Rival Season (Hockey Boys of Loft 3B #2)

Chapter 1

PENN

My college freshman sister barrels through the front door of my San Francisco loft apartment, her puny arms filled with brown paper bags overflowing with groceries. She drops the bags unceremoniously onto the large kitchen island and lets out a huff.

“What the hell is all that?” I demand, still standing in the doorway, stunned.

“Hello to you, too,” Cassie retorts as she shrugs off her khaki jacket.

“Hello,” I reply with a grin. I close the front door and point at the bags. “Now what the hell is all that? Because it looks like you’ve brought me a year’s worth of groceries.”

“Please, I’ve seen you eat.” My sister’s exasperated demeanor evaporates as she grins back at me. “This is more like a day’s worth of food.”

“You shouldn’t be bringing me anything,” I scold her, then stride over to her to pull her into a hug. “But it’s really good to see you.”

Cassie is seventeen, and she started college nearby at Berkeley at the beginning of January.

But between her classes and my hockey schedule, this is the first time I’ve gotten to see her since I picked her up from the airport after she flew in from Canada a couple of weeks back.

We went straight to Target to grab everything she needed before I helped her move into the dorms, and I felt like a proud parent when I drove away from the campus that evening.

Which was weird. I mean, I only graduated college myself last year.

“You need to learn how to cook, Penn,” she announces as she hugs me back. “And I’m going to be the one to teach you.”

“Why?” I screw my nose up. “I have no need when I can already assemble a sandwich.”

“You’re such a child.” Cass pushes her thick black hipster glasses up her pierced nose and blinks at me. “Don’t tell me you’re a professional athlete still living on PB&Js.”

“Make that turkey and swiss. I'll never eat another peanut butter and jelly sandwich as long as I live, thank you very much.”

“Ugh, same.” Cassie winces, and we share a look—we don’t have to speak about it to know we’re both remembering that one particularly bad foster placement where we lived on bread and peanut butter. I haven’t been able to stomach it since.

“Noah is always cooking chicken and vegetables and whipping up green juices for us, so my diet is just fine these days,” I tell Cass.

Noah’s one of my roommates. We’ve been tight since we played college hockey together, and now we’re teammates on the San Francisco Lions.

“Noah is not your mommy, Penn,” Cassie chides. She pushes her chin-length reddish-brown hair back and ties it into a stubby little ponytail. “And I also can’t believe you have an incredible kitchen like this and never use it. This loft is so bougie.”

I smile as she does a spin, looking around and soaking everything in.

She’s not wrong about it being bougie—the penthouse loft is pretty swanky, with fifteen-foot ceilings, industrial brickwork, and insane views of the Golden Gate bridge.

It even has a rooftop patio complete with a hot tub.

Most days I still wake up and can’t believe this is my life now.

That I actually made it.

“Fisher’s parents are richer than God,” I say as I look in one of the brown bags and start pulling out ground beef and spaghetti sauce. “Apparently this is only one of the many properties they own.”

“Lucky for them.”

“More like lucky for me to have a rich ass teammate with a sweet place.”

When Noah and I met Fisher last year at the Lions’ training camp, we didn’t hesitate when he said he had a great place with four bedrooms that his parents would rent to us for dirt cheap. Noah’s now-girlfriend, Ally, and her cat, Harry Styles, moved in a few weeks later, and the rest is history.

It’s a pretty great living situation with roommates that practically feel like family—although Noah and Ally are all over each other most of the time.

I’ve known Noah since our freshman year of college together, and we were both eternally single before Ally came along, and seeing him so in love is taking some getting used to.

“Very true,” Cassie says, walking towards one of the exposed brick walls that features a huge, colorful art piece. She examines it for a moment before her eyes widen. “Wait, is this a Santi?”

I scrunch my brow. “A what?”

“Santi. They’re like, this really mysterious up and coming artist in the Bay area. Don’t you know anything?”

I look at the painting on the wall—which is pretty cool, I guess, but all I really see is a bunch of lines and splotches. “Nope,” I admit. “Can we cook now? I’m starving.”

“Sure. Music?”

“On it.” I pull out my phone, which is hooked up to the loft’s Bluetooth speaker system, and put on an old school rap playlist at top volume.

Cassie whoops in delight, immediately belting out at the top of her lungs, remembering every word of the song…which probably came out before either of us was even born.

My first car—a beat up piece of shit that I worked three part time jobs around my schoolwork for almost two years to be able to afford—was so ancient, it had a cassette player.

Which had an old rap mix cassette jammed in it.

The car’s radio was broken, too, so Cassie and I ended up listening to a whole lot of DMX and Tupac that year when I drove her to the middle school every morning.

Probably not the best listening material for a ten-year-old in hindsight, but it’s still one of the rare memories from our childhood that makes me smile.

“What’s first?” I yell over the pounding bass of the music.

“Grab the sauce!” She yells back, shimmying to the music as she opens all the cupboards, finally pulling out a big pot.

I grab a jar of marinara and twist the lid off, just as Cassie comes up behind me and accidentally knocks into me, jostling my arm.

“Agh!” She yells as a shower of tomato gunk slops out, somehow splattering the floor, the walls, and my crisp white t-shirt all at once.

I laugh. “If this isn’t some kind of sign that I don’t need to learn to cook, I don’t know what is. Can we order takeout now?”

“Since when do you give up after one minor setback?”

“True.” I look down at my sauce-covered shirt and shrug. “I’ll get changed and we’ll continue this disaster then. But you can explain to Noah, Ally, and Fisher when they get home later that the crime scene in the kitchen was your idea.”

“They’ll blame you anyway,” Cassie says with a smirk.

We both know she’s right.

I go to my bedroom and then pull off my shirt and dispose of it in the trash can. No way that’s salvageable.

As I’m reaching into my closet for a clean one—black this time, to avoid any further spaghetti stains—the doorbell rings.

And rings again, and again.

I only hear it over the music because it pings through to my phone.

We recently had a high-tech security system installed in the loft, after a guy who had hurt Ally in the past turned up in San Francisco and started harassing her.

Noah and Fisher ran the asshole out of town, but we decided an extra layer of security in the loft wouldn’t hurt—especially as Ally is home alone when we travel to away games.

It’s an added bonus that we can now pre-check who’s at the door…

and I already have a good idea who might be ringing the doorbell so aggressively.

I pause the music and open the security app on my phone and smile at the sight of 2B—the woman who lives below us—standing in the hallway, hands on her hips.

“Hey Cass, can you get that?” I yell. I don’t want her to leave before I can mess with her a little.

“Sure,” she calls back, and as I’m reaching for a T-shirt, I hear the front door to the loft open.

“Where is he?” 2B’s irritation is so clear, I hear it all the way from the bedroom. It makes me smile that she doesn’t even bother with a “hello.”

“Where’s who?” Confusion peppers Cassie’s tone, and I walk out to the hallway, my clean shirt still in my hand, so I can eavesdrop for a minute before making an appearance.

“Any of the meatheads who live here will do,” my downstairs neighbor clips.

“But I’m going to go ahead and assume the smirky one with the tattoos is responsible for this—when it’s noisy up here, it always seems to have something to do with him,” the woman huffs.

I wish I could see her right now. I can easily imagine her sour expression, a reddish flush painting her cheeks to illustrate her frustration.

“He’s just getting changed, but I can grab him for you?”

“No. Don’t do that.” 2B’s harshness softens a little in the face of Cassie’s kindness. “Just…tell your boyfriend to keep it down.”

“Definitely not my boyfriend.” Cassie’s voice has gone from sounding confused to downright amused now.

“Of course he’s not.” My neighbor sighs. “Let me rephrase: tell that insufferable guy you’re ‘just hooking up with’ to keep it down.”

“Um, what? No. Ew,” Cassie starts to sputter, and I take that as my cue to round the corner and stalk towards our red front door with a gold-embossed 3B at the top that’s currently wide open.

For no reason other than to mess with my annoying-but-hot downstairs neighbor, I don’t bother to put my shirt on first.

“Bubbles, what a pleasant surprise,” I say as I let my eyes travel lazily up and down the tall, willowy length of the girl from 2B.

Today, she’s dressed in a preppy blue and gray plaid skirt paired with a navy sweatshirt.

She’s wearing a white collared dress shirt underneath like the sweatshirt was too casual on its own.

While her outfit is perfectly neat and put-together, she’s wearing her glasses and has about three pencils threaded in her messy bun, holding her wild brown curls back.

“Looking extra bubbly today, I see,” I add with a smile, and her green eyes narrow as she scowls back at me.

“Put a shirt on, Playboy,” 2B snaps. “I don’t want to talk to your bare chest.”

“My eyes are up here, you know,” I respond with a smirk as I lean against the doorframe. “You could always look at my face—not my fault if you can’t control your urge to ogle my body. And the name’s Penn, by the way. However, Playboy is growing on me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Penn, Playboy. It makes no difference to me. And it’s not my fault you don’t have an ounce of neighborly decency.

” 2B’s scowl deepens. Meanwhile, Cassie’s head ping-pongs as she looks back and forth between me and my neighbor, and I know I’ll have to explain myself to her afterwards, but I’m having way too much fun right now to worry about that.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I step aside and gesture into the apartment. “Did you want to come in and join the fun?”

“I don’t have time for this.” The woman scrunches her freckled nose in annoyance before she closes her eyes—for patience, or zen, or maybe because the sight of me shirtless really does repulse her that much (unlikely)—and breathes in deeply.

A few beats later, her eyes pop open again and she gives me a very, very forced smile through still-clenched teeth.

“I’m trying to study. Your music is bothering me. Can. You. Keep. It. Down. Please.”

I open my mouth to retort. I don’t know what it is, something about this girl just makes me want to provoke her, but Cassie grabs my arm, yanking me backwards before I can aggravate my neighbor more.

“Yes,” Cassie tells the woman. “We can. And we apologize that the music was too loud.”

“Thank you,” 2B huffs. And without even bothering to shoot a last glare in my direction, she turns on her heel and strides away, her loafers squeaking on the gleaming tile floor.

“Miss you already, Bubbles,” I call after her. “What’s your name, by the way? Or should I keep calling you Bubbles?”

2B crosses her arms and groans before storming off towards the stairs. I smile as I watch her walk away, and I’m surprised when I hear her low voice call back to me, “My name is Hazel, but I’d prefer if you didn’t call me anything at all.”

I burst out laughing as I step back into the loft and close the door.

“What was that all about?” Cass asks, her brown eyes wide. “Who—”

“Hazel, apparently,” I answer through my laughter, shrugging my shirt on. “She lives downstairs, and she’s always mad at us for one reason or another.”

“Sounds like the music was really bothering her.” Cassie crosses her arms. “And that she’s had this conversation with you more than a few times already?”

“It’s three in the afternoon, not three a.m.” I shrug. “Maybe she should lighten up a little. Or wear headphones when she studies. Wait, that’s actually a good idea. I’ll suggest it to her next time she comes up here all red and furious.”

Cassie rolls her eyes. “Sounds more like a death wish to me. Girl was pissed.”

“Don’t sweat it, I think she secretly loves our little sparring sessions. Gives her something to look forward to during her study breaks.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” My sister arches an eyebrow at me. “And don’t think it didn’t escape my notice that she was super cute.”

“Was she?” I ask innocently.

Of course I’m aware my downstairs neighbor is a total knockout. I have eyes. But as much as I dig 2B’s—Hazel’s—hot librarian vibes, I’m not sure she’s ever had fun before. It’s cool that she’s smart and all, but the girl has zero chill.

Plus, I saw her holding hands with Chadwick Weatherby a couple months back.

I don’t hate many people in this world, but that guy is a grade-A asshole.

I haven’t seen them together since or noticed him lurking anywhere around the building like the garbage dump of a human that he is.

I’m guessing it was just a one-off date or a temporary casual thing between them that fizzled out…

but it was more than enough to tell me 2B is a terrible judge of character.

Cassie jabs an accusing finger in my direction. “She’s gorgeous, and you damn well know it.”

“Hmm,” is all I’ll give away as we walk back to the kitchen, which looks like the spaghetti monster threw up everywhere.

“What a disaster,” Cassie says. “I’ll mop the floor if you clean the sauce off the walls and then we can just order takeout instead?”

“Deal,” I tell her, grabbing a cloth. “As long as it’s burgers.”

“Pizza,” she insists, and we argue back and forth about food as we clean up.

I think about turning the music back on, but for some reason, I decide not to.

And when Cass and I finally sit down to our compromise meal—Lebanese food, which neither of us had ever tried before so was the only thing we could agree on ordering—I slide out my phone and place an order for some fancy noise-cancelling headphones to be shipped to the apartment downstairs… addressed to Bubbles, The Grump In 2B.

I can’t stop smiling as I eat my chicken shawarma.