Campus Crush (CFU Hockey #1)

Chapter 1

ONE

Why, in God’s name, was there a dildo on my couch?

I froze in the entryway of my apartment and then closed the door behind me with a heavy sigh as I stared at the offending phallic object.

“Please don’t be used. Please don’t be used,” I muttered quietly, taking slow steps forward and approaching the couch.

“Sam,” I hollered, my eyes not leaving the large blue dildo. Dicks weren’t actually that big, were they? And why the hell was it blue?

“Sam,” I called again, a little more urgently.

No response.

“Samantha.” My patience was running out faster than the battery on that dildo probably did.

“One sec,” I heard her shout from down the hallway of our shared apartment just off campus.

“Do you have a guest?” I called. I was two seconds away from spinning around and walking right out the door.

I’m sure I could waste some time around campus if need be.

I’d been hoping to get a little time at home to decompress, maybe even play a little Stardew Valley, which had become my ultimate stress management tool.

That, and I loved chatting with BigBear88 and seeing what shenanigans he had gotten into.

We’d met on a Discord server for fans of the game and talked nearly every day now—although usually only about the game.

He couldn’t have a more different approach to how he played than I did.

Whereas I was more a min-max girly, he was all kinds of chaos.

It was easy talking to him. Comfortable in a way real life never seemed to be.

I was the epitome of awkward when it came to the opposite sex.

I’d tried to be “cool” once and it had epically backfired.

And then life had smacked me in the face, and I felt like I’d been holding on by my fingernails ever since.

Some days, the game—and BigBear88—felt like the only place I could actually breathe.

My gaze caught on the bright blue object again and I fought a shiver of repulsion. I’d seen enough of Sam’s “guests” to know I didn’t want to see another toned butt of some random dude I would likely never see again.

Her silence made me nervous.

This wouldn’t have been the first time I’d walked in on her hooking up with someone. It wasn’t even the first time I’d found a sex toy lying around our apartment. Although they weren’t usually this large…or blue.

Dicks seriously couldn’t be that big, right? That had to be some kind of kink thing.

“Nope, just me,” she said, walking down the hallway, her hair up in a towel wrapped like a turban around her head.

She wore her favorite pair of fitted leggings and a tight top. Sam loved to show off her body, as she should since it was “banging”—her word, but I wouldn’t argue. She had the kind of curves women around the world would kill to have, and she wasn’t afraid to show them off.

Sometimes I was envious of how confident she was in herself—her sexuality, her independence, her free spirit.

What I wouldn’t give to have just an ounce of her confidence. Maybe then I wouldn’t hide in my textbooks like she constantly accused me of doing.

I pointed to the object. “Uh, is this your dildo?”

She laughed, the sound light and carefree. “Oh, yeah, sorry about that.”

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “Please tell me that was not used out here on our couch—our shared couch.”

I loved Samantha Lowe like a sister—that had to be the reason we had been roommates since freshman year even though we couldn’t have more different personalities—but sometimes her actions drove me crazy.

She shot me a knowing grin. “Relax, Mom. I did not have sex on our communal couch. You don’t need to deep clean it. I was showing one of my sorority sisters how to put on a condom, because she’s about to lose her V-card tonight.”

“Shouldn’t the guy be the one who knows how to put on a condom?”

Despite Sam’s best efforts, I was still about as sexually savvy as a Victorian maiden. Hence why I wasn’t confident if that dildo was to scale or not.

Once upon a time, I’d thought I would finally lose my virginity freshman year, but instead of losing it to the guy I’d been secretly crushing on since the first day of classes, it turned into the most mortifying night imaginable.

I might’ve been able to move past the humiliation if it hadn’t been followed immediately by the worst days and months of my life.

After that, sex had been nowhere on my mind. And whenever I thought about that time of my life, I was unfortunately reminded of the mortification that preceded it. It was a vicious cycle I never seemed to be able to escape.

For a while, Sam had been my rock—I genuinely don’t know if I would’ve survived the rest of freshman year without her—but lately it felt like she was trying to push me out of the comfort zone I’d settled into.

“It’s always good for a girl to know how to do it and know what she’s doing, so the guy doesn’t try to pull some bullshit like, ‘Oh, I don’t have any condoms. I’m gonna have to go in raw,’ or whatever.

” She rolled her eyes like that was an excuse she’d actually heard. “We gotta look out for ourselves.”

I would take her word for it.

Sam picked up the dildo and set it on the coffee table, which wasn’t much better than the couch, but at least I knew it was clean. Then she sat down on the couch. “I didn’t expect you home so early. I thought you had to work at the tutoring center tonight.”

I sat down next to her. “I do, but I’ve got some time to kill before my shift,” I said, kicking off my shoes. Scholarships covered tuition, but rent, books, and groceries still needed paying—and two part-time jobs barely made a dent some months.

One of them was working in the tutoring center of our university, and the other was a low-pay internship with an engineering firm in the nearest city, Missoula. The tutoring center had needed tutors who were available to help with the summer sessions, and I needed the extra cash.

“Cool. Wanna watch an episode of Real Lives of Mormon Wives?”

Sam was obsessed with that reality show—probably because she’d grown up in a strict Catholic household and had a thing for religious drama.

Or maybe it was just the chaos of reality TV in general.

That definitely wasn’t the only show she binged like her life depended on it.

Since freshman year, she’d exposed me to so much reality TV that now I was a bit of a junkie for it myself.

It was the one thing that was completely out of character for me.

One of those little tidbits I could use in the game of “Two truths and a lie” and everyone would assume it was the lie.

Despite my logical brain and my love of math and science, she had brought me to the dark side of loving the chaos of reality television.

Before I could answer, she looked at me knowingly. “Or did you really come home to play Stardew Valley?”

She said it with a smile, but my cheeks still flushed with a hint of embarrassment.

I knew she didn’t judge me for playing, but I also knew she thought there was something flirty going on with me and BigBear88.

She’d been pushing for me to try to meet him in real life—I knew he went to CFU with us—but I didn’t want to lose what he and I had online.

I was worried meeting in person would ruin the relationship we’d built, and that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

I couldn’t stomach the thought that he wouldn’t like what he saw in real life.

I wasn’t innately gorgeous like Sam or nearly as confident.

I knew from experience that a guy was more likely to look right past me than to notice me.

And I was invested in my online relationship with Bear enough to know I’d be totally crushed if we met in real life and he decided I wasn’t his type.

“I thought I’d play for a little bit. Clear my head before I go to work.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said, her lips pursed together but tilted at the corners as if she was fighting back a smile.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed my stuff, taking it into my room, but before I could shut my door, she called out, “Say hi to BigBear for me!”

I shook my head, but couldn’t ignore the smile already on my face or the swirl of butterflies that took off in my belly as I dropped my bag by the door and grabbed my laptop.

A minute later, the familiar chime of a new message lit up my screen.

BigBear88:

Emergency.

I accidentally gave Pam a diamond and now she thinks we’re dating. Send help.

A laugh slipped out before I could stop it—real, full, and warm. I hadn’t even realized how much I needed that until right then.

PeachyKeen:

You reap what you sow, my guy. Good luck explaining that one.

BigBear88:

I panicked! I thought it was wine! Now she’s calling me “her shining star.”

This is slander. I demand a trial by farming committee.

PeachyKeen:

You’re on your own, Bear.

Also, I’m 100% putting this on the bulletin board.

BigBear88:

This betrayal will be remembered.

I grinned, shaking my head as I settled against my headboard. The tightness in my chest I hadn’t even noticed before started to loosen, and all my stress eased.

If only real life was as easy as this game.