Chapter Four
Leo
The season was due to start in a week and, based on the wall-to-wall crowd of drunk students in this apartment, the guys were planning to cram in as much partying as possible until then.
Coach had a very low tolerance for bullshit during the season.
Drunk and sloppy on campus counted as bullshit as far as he was concerned.
Even without Coach’s stance on drinking, I’d never been a huge partier.
First, nothing was worse than being hungover and doing sprints on the ice.
It only took one morning over a trash can next to the bench to figure out that no temporary pleasure from the night before was worth that experience.
Second, I preferred to be sober enough to enjoy the evening if I left with someone.
It allowed me to be clearheaded and upfront about my intentions.
My reputation had never really bothered me until Sophia shared her opinion of me during my interview.
She was a beautiful, smart girl who didn’t know me at all, and she’d already pegged me as a dumb athlete and a fuckboy.
It bothered me more than it usually did when people wrote me off.
I knew I treated the women I slept with well, and I hadn’t needed anyone else to validate that—until she doubted me.
I was trying to extricate myself from a very clingy freshman who’d been batting her eyelashes at me for the last ten minutes while we stood near the beer pong table.
I wasn’t interested in her, but even if I had been, I would have stopped looking at her fifteen minutes ago when my eyes landed on the wannabee reporter across the room. She was the one I wanted to talk to.
“I’m sorry, Chelsea, I’m just not feeling it tonight,” I said, pulling her hand off my arm. “I’ll see you around.”
I made my way over to where Sophia stood with a tall redhead and a petite Asian girl.
I smiled at them as Sophia turned toward me, her wide eyes locking on mine like she was surprised I was acknowledging her.
By the end of the interview, I was pretty sure she’d warmed up to me enough that she wasn’t repulsed by me at least. But apparently, she still hadn’t expected me to want to make casual conversation at parties.
“Hey, Hawaii,” I said with a charming smile.
“Hi, Leo,” she said politely, tucking her long dark hair behind her ear. She quickly introduced me to her roommates, Alyssa and Jia. After saying hello, Alyssa made a quick excuse for stepping away before grabbing Jia’s wrist and pulling her into the crowd, leaving Sophia and me alone.
“My editor loved the article. It should be in tomorrow’s paper,” Sophia said.
“Cool, can’t wait to read it,” I said. “I’m hoping I don’t come off too terrible. I’ve been avoiding interviews since I got here. I’m not really interested in being probed by reporters about my life.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s going to be your life soon, you know. And don’t worry, I’m not really a reporter.” She took a sip of her beer and crinkled her nose slightly. “I’m an English major and I intend to write fiction. This newspaper writing is just to differentiate my skills.”
“Maybe that’s why the interview wasn’t so bad then. It felt more like a conversation.”
She pursed her lips. “I was kind of bitchy at the beginning and I feel bad about it. I made a lot of assumptions about you. Many of them related to your window escapades.”
I chuckled. “I noticed.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding genuine. I appreciated her ability to apologize rather than just pretend she hadn’t shown up with a false image of me.
I shrugged. “It’s fine. But I think you need to spend some time with me now so you can learn what I’m really like. Only seems fair.”
She narrowed her eyes, and an amused smile filled her face. “What could you and I possibly have in common that would make this endeavor worthwhile?”
“How much beer have you had?” I tipped my chin at the bottle she was holding away from her body, like even the smell of it bothered her.
“A few sips. I hate beer.”
“I’ve been holding this for an hour.” I lifted mine in the air. “Haven’t even taken a sip. So, there’s one thing in common already. Let’s get out of here.”
“Are you kidding?” she exclaimed, her jaw dropping. “That’s how fast you move? Establish a weak connection about something we both dislike and then you think we’re off to bed? I’m not sleeping with you.”
“Give me a break, Hawaii. I was going to take you somewhere to talk where I can actually hear you.”
“Mhm,” she said skeptically, looking at the couch behind me. “We can talk right there. You’ll just have to sit close enough to hear me.”
“Are you trying to sit on my lap?” I asked, smirking.
“You are really something. Remind me why I should sit down and talk to you?”
“Because there’s a part of you that definitely thinks I’m charming,” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Mhm.” She shook her head and brushed past me to sit.
I stopped at a cooler at the edge of the room to grab a hard seltzer before sitting down next to her.
Our knees bumped against each other, but she made no move to get further away from me.
The tingling sensation I felt with her against me was so new and addictive, I had no desire to move either.
“Alright.” I shifted my upper body to face her. “It’s my turn to ask the questions.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yep, if you ever become a famous author one day, just remember Leo Harrison conducted your first interview.”
I cracked open the seltzer and held it out to her.
She took it tentatively and I took her beer from her.
She took a sip of the seltzer and didn’t wince.
I made a mental note to file that under what counted as a suitable drink.
I held on to my full beer since I had no intention of replacing it with anything, but I set hers on the ground.
She eyed me skeptically. “Why are you sitting here with me? You’re not going to change my mind about sleeping with you.”
I took a deep breath at the intensity of her blue eyes. This woman was still not seeing past what she’d heard about me. “I’m not trying to change your mind. I like talking to you. Why is that so hard to believe?”
“You said the other day that you value honesty. Are you always honest?”
“To a fault,” I said.
She took another slow sip of her seltzer and turned her body toward me. A little more progress. My pulse picked up. I didn’t understand what was happening to me when she was around, but I liked it.
“You’re really not trying to get me to sleep with you?” she asked, eyes boring into mine.
I smirked. “I mean, I’m not uninterested in the idea. But no, my goal is not to sleep with you right now.”
“Okay.” She relaxed her hands in her lap and started playing with the top of the can. “What do you want to know about me?”
“What was it like growing up in Hawaii? I feel like everyone thinks it’s paradise, but I’ve always suspected the people who live there don’t see it that way.”
She smiled fondly, her love for her home visible on her face before she even opened her mouth.
“I’m sorry to be the one to burst your bubble, but it really is paradise.
It’s always warm and sunny, the flowers there are unique and beautiful—nothing like what you see here.
We have waterfalls, beaches in every direction, hiking trails.
There are no snakes on the island, which is a bonus. It truly can’t be beat.”
She talked about her home in a way that rivaled how I felt about hockey. I could feel her passion while she described it.
“Then what are you doing in Boston?” I asked, unsure why she’d ever leave Hawaii if she loved it that much.
“I wanted to go somewhere completely different from home for college. I knew it was just for four years. Honestly, I’d probably travel the world just to see it all if it weren’t for how much I’d miss my family. But I’ll always end up back home in Hawaii.”
“Are you close with your family?”
“Very.”
“Siblings?” I asked.
She smiled again and I was pretty sure I found the secret to breaking down Sophia’s defenses. She didn’t seem to have space to be skeptical when she was talking about what she loved: her family.
“Three,” she said. “My dad and stepmom have twin boys who are nine and my mom and stepdad have my sister, Elena, who is fifteen. She’s my best friend.”
“That’s a big family compared to my experience. I’m an only child. My aunts adopted my cousin, Jace, when he was fifteen though. I was nine, and they lived across the hall in our apartment building, so he feels like a big brother.”
Sophia chuckled. “My family is so close that it’s usually hard to explain.
Especially since my parents were never together.
My conception was the result of a bad combination of whiskey and grief, but I’ll spare you those details.
My aunt and uncle, parents, and stepparents are all best friends.
But at least we didn’t all move into the same building.
” She took another sip of her seltzer, smiling broadly now.
I laughed. “Okay, there is a lot to unpack there, Hawaii. I hope you don’t have any other plans tonight.”
“Oh, there’s no way we’d get through it all in one night. I’ll just drop off a copy of my father’s books.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“My dad’s an author. And his books are about my family. It’s been mildly traumatic.”
Laughter bubbled out of my chest.
“Okay, I’ll bypass all my questions about that temporarily. I was also an accident—a bad combination of antibiotics and birth control.”
“Is that a real thing? I thought it was a myth.”
“It’s been a hot debate in my family for more than twenty-two years now. Pick a side at your own peril.”
She laughed. “Noted.”
“So is the fact your dad’s an author what made you want to be a writer too?”
“It certainly contributed. He’s an English professor, so I grew up around a lot of books.
Mostly classics and genre fiction from him, and contemporary romance from Kennedy, my stepmom.
My mom’s more of a casual reader compared to the two of them.
My dad didn’t start writing until his late twenties, but he’s published two books and has another one on the way. ”
“Wow, that’s impressive.”
She shrugged and gave me a sly smile. “Maybe, but I’ll be publishing my first book years earlier than he did.” She took a sip of her seltzer.
“Is that a little competitive spirit I hear, Hawaii?”
“A little bit,” she said, blushing slightly.
“I like it.”
I couldn’t stop staring into her blue eyes; they were like getting lost in an ocean. “At the risk of you questioning my motivations again, you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen, Sophia.”
Her cheeks flushed deeper, and she gave me a small smile as she averted her eyes. Her brows pulled inward just enough to make me wonder if she didn’t believe that about herself. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said with a smile. I shifted my knee away from her, instantly regretting the decision, but I wasn’t going to corner her on this couch all night. “Listen, I’m not going to commandeer your entire evening, and I have practice in the morning so I should head out.”
I stood up and she looked at me with curiosity. “Will there be an article in the paper about me too?”
“Nope.” I smiled smugly. “This was all for me. I hope I see you around, Hawaii.”
I turned and left before I could change my mind.
I’d promised her I wouldn’t try to sleep with her, and I was pretty sure if I sat there much longer my desire to do just that was only going to grow.
The fear that I’d never see her again gnawed at me, but I’d have to be okay with taking my chances.
I walked across campus and made my way back to my dorm.
Most of the guys on the hockey team had townhouses with four to six guys living in a house.
But I was one of the few who lived in a single suite in one of the upperclassman dorms. It wasn’t as fancy as a townhouse, but it was my own space that contained a bedroom, bathroom, and a small, combined kitchenette and living area.
After having a roommate freshman year, I’d managed to snag one of these every year since.
Living alone meant I could be rested for hockey, and it gave me a quiet place to do schoolwork to ensure I kept my grades up too.
This is the actual perk Sophia should be investigating: Hockey star gets preferential treatment in campus housing lottery.
I got ready for bed and crashed until my alarm went off the next morning. I grabbed my phone to silence the alarm and immediately opened the online version of the school paper. I wanted to see what Sophia had written.
As I read her words, I smirked and shook my head.
This girl is going to cause me all sorts of problems.
Not only did I like her—which was an entirely new experience for me—but she’d also written an article that was likely to have some annoying ramifications.