Story of your life, Coulter.
Mid-week hockey mixers at the Kappa Nu house were a tradition — Wednesday nights, team only plus whoever they were dating that week.
Low-key by our standards, which still meant too much beer, Jenkins on the aux playing terrible country rap, and at least one freshman doing something regrettable on the porch.
But the point was, this was team turf. my turf, and tonight, Lena was walking in on my arm for the first time.
I’d told her it was necessary. The team needed to see us together before the game on Friday.
My team was the final piece of the puzzle we needed to sell this.
Scouts would be in the stands, Aaron was handling press, and if any of my teammates let slip that they’d never seen my supposed girlfriend, the whole thing fell apart.
But the real reason was I wanted everyone in that house to see her standing next to me and know she was mine.
Not yours. Fake yours. Important distinction.
I told the distinction to shut up.
She showed up at eight wearing jeans and a cropped sweater that stopped just above her waistband, leaving a strip of brown skin visible every time she moved.
Her braids were pulled half-up, copper highlights catching the porch light, and she had on the boots I liked.
Though even with the heels, she still barely hit my chin.
She looked like she’d put in exactly zero effort and somehow still made every girl within a three-block radius irrelevant. The coconut and shea butter hit me from six feet away, and my whole body tightened like I’d just taken a check into the boards.
You’re staring. Close your mouth, Coulter, before she catches you looking at her like she’s the last meal on earth.
I met her on the porch before she could knock, leaning against the doorframe with my hands in the pockets of the joggers I’d pulled on over compression shorts because I refused to look like I’d been getting ready for an hour. Which I had.
“Hey.”
She looked up at me, one hand still raised to knock, and her mouth did that thing where it almost smiled before she caught it. “Hey yourself. So how does this work? Do I just stand next to you and look adoring, or is there a script?”
“No script. Just stay close and try not to look like you’d rather be anywhere else.”
“That’s going to require acting skills I don’t have,” she muttered sardonically.
I almost laughed at that. I put my hand on the small of her back to guide her inside and felt her stiffen for half a second before she leaned into it, and my brain short-circuited so fast I almost tripped over the threshold.
Smooth, Coulter. Real smooth. One touch and you’re tripping over your own feet like a freshman at his first kegger.
The house was in its usual Wednesday state, music thumping from the living room. Someone had propped the back door open and the September air cut through the house, carrying the smell of wet grass and the distant pop of a tennis ball from the courts across the way.
I kept my hand on Lena’s back as we moved through the kitchen.
Not possessive. Okay, possessive. But the good kind — the kind that said she’s with me, adjust accordingly without me having to open my mouth.
My thumb traced the strip of bare skin above her jeans — just that one inch of skin, warm and impossibly soft — and my dick, that traitorous bastard, decided this was his moment to weigh in and she shot me a look.
“Your hand is very low, Coulter.”
“It’s on your back.”
“It’s migrating.”
“It’s staying exactly where it is.” I leaned down so only she could hear, my mouth close enough to her ear that I caught the scent of coconut and shea butter. “Part of the act, sweetheart. Relax.”
She didn’t relax. But she didn’t move my hand, either, and the muscle in her jaw ticked once before she faced forward again.
I’ll take it.
We made it to the living room where most of the team was spread across the leather sectional and the floor.
The energy shifted the second we walked in, conversations hitching for half a beat, eyes tracking from me to her to my hand on her back.
I could practically hear the group chat lighting up in real time.
Lena’s fingers found my forearm and squeezed once — quick, involuntary, like a reflex she’d kill me for noticing — before her hand dropped back to her side.
Reid was the first to say something, because the guy had never once in his life had an unexpressed thought. He was sprawled in the armchair by the window — our starting center, built like a truck, from Detroit, with a mouth that ran faster than his skates and zero interest in using it responsibly.
“Coulter.” He sat up, beer in hand, and let his eyes travel over Lena slow enough that the muscle in my jaw flexed hard enough to crack a molar. “Damn. Who’s your friend?”
“Lena Hartwell. My girlfriend.” I said it flat, like it was old news, and pulled her into my side. She fit there — the top of her head right at my collarbone, her shoulder against my chest — like the spot had been measured.
Easy. Don’t spiral. She’s not actually yours, remember? You’re playing pretend, you possessive fuck.
Reid’s eyebrows climbed his forehead and his gaze dropped to her legs before coming back up. “Your what?”
“His girlfriend,” Lena repeated, and the calm steadiness in her voice almost made me believe it.
She offered Reid her hand and he held it a beat too long, turning on that wide, easy grin he pulled out for every girl who crossed his path — teeth, dimples, the full arsenal — until I tightened my arm around her shoulder.
“Easy, Reid.” Waylon appeared from the kitchen with a plate of nachos balanced on one palm, dropping onto the couch arm closest to us. He gave Reid a look that could’ve frozen the rink. “She said girlfriend, not available.”
Reid held up both hands, still grinning. “Just being friendly, bro.”
“Yeah, you’re real friendly.” Way bit into a chip without breaking eye contact with Reid. What hell was with those two tonight? Way was usually more chill.
Reid retreated and Waylon turned back to his nachos like nothing had happened, his expression resettling into that easy, unbothered grin in the time it took to crunch a chip.
But for a half-second before his mask clicked back into place, I’d caught something else.
Something watchful and tired. Then it was gone, and he was just Way again, stealing salsa off my plate and calling Jenkins a dumbass.
“Since when does Coulter have a girlfriend?” This from Jenkins, leaning in the kitchen doorway with a towel over his shoulder, apparently the only person in the room without a death wish. “Bro, I literally saw you turn down Kessler last week.”
“Kessler wears body glitter to Tuesday classes,” I said. “That tells you everything you need to know about her decision-making.”
Lena pressed her lips together to kill a smile, but I caught it anyway — the way her dimple flickered before she got it under control.
For the next half hour, I didn’t let her out of arm’s reach.
When she went to get water from the kitchen, I followed.
When Reid tried to pull me into the poker game, I pulled a chair up and brought her with me, my arm slung over the back of hers.
When a couple of juniors I didn’t know well enough to trust tried to talk to her by the snack table, I materialized behind her with my hand on her hip.
“You’re hovering,” she murmured as I reached past her for a handful of chips, the salt sharp on my tongue.
“I’m being attentive.”
“You’re being a golden retriever with separation anxiety.” She tugged the hem of her cropped sweater down — a nervous habit I’d catalogued years ago — and shifted her weight onto her other hip.
“Woof.”
She snorted — actually snorted — and covered her mouth with her hand, and I hadn’t heard that sound in three years. That was the real Lena, the one who laughed at dumb shit and covered her face when it happened, who used to throw pencils at my head during study sessions when I made her lose focus.
There you are.
Around nine-thirty, the house got louder.
More people showed up — some girlfriends, a handful of girls who weren’t anyone’s girlfriend but were trying to be.
I watched one of them — tall, blonde, confidence cranked to eleven — clock Lena from across the room and do that slow full-body scan that women performed on each other like they were running diagnostics, her eyes cataloguing the braids and the brown skin and the boots and my hand resting on Lena’s thigh before she looked away with a tight little smile that wasn’t friendly at all.
I pulled Lena closer, and not for show this time — just because I wanted to and no one was going to stop me.
“I need air,” she said after someone bumped into her back for the third time. “This house has terrible ventilation.”
“Porch?”
“Porch.”
I grabbed two waters from the fridge — the fancy glass bottles my mom kept sending because she was convinced college students were dehydrated, which, fair — and followed Lena out through the back door to the wraparound porch.
The September night had teeth. The air was sharp with early fall — damp leaves, cut grass, that clean bite that meant the season was turning — and I watched goosebumps race up Lena’s bare midriff the second we stepped outside.
She didn’t complain, just wrapped her arms around herself and kept walking.
The porch light was off on this side and the only illumination came from the string of LED lights wound through the railing, blue and silver, washing everything in a dim glow.