The Captain (Rose Hill Campus #2)

ONE

Lincoln

Present

My chair squeaks underneath me as I adjust in front of my desk, my laptop open in front of me with a grade showing my worst nightmare.

I grip the stress ball in my hand tight enough for it to pop.

I knew there was a possibility this could happen—that I would fail my paper, that I would fail myself because I’ve been too tied up with everything else happening around me and refused to do anything for myself that I messed up what could have been a fucking awesome future.

The past year has been a whirlwind of shitstorm after shitstorm, starting with my best friend acting like he was stabbing me in the back.

But that’s not all.

Our season last year had started off with a bang. Our team had gained a brand-new coach who was famous for his skills on the ice with the pros and was bringing his talents to our small school.

It had hyped us all up for an amazing season, and we’d started with a bang until my best friend decided he was going to ask out my sister’s friend, and all hell broke loose.

Then I found out my sister was secretly dating my hockey coach, and, well, it was hell. Hell, because I had acted out, I had told my sister some shitty things and lost the respect of my coach, a man I admired.

After some serious inner reflection—as my mother would call it—and some deep groveling with my sister, I finally made things right and saw that they were truly a happy couple.

But that was the only thing made right.

My grade in my final class last semester was an F, which means I had to take this class all over again, whether I liked it or not.

And if I can’t convince my teacher from that class to help me out, whether that be extra credit or what have you, I will not be playing for the Rose Hill Vapors this fall, and that would absolutely ruin my future.

My phone rings on the desk, and my sister’s picture pops up. Anyone else calling I would have ignored, but not my sister.

“Hey, sis,” I answer, trying to repress the long sigh that wants to escape. I’ve already put my sister through enough, it was time to give her the good, not the bad.

“Hey, baby brother, what are you up to next weekend?” Her voice sounds light and full of the happiness that she usually carries. I was worried I had been a part of taking that away from her earlier this year and that I had absolutely ruined any kind of relationship I had with her.

Thankfully, she forgave me when I profusely and publicly apologized.

“I have no idea.”

We were well into the hot summer months of June, and though I was just getting my grades back, my sister was a fully graduated master’s student, and I couldn’t be happier for her. She deserved all the happiness in the world.

“Well,” she sings through the phone, making me smile. “Would you be available to come to an engagement party for your favorite sister?”

“You’re my only sister,” I tease, even though she’s right—even if we had more siblings, she would absolutely be my favorite.

“Still your favorite.”

I sigh and pretend to be exasperated by the request, but I’m really not. It was only last month as my sister walked across that stage at her graduation that she was proposed to. “Aren’t you tired from your vacation?”

Right after graduation, Coach Mitchum—er, Tanner—had taken my sister on a two-week trip to Florida to get away from the drama they’d been dealing with for the last year.

“Not at all,” my sister replies chirpily. “I’m relaxed, refreshed, and ready to take on the world.”

“Of course you are.”

“Don’t judge, I have goals. The clinic is implementing the new program right away, and I promised to head it up.”

My sister was a physical therapist who specializes in helping veterans get their bearings again. This stemmed from our own dad getting injured while he was enlisted and coming home to be frustrated with the support the system gave him. My sister was insistent on changing how that all worked, and if I know my sister, she was going to succeed with what she was doing.

“I’m not judging.” Though I was slightly jealous, given that my own goals were slowly spiraling down the drain.

“Okay, so you’ll be there? Mom’s house, next Saturday?”

“I’ll be there,” I say, glancing around my own room in the hockey house I lived in, wondering if I was about to be kicked out and have to live in my parents’ house again because I was going to be benched.

We were able to live in our hockey house during the summer as well as the school year because we had training camps all summer long. The hockey season didn’t end for us.

“Great! I’ll let Tanner know.” I say goodbye to my overly optimistic sister and set my phone back on my desk.

I was seriously happy for my sister, I was.

I want all the happy and great things for her, I just can’t seem to get out of my own head.

My dreams and goals of being a professional hockey player were dependent on me succeeding in my worst possible subject, creative and critical writing. A requirement for my journalism degree.

As with most athletes, my backup career would rest on something in sports, like reporting or writing. Since I wasn’t cut out for sports medicine and the training for that, plus actually playing hockey, were not conducive, I went for something a little more manageable.

Or so I thought.

The doorbell rings, and I wait to see if one of the other guys gets it. Most of them are hungover from the party we went to the night before, all except me, because I’ve chosen to privately abstain from drinking for the foreseeable future.

Another thing that was plaguing me was the last time I’d gotten blackout drunk, I did something I would always regret, which spiraled into a whole mess I’d had to untangle.

When the doorbell rings again, I sigh as I stand and make my way downstairs, noting the bodies sleeping on the couch, completely dead to the world.

I swing open the door, my posture relaxed, until I see who it is.

Coach Mitchum, a.k.a. my sister’s fiancé.

“Coach,” I greet him politely, holding in any sarcastic comments. “What can I do for you?”

“We need to chat,” he says, his broad shoulders filling out the doorway. Coach Mitchum is a big dude, and even more menacing when he straps some skates to his feet.

I nod my head inside and lead him into the kitchen.

“Need something to drink?” I offer, bracing my hands on the island between us.

He regards me carefully before speaking. “No, I’m all right, thanks, Ellis.”

I nod, and he sighs, crossing his arms and bracing his feet apart.

“I received my players’ grades this morning.”

I bite down on the inside of my cheek hard enough for it to hurt.

“What the hell happened?” I see a tinge of anger in Coach’s eyes, and I feel myself regret everything that’s happened in the last year—hell, really two years—all over again.

“The tutor didn’t work out.”

Coach sighs and shakes his head. “Linc, I know you and Cassie have your issues—”

“She absolutely hates me.” She has good reason to. “There was no chance of us working together.” My gut clenches at the lie, because, for a minute there, we worked great together.

“So you quit on her? What about the other guy that was helping you?” he asks, his voice rising slightly.

The other guy had only stepped in when I completely fucked everything up, and he was an idiot. “He doesn’t know his ass from his nose.”

Coach had been the one who set up tutoring with Cassie, my sister’s best friend, and the woman who currently hated my guts, making sure that I had the best help possible to pass my classes.

And Cassie had actually shown up willing to work with me.

I took that as a sign that she was willing to let go of the past, to forgive my mistakes, and maybe she would have. Maybe it all could have worked out.

If only I hadn’t fucked it up again.