Chapter 17 ~ Bellamy
Real or Rumour? Scroll to see for yourself...
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How far is too far when it comes to winning Minho over?
I have asked myself this question since my last conversation with Rafe. He told me to find a way to corner my stepbrother, okay, so maybe I told myself to do that. But would it be cornering if I stole the idea from Minho?
I stole the hard drive. And obviously, I checked it before texting Nyla what I was planning, and the utter glee that emanated from our conversation on her end is terrifying. I think she loves the mess I am about to cause in the name of finally beating Minho at his own game.
I told Nyla to leak the information Armani fabricated and freely gave my beautiful, evil rival, and it should spread throughout campus in another hour or so.
Will it risk my chances at being drafted? Yes. Am I scared of losing my lifelong dream over gaining Minho’s heart? Absolutely.
But he’s worth the risk.
He always will be. And I did hear what he said as I dove off last night. Promise me, and I’m yours, Bells, always. We didn’t get the chance to speak this morning, having to get ready for early practice and all that, but I am going to bring it up—after blowing up my life for him.
I won’t guilt him.
No, the plan is simple. Nyla leaks it anonymously, giving the information to the campus gossip mill; they spread it through their socials, and then I pretend to be angry at Minho, thinking it was him who leaked rumours to taint my reputation.
Then comes the hard part. Getting Nyla to lie to him after I have confronted him and having her tell him we slept together. She said she’s planning on doing it tomorrow, which means I have to sell my part today; there is no room for mistakes.
I can’t afford for Minho to sniff out what we are doing, or he’ll have a new reason to hate me and laugh in my face all at the same time.
Why I did this on the day we have practice, I will never know. It all could have waited until tomorrow, and yet I was too excited and threw patience out the window.
Sue me.
The team is already scattered across the rink, running warm-up drills. I let the noise around me distract me from my ultimate scheme—sticks tapping, pucks clacking, the shark hiss of blades carving fresh grooves into the ice.
I take it all in when Minho steps onto the ice, quickly turning my safe distraction from him into something utterly unsafe.
He pulls his helmet on as if he's trying to hide his eyes, specifically from me. I’m standing at the centre of the ice without my bucket, letting the cold air bite at my face, and I watch him skate to the far end like he belongs there and not beside me.
“Maddox!” Coach Walker's voice cuts through my thoughts like a knife to cake, and I glance in his direction to find him standing at the boards, arms crossed, his eyes fixed on me with that look that says he already knows something is wrong.
“Get your head out of your ass and run the drill. You're the Captain, act like it.”
“Yes, Coach.”
I snap my helmet on, tight enough that the strap bites into my chin, and I blow my whistle. The sound echoes off the rafters, and the team gets into formation like a single organism.
We run the drill, pass, receive, pass, skate. The puck moves between sticks, and for ten minutes, I don’t think about anything except the next pass, the next stride until we are done.
That is, until Minho takes the puck on his forehand, spinning around Marcel, sending a saucer pass across the ice that lands flat on Benji’s hockey stick so effortlessly. And I can’t stop staring at how well he’s attuned himself to how the others play.
“Eyes up, Cap.” Noah’s voice is laced with amusement as he skates toward me on my right. I turn to find him grinning under his cage, a bead of sweat tracing a path down his cheek.
I blink.
Was I that obvious?
“What?”
He laughs. “You were watching your stepbrother.” He skates past me, stick tapping on the ice. “Again.”
I roll my eyes. “I was watching the puck.”
“Uh huh.”
I want to shove him into the boards to shut him up. Instead, I blow the whistle and call the next drill, because that is what captains do—they keep moving, they don’t let anyone see the cracks in their mask when on the ice.
***
The locker room after practise is full of noise and steam from the showers—the low rumble of half a dozen conversations layers over each other like overlapping harmonies. I’m sitting on the bench in front of my stall, still in my underlayer, my hands working at the lace of my skates.
Nyla texted me to let me know her part has been taken care of. Which means, any minute now, everyone is about to get the notifications of a lifetime.
Coach is going to kill me. And it sucks that I just got off the bench only for him to have to put me back, or worse, suspend me.
“Yo, Cap.” Benji flops down next to me, towel slung over his shoulder, his dark hair dripping onto his face. “You coming to Sully’s pizza tonight? They’ve got ten-dollar pitchers and that waitress with the—” He makes a gesture near his chest.
I laugh. “Not tonight.”
Benji pouts dramatically. “Come on, man. We’ve barely seen you, and when we do, it's either for practise or a game.”
“I know.” I finally get the laces loose and pull my foot out. “I just...” I look up to see Minho walk out of the showers in nothing but a towel hung low around his waist, his red hair slicked back and wet. I swallow hard. “I’ve got shit to do.”
“Like what?”
Oh, I don’t know, how about figuring out what I am going to do with my bed? After taking Minho’s bed for a test drive, I decided we are keeping his and getting rid of mine, along with my dresser, his desk and selling everything else.
He doesn’t know it yet, but I was dead serious about sharing one room, one bed, and when we get home tonight, Rafe should have it all taken care of.
Minho is going to be so pissed.
I chuckle to myself, remembering Benji’s question. “Homework. I have a paper on the history of the Romantic era of music to finish tonight.”
It isn’t a complete lie. I do have a paper, but I left out the part where I already wrote it. And I just need to review it one last time before I give it to my professor.
Benji snorts. “Since when do you do homework?”
“Since I started failing the stupid class Professor Smith is teaching.”
That gets a laugh from across the room. Marcel leans out of his shower stall, soap studs still sliding down his chest, hair full of shampoo. “Smith? Are you talking about Sasha Smith? Has glasses and constantly wears a frown when she sees hockey players?”
I laugh. “That’s the one.”
“Damn, she absolutely hates you, dude.”
If only he knew how much.
“I know.”
My teammates break into another fit of laughter, easily slipping into easy conversations again; some still laugh about the whole failing my class thing, and Ollie even asks why I don’t ask Minho to tutor me.
I strip off my underlayer and head for the shower. I turn it on until hot water hits my back, and I stand there with my head down, palms flat against the tile and close my eyes.
Flashes of kissing Minho, touching him, of him kissing me first, coming in my shorts from his teasing and then getting to taste his ass fill my mind, making my cock twitch until I have to turn the water colder for my own sake.
I don’t take long showers here as I prefer to do it again when I get home anyway. So I quickly apply soap everywhere, tilt my head under the spray of water to wet my hair.
By the time I return to my stall, the energy in the locker room has shifted.
The laughter, the noisy chatter, is all gone, and in their place is something terrifying.
A few of the guys are huddled around Ollie’s phone, their voices so low I can’t make out what they are saying, but the looks on their faces make my stomach drop for a millisecond before I realise what this is.
It’s happening.
I take a breath and then slip into character. “What's going on?” I ask with the fakest laugh I have ever heard come from my mouth.
Ollie looks up, his expression caught somewhere between horrified and uncomfortable. “Uh—” he swallows hard. “You might want to see this.”
I stride over to him in a few steps, and at the same time, he turns his phone toward me. The screen shows a post on the gossip page for the hockey team; the headline is bold and in all caps.
JUST IN: EDEN U’S HOCKEY CAPTAIN HOOKING UP WITH SCHOOL FACULTY? REAL OR RUMOUR? SCROLL TO SEE FOR YOURSELF...
Below the post is a series of grainy photos of what is supposed to be me standing outside Smith’s office, talking to her, my hand on the doorframe, and she seems to be laughing at something I must have said.
But the angle also makes it seem as if I am leaning in, makes it look like something intimate and who the hell knows, maybe we were still fucking during this time.
The rumours are true, I got my dick wet a lot, sue me.
If I didn’t hate Armani before, I sure as hell do now. I mean, yeah, I checked to see what I was giving Nyla before making up my mind, but how the fuck did he even get this?
Who the hell is Minho friends with?
If all goes according to plan, this will make it look as if Armani leaked the photos as a last-minute parting gift.
Genius, right?
I’m killing two birds with one stone. Get the guy; it remains to be seen, but Minho is definitely never talking to his famous friend ever again.
I bite my tongue to refrain from laughing when I get to the comments already piling up beneath the post.
“No way.”
“Isn’t she like forty?”
“Yo, man’s desperate for pussy. Does anyone know if he likes them younger? Asking for a friend.”
“I heard she gives extensions... for favours.”
I knew it would be bad, that Professor would be collateral damage in this whole mess, and clearly, so did Minho; he just didn’t get to use this since I found the hard drive under the couch this morning.
Nyla is the one who copied the contents onto her own drive, and we put the original one back before he could question its whereabouts.
Why I didn’t loop his best friend into my schemes earlier on beats me. She’s a fucking mastermind.
It's kind of scary.
I blink up at my teammates and do my best to chuckle nervously. “That’s not—” I start, my tone comes out just the right amount of wrong and defensive. “That’s not what it looks like.”
“We know, man.” Benji puts a hand on my shoulder. “We know, but this shit is spreading fast. Briarston U’s team is already spreading it throughout their campus.”
Fuck.
I didn’t think about them.
“It’s a rumour, nothing more.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why did I forget about the preppy Briarston U fuckers? We play them four games from now.
I take a deep breath, this one more real than the last. I cannot panic right now, not when I need to stay the course.
The photos don’t even show us kissing.
I’ll be fine.
“It’s on the internet,” Marcel says, pulling his joggers up. “That makes this real to the people who want to believe it.”
I grab my phone from my sweatpants pocket, open it to the gossip page, and when I find the post, I scroll through the comments with shaking hands.
My stomach churns even though this is the plan, my plan.
The comments are getting worse; some people are tagging the athletic department, while others are tagging Coach and the NCAA, who I know for a fact never checks his socials.
Anyone else thinking the Captain’s getting special treatment? One comment asks, and the further I scroll, the worse it gets.
I did not think this through fully.
Wonder what else he’s getting.
I don’t know, guys, this could be fake.
Bet they fucked in her car on school grounds.
“Fuck me.” The word comes out so quietly, I’m not sure if I said it out loud or in my head, even with the silence that has settled in the locker room.
“Bellamy.”
I jolt a little from hearing Minho’s voice. When I look up, I find him standing at the entrance to the showers, his towel still around his waist, water still dripping down his chest—wait, did he take another shower?
Not the time, brain.
His eyes meet mine, and for a second I see something flicker there, concern maybe or confusion, before it's gone, replaced by his perfectly constructed mask of blankness.
“Coach wants to see you.” The way he says it, jaw clenched tightly, has goosebumps spreading on my skin.
“Now?”
He raises a brow, jaw ticking. “Now.”
Wait, is he mad with me? This isn't how things are supposed to go. I mean, yeah, he’s supposed to be mad with me but not about this.
How is my plan already falling apart?
Fuck.