2. Sydney
two
sydney
There’s a narrow footpath through the woods to the beach, and we race along with everyone else. By the time my feet sink into the sand at the edge of the trees, I’m laughing. I somehow managed to hold on to both my original drink, which only sloshed like half of it out, and Carter’s hand. He lost more than half of his drink, although he doesn’t seem to mind.
The inky water comes into view. We head farther away from the house, sticking to the shadows. The police don’t really give a fuck if we party on the beach—they just don’t want the neighborhood to complain about the noise.
The music starts back up, and someone lights a bonfire. I chug the remainder of my drink, crumpling the plastic cup in my hand. The vodka warms me from the inside out, and it takes a minute to hit.
I crane around, searching for my best friend. She’s standing with some other girls and hockey players—Carter’s teammates—a little ways from the fire.
“You okay?” Carter nudges me.
“I’m great .” The vodka is getting to me, bleeding through my bones and melting my muscles. “I want to dance.”
He laughs. “Okay.”
“And I want another drink.”
“Done.”
I nod.
He nods.
“You’re really okay?” he asks again.
“Shut up, Carter. Can’t you go back to being an asshole?”
“Only if I can get you drunk enough to let me kiss you,” he counters.
“Pretty sure I don’t need to be drunk for that.”
He goes for it, and I palm his face. I burst into laughter at his darkening expression. I trail my fingers down his cheek, jaw, throat. I grip the front of his sweatshirt and sway toward him.
Bad idea, Sydney .
“Maybe I should walk away,” I murmur.
It’s one of those moments that I’m not exactly sure if I want to… and the longer I look into his ocean eyes, the more I want to lean forward just a bit more…
“Maybe,” he agrees.
I do.
Kissing him is not a good move.
I turn on my heel and stride right for Lettie, who won’t let me make out with my ex. Maybe another hockey player— no, Carter would run interference there —or someone else. When she sees me, she loops her arm around my shoulders and pulls me into the conversation.
“Oh, Marcy!” She points. “You grabbed the vodka?”
The other girl, a year older than us, nods. She offers it, and I take it without thinking. I don’t like the taste of alcohol, but I swig a huge gulp straight from the bottle and hand it back.
“You okay, babe?” Lettie’s breath is warm in my ear. “I was about to come rescue you from Masters if you let him kiss you.”
See? Always the rescuer.
I force a laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”
We migrate as a group, six of us, closer to the music. Marcy grabs our hands, and we all move in some sort of dance. Not my vibe, but the vodka is getting to me. So maybe it is my vibe.
“Hey,” someone says in Lettie’s ear. On my side, which means I hear it loud and clear.
I find myself staring at the guy and try not to let my mouth drop open.
It’s the asshole I just robbed. Tried to rob. The one I’ve been stalking for over a week…
His hazel eyes swing to mine, but his hands are on my best friend’s hips. I try not to focus on that. Or any of it, really.
She glances over her shoulder, her brows furrowing for only a split second. She doesn’t recognize him. Why would she? He doesn’t go to our school.
Oliver Ruiz goes to the rival school—Framingham State University. He plays hockey for my father. He’s the freaking captain of the team, and if my best friend knew anything about hockey, she’d know that.
She twists around and brings her hand up between them. A handshake.
“Scarlett,” she introduces.
“Ruiz.”
“Do you speak Spanish?” She tilts her head, going into flirt mode. “Are you a local? I don’t recognize you.”
His gaze slides to mine again, and he ignores her question to ask, “Who’s your friend?”
She pauses and follows his line of sight. Not that she has far to go—I’m standing right next to her. Shifting my weight like a freaking madwoman because I keep sipping my drink, which has to be ninety percent vodka, and the music has taken over my limbs. The alcohol is going straight to my head, making the rest of me a bit numb. I’m not entirely in control of how I’m dancing.
If we can call it that.
“That’s Syd,” she says. “Great gal. Kind of a prude, if you know what I mean.”
I choke. “Lettie!”
She giggles. “What? Sorry, sorry. I mean, you’re not the type to make out with a stranger at a party. Right? You wouldn’t even make out with your ex.”
Her comment cuts, and I look away.
“Syd,” he says.
I scoff.
“Is Ruiz your first or last name?” Lettie asks.
He glances at her. “Most people call me Ruiz.”
“Hmm.” She puts her hand on his chest.
“I think your prickly friend is trying to ignore us, Scarlett,” he says to her.
She laughs. “She’s not comfortable with where your hands are drifting.”
“They’re not drifting,” he counters. “Do you think she’d dance with me?”
My friend considers him. She steps back and makes a show of looking him up and down, even reaching out and pushing his upper lip up, as if to examine his teeth. The most bizarre part is that he lets her.
Finally, she shrugs. “You’re hot enough, Ruiz. I don’t know why she’d say no. Except that you just called her prickly.”
“I thought girls liked that kind of thing.”
Oh, jeez. I face him. Them.
“Insults?” I plant my hands on my hips.
“Yeah.” His expression is a challenge. “Dance with me, Syd .”
“It’s Sydney.”
“I figured.”
What I should do is run in the other direction. But instead, I motion for him to lead the way. I don’t know where—really, just away from Lettie and her group of friends.
He still wears the amused expression, and he puts his hand on my back and guides me out of the circle of girls. All the way around to the other side of the fire, where he puts my hands on his shoulders and locks his arms around my back.
We’re suddenly a whole hell of a lot closer than I planned.
We’re fucking swaying in the sand like it’s an eighth grade dance, and the DJ put on a mandatory slow song—the opposite to what’s blaring through the speakers on the other side of the bonfire.
“You seem kind of familiar,” he says in a low voice.
“Do I?”
From here, the flames seem to reflect back at me in his eyes. The brown in the center is almost amber colored, and all the more captivating in the flickering light. Until he lifts one hand and blocks his view of my nose and mouth.
My heart fucking stops.
“Hmm, even more familiar.”
I step out of his hold, but his fingers catch in the fabric of my dress. He drags me forward, crashing into him.
“What did you steal?” he asks. “Was it a dare?”
“I didn’t take anything,” I lie, lifting my chin. “And you should let go of me.”
He sneers.
“Sydney,” he tries out. “How about you tell Masters that fucking with me won’t make anything easier on them. In fact, the opposite.” His gaze rakes down my body. From this angle, he probably has a perfect view down my dress. “And sending sluts to distract us is a tired trick. Time to retire that one.”
I jerk out of his grip and spin on my heel. I tug down the hem of my dress. Not that he made it ride up, it’s just stupidly short and annoying and I fucking hate that I’m not wearing my own clothes.
Oliver Ruiz thinks I’m a slut? That I wasn’t sent to his house to steal but to seduce.
It’s laughable.
Scarlett’s vision of me suddenly seems right. Achingly so.
Prudish.
And Oliver’s assessment: prickly.
No one sent me, but especially not the hockey team . Not to fuck Oliver or fuck with him. But now I have the strong urge to lower myself to the standards he thinks.
He’s an asshole. Plain and simple.
He judged me when he doesn’t know me, which makes him the worst sort of person.
I find Lettie and the girls. But by the time I glance back over my shoulder for Ruiz, scanning the crowd for him, he’s gone.
He called me a slut, and he thinks I nicked nothing from his house.
Above all, he underestimated me.
I reach down into my left boot, where I stashed my phone. I scroll through the photos, zooming in on the plays. The little handwritten notes scrawled along the margins. Formations, patterns, lineups that have been tweaked for the playoffs. There’s a handwritten date in the top corner of one of the pages from only a week ago.
“Syd?” Lettie’s eyelids are drooped, her smile drunk.
My gaze moves up and over her shoulder to Carter. He’s drinking and laughing with his teammates, gathered around the fucking keg while one of them goes heels over head above it.
Without thinking, I slip past her and slam to a halt in front of him. “When are you playing them?”
He slow-blinks at me.
My father is a college hockey coach.
And, like St. James University, his team is going to the playoffs.
“Who?”
“The Vipers,” I spit. Framingham State University . “Obviously.”
His gaze softens. “Is this about your dad? I’m sorry for poking a sore spot, Syd— What are you doing?”
I shake my head slightly, selecting the images and adding it to the message.
They’ll never know it was me. It isn’t about my father, not really. I wasn’t going to send the playbook to anyone. But Oliver Ruiz pushed the right buttons. He called me a slut, and for what? Because he thinks I’m Carter’s puppet? That I was sent, the whole thing was orchestrated?—
I hit send.
I’d rather St. James win than Ruiz get one chance at scoring on the ice.
Carter pulls out his phone and scans the text. It takes him a minute to register what he’s looking at, but once he does, his eyes grow big. He scrolls through the photos, zooming in and covering his mouth to hide his laugh.
Finally, he lowers his phone and stares at me. Hard .
But he doesn’t ask how I got the photos.
Just like I figured.
“Keep my name out of this,” I warn him.
He extends his hand.
I’m fuming, shaking with adrenaline, but sliding my hand into his is easy. His fingers wrap around mine, and he squeezes, then drags me closer.
His lips touch mine, sealing our dirty deal with a kiss.