Chapter 13 – Lena
chapter
thirteen
Lena
I was deep in my psych reading…okay, more like scrolling my phone while pretending to study, when my phone buzzed.
Trace: I’m outside your building.
I stared at the screen. And the screen stared back as if to say, I didn’t do it, girl.
Me: How do you know I’m home right now?
Trace: Buzz me in.
Me: Trace. How do you know I’m home.
Trace: It’s cute that you think I don’t know your schedule by now.
Me: Okay, Joe Goldberg. That’s not the flex you think it is.
Trace: I’m being a good boyfriend. Buzz me in before someone sees me standing out here looking pathetic.
I threw my phone on the bed and looked around the room.
Kimmy was in class, which meant her side looked like a clothing bomb had gone off.
There were bras on the desk chair, jeans on the floor, an open bag of sour gummy worms on her pillow.
My side was fine. My side was always fine. Control what you can control.
I shoved them in her closet, threw the gummy worms in a drawer, and buzzed him in.
Three knocks.
Deep breaths. I could do this.
I pulled the door open and my lungs forgot how to function because there he was. Six-four of Trace Coulter filling my doorframe. Practice sweats, that gray henley with the sleeves pushed up, hair still damp, smelling like soap and something woodsy that I refused to find attractive.
And in his other hand, an iced latte, my order, oat milk, extra shot, light ice.
He extended it like he hadn’t memorized my coffee order. Like he wasn’t standing in my dorm room looking like that. “Here.”
I took it because I wasn’t about to waste good coffee over pride. First sip, and it was perfect, and I despised that he knew my order.
Down the hall, someone’s speaker was thumping bass through their door.
His eyes swept the room, the twin beds, Kimmy’s Beyoncé poster, my color-coded desk, and one eyebrow went up.
“Nice place.”
“Don’t start.” I stepped back to let him in because leaving him in the hallway meant every girl on the third floor would be posting about it in ten minutes. He walked past me and the room immediately shrank. He was too tall, too wide, and he smelled too good.
Standard Trace Coulter problems.
He dropped into Kimmy’s desk chair, uninvited, knees almost hitting my bed frame. He looked ridiculous. Six-four of hockey player folded into a pink desk chair with a crochet pillow behind his back, legs spread wide like he owned the place.
And those sweats were not doing their job. Or maybe they were. Gray cotton, thin from washing, clung to…every part of him. And he was just sitting there. Like that. Like the entire enormous outline of dick wasn’t on full display at two in the afternoon.
Stop looking at his dick before you start drooling.
I looked at the ceiling. Then the wall. Then the Beyoncé poster, which at least had the decency to be fully clothed.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t —
I looked down.
Shit.
He snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Hey. My eyes are up here.”
My eyes snapped to his face and he was watching me with that lazy half-smile. “If there’s something you want,” His voice dropped somewhere near sin and bad decisions. “I can help you with that.”
My thighs clamped together so fast it was embarrassing.
“You wish, Coulter.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. Small victories.
“I mean…” He shrugged, that smile getting worse, his eyes tracking down my face to my throat like he could see my pulse hammering. “I’m just saying. I’m helpful.” The corner of his lip tipped up into a smirk. “You want my help, Hartwell?”
And the worst part? He knew. He knew exactly what that voice did, exactly what that spread-legged confidence did, and he was sitting there enjoying every second of my suffering.
“You’re delusional.” I grabbed my pillow and threw it at his face. He caught it one-handed without even flinching. Of course he did.
I hate him. I hate him and his stupid voice and his stupid hands and his stupid gray sweats and everything they’re not hiding.
“Okay.” I sat cross-legged on my bed, pulling a notebook into my lap. “Let’s get this over with.”
“You always this welcoming?”
He had his full grin on now and had to fight a groan. “You showed up unannounced to my room. You’re lucky I’m letting you stay.”
His mouth twitched. “Anyway... So we need some prep for this awards dinner. The dinner will be mostly lowkey. It’ll just be Coach Bergman and his wife, then the athletic director, boosters, scouts from a few NHL teams. At some point someone’s going to ask how we went from friends to this. The team was easy.”
Right. Why did I have a feeling his version of easy and mine were totally different. “Fine. What’s the story for your coach and boosters? I assume we want a more sanitized version than what we told your team?”
He leaned back, chair creaking, and picked up one of Kimmy’s pens, spinning it between his fingers. “People know we grew up around each other. We keep it simple. Reconnected this semester, it just happened.”
“‘It just happened.’ Riveting. Nobody’s buying that from a guy who looks like you.”
He tilted his head. “A guy who looks like me?”
Walked right into that one. “Don’t fish. You know what you look like. I’m no slouch. I know that. But you for some inexplicable reason, are coveted. So you choosing to settle down, People want a moment.”
I took a sip of the latte, still perfect, which was annoying. “We say it started at the Kappa Nu party. We danced, things shifted.”
“You want to tell Coach Bergman’s wife you were grinding on a stranger and it turned out to be me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously not. We danced, realized there was something there, started hanging out.”
He was quiet for a second. “The dancing part is true. As close as we can stick is better.”
My pen stopped moving. Because he was right.
The party, his hand on my hip bones while the bass thumped too loud.
His chest against my back, his breath at my temple, my body doing something my brain absolutely did not authorize.
I hadn’t known it was him. But my body had known something, because I’d leaned back into him like I’d been waiting for it.
I’d thought about that dance more than I’d ever admit.
Late at night, staring at my ceiling, being mad at myself for thinking about it.
The way he’d pulled me closer like it was instinct, not strategy.
How when he’d turned me around and I’d seen his face, the first thing I felt wasn’t anger. It was loss.
“Close enough to the truth,” I said, keeping my voice flat.
He repeated it back. His face had gone carefully blank. Not relaxed. Controlled.
What are you not saying, Coulter?
He held my eyes too long. Then, “Moving on.” The pen spun again, then stopped. “Someone’s going to bring up Trevor.”
My stomach dropped. “Yeah.”
“The truth. Friends first. You dated my brother. Didn’t work out. Nobody needs more.”
“And if someone asks how Trevor feels about his little brother dating his ex?”
His jaw ticked. “I say we talked about it, he’s cool, we move on.”
“Is he cool with it?” I wasn’t afraid of Trevor hurting me or anything like that. But he could be a petty bitch. He wasn’t above starting a rumor or trashing your name.
“He doesn’t know yet.”
That landed like a brick. “Trace —”
“He’ll deal with it.” His voice went hard. “Trevor doesn’t get a vote on who I date. Real or fake.”
Something about the way he said real or fake made me look at him too long. I wrote it down because I needed somewhere to put my eyes.
“Okay. Trevor’s handled. What else?”
“The physical stuff. I’m going to be touching you a lot tomorrow night. Hand on your back, your waist, your thigh. You cannot freeze up like you did in the stands.”
“I did not freeze up.”
“Lena. When I kissed you, you stopped breathing for four seconds. I counted.”
He counted? “We agreed on no tongue.”
“You were the one who parted your lips. I thought you were changing the rules. Besides, we needed to sell it. And if I’m being honest, tongue sells better.
Besides, it’s not like it should make any difference to you.
And you about jumped a mile even thought you were expecting it.
” He leaned forward, elbows on those spread knees. “We need to practice.”
He has a point. I had been caught off guard.
I hated that he was right. My back teeth ached with it.
He stood, slowly, unfolding all six-four of him. “Stand up.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
I stood. Too close. My room was barely twelve feet wide and he was taking up most of it, his chest at my eye level, that clean woodsy soap everywhere, and it was just his breathing and mine.
His hand found the small of my back, palm flat, warm through my T-shirt, and my whole spine went tight. “This is where my hand goes when we’re standing. Lower back, fingers spread.”
“I know where the small of my back is.”
“Then stop tensing up. You’re doing it right now.” His thumb moved, once, a slow circle, and I leaned toward him a quarter inch before I caught myself.
Traitor.
“Better. Now touch me back. Couples don’t stand there like mannequins.”
I put my hand on his chest and immediately regretted it. His heart was beating hard under my palm, way harder than his voice let on. Warm cotton over hard muscle.
“Your heart’s going fast,” I said, because apparently my mouth had disconnected from my brain.
“Yeah. It does that.”
Neither of us moved.
He cleared his throat, sat on the edge of my bed, patted the spot next to me. “Sit.”
“For real?”
All I got was him rolling his eyes at me. “Lena. Sit.”
I sat. He reached over and placed his hand on my thigh, not my knee, my actual thigh, palm flat, fingers curving around the inside, pinky on the inner seam.
The weight of his hand was warm and solid through my jeans and I was suddenly very aware of every inch between where his hand was and where it wasn’t.
“You need to relax. Like I’ve done this a thousand times.” His thumb grazed back and forth. “You good?”
“Mm-hm.” That was not a word. That was a sound my throat made because actual words had left the building.
“Convincing. Put your hand on top of mine.”
I did. His fingers curled against my palm and my brain supplied a very unhelpful image of those fingers doing other things.
“Good,” he said, but his voice had gone rough.
“One more thing. These dinners usually have dancing. If not, then there will definitely be dancing at the gala.”
I shook my head vehemently. “No.” I could not be in his arms here. That was too intimate.
“We’re not practicing. But you need to not freak out when I pull you onto the floor.” He squeezed my thigh, quick and casual, and heat shot straight through me. “Slow song. Arms around my neck.”
“I know how to slow dance, Trace.”
“Yeah?” He turned his head and we were close, too close, mouth right there. “Last time we danced, you didn’t know it was me. This time you will. That going to be a problem?”
My mouth went dry. “It won’t be a problem.” My voice sounded tinny and too high.
“Good. Because when I pull you close, I need you to just… stay.”
“I don’t run.”
He lifted his hand off my thigh, and I felt it. But he didn’t stand up. We were still on my bed, thighs pressed together, and his eyes moved to my mouth like he was about to make a very bad decision.
His thumb brushed my jaw, barely there, just enough to tilt my chin up.
I should pull away. I didn’t.
His nose brushed mine. His breath on my lips, warm and unsteady, fingers in my braids, and this was happening, we were absolutely about to—
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Loud. Vibrating itself halfway off the edge.
Kimmy: yo are you in the room?? I forgot my keycard
He dropped his hand and sat back with his eyes closed for a second.
“Kimmy forgot her key. She’s—she’s coming back.” I sounded like I’d run a marathon instead of nearly kissing him.
“Oh right.” He opened his eyes and the look in them, dark and frustrated and hungry, made my thighs press together again. He stood up and dragged a hand through his hair. “I’ll text you the details for tomorrow.”
He grabbed his jacket and nearly walked into Kimmy at the door, who took in six-four of hockey player exiting her dorm room with her mouth open.
“Hey, Trace.”
“Hey, Kimmy.” Then he was gone.
She turned to me, eyes wide, mouth open. Then, “What. The. Fuck. Was. That?”