Pucking Loyalty (First Blood #9)

Chapter 1

Rock bottom usually smelled like stale beer, vomit, and bad decisions. Mine, apparently, smelled like artificial coconut, high-end hairspray, and the terrifying metallic scent of an impending overdraft fee.

I stared at the neon-glowing liquid in my martini glass—a Blue Hawaiian, because I was committed to the aesthetic of a tropical disaster—and tried to ignore the vibration of my phone against the marble bar top. It buzzed again. And again. A relentless, angry hornet trapped in a glittery case.

I didn’t need to look at the screen to know who it was. Or rather, who it wasn’t.

It wasn’t my father calling to apologize.

It wasn’t the bank telling me there had been a terrible mistake and that my Amex Black Card was still a magical portal to unlimited dopamine.

It was the notification I had been dreading since I woke up at noon with a headache that felt like a pickaxe to the frontal lobe.

Payment Declined: Uber Eats. $24.50.

Twenty-four dollars. I couldn’t even afford a sad, lukewarm poke bowl.

I took a long, burning sip of the blue sludge, the sugar coating my tongue like a layer of denial.

Around me, the VIP section of The Wolves’ Den was throbbing with the kind of bass that rattled your teeth in your skull.

This was the place to be on a Friday night at Westbrook University.

It was dark, exclusive, and smelled of old money and new desperate ambition.

The leather booths were filled with the children of senators, tech moguls, and legacy admissions who had never heard the word no in their lives.

Until three hours ago, I was the queen of this kingdom. Camila Sterling. The Sterling heiress. The girl who bought rounds of shots for strangers just to watch them smile, the girl whose Instagram stories were a curated feed of effortless luxury.

Now? Now I was a fraud in a six-hundred-dollar dress I would probably have to sell on Poshmark by Monday.

"Mila! Oh my god, are you even listening?"

I snapped my head up, my curls bouncing against my bare shoulders. Brittany—or maybe it was Bethany, I never really bothered to learn the difference—was leaning over the table, her eyes wide and glassy with vodka.

"Totally," I lied, flashing the smile I had perfected at charity galas. The one that said, I am delightful and nothing hurts. "I was just thinking about... the lighting in here. It’s tragic, isn’t it?"

Brittany/Bethany laughed, a shrill sound that grated against my raw nerves. "You’re so funny. Anyway, are you coming to the Aspen trip over break? My dad’s renting the chalet, but we need to book the jet by Tuesday."

The jet. A private plane. A week of skiing I didn’t know how to do and drinking champagne I could no longer afford.

My chest tightened, a physical squeeze that made it hard to draw breath.

It felt like a corset laced too tight, crushing my ribs inward.

I looked down at my hands. My manicure was chipped—a microscopic flaw on the thumbnail.

Yesterday, I would have booked an appointment immediately.

Today, that chipped polish looked like a premonition of decay.

"I might be busy," I said, my voice sounding airy and fake, even to my own ears. "Family stuff. You know how Dad gets about the holidays."

"Ugh. Parents," she groaned, signaling the bartender for another round I definitely couldn’t pay for. "They’re such tyrants."

Tyrant. That wasn’t the word for Richard Sterling. A tyrant implies passion, anger, some kind of heat. My father was a glacier. He was the NHL Commissioner, a man who moved chess pieces worth millions of dollars with a flick of his wrist. He didn't get angry; he made cuts. He traded liabilities.

And as of this morning, I was the liability.

“You’re twenty-one, Camila. You’ve changed majors four times. You’ve spent a fortune on clothes you don’t wear and parties you don’t remember. You are a bad investment. I’m cutting the line.”

Just like that. No negotiation. No overtime.

I needed another drink. I needed to drown the voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like my father telling me I was worthless. I lifted my hand to signal the bartender, my movements loose and uncoordinated, when the atmosphere in the room suddenly shifted.

It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure drop. The air grew heavier, colder, sucked out of the room by a massive gravitational force.

Conversations lulled. Heads turned toward the velvet-roped entrance of the VIP section. Even the bass seemed to hesitate.

He walked in.

Cameron Vance.

If Westbrook University had a god, it was him. If the NHL had a future king, it was him. And if I had a nightmare made of flesh and bone, it was him.

He was massive. That was always the first thing you noticed—the sheer, architectural scale of the man.

He was six-foot-five of pure, condensed violence wrapped in a bespoke charcoal suit that fit him like a second skin.

He didn't walk; he stalked. He moved with the eerie, predatory grace of a creature that knew it was the apex of the food chain.

As the starting goalie for the Westbrook Wolves, he was treated like a deity on this campus. They called him "The Wall" because nothing got past him. Not pucks, not people, and certainly not emotions.

He had the kind of face that stopped traffic—sharp cheekbones, a jawline that could cut glass, and eyes the color of a frozen lake. Pale, icy blue. Cold enough to burn.

I hated him.

I hated him because he was perfect. I hated him because he was disciplined, rigid, and successful—everything my father wanted me to be and everything I wasn't. And I hated him because two semesters ago, in a shared lecture hall, I had asked to borrow a pen, and he had looked at me like I was a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe and said, “Come prepared or don’t come at all, Sterling.”

He hadn't spoken to me since.

I watched him over the rim of my glass. He wasn't smiling. Cameron Vance never smiled. He scanned the room, his gaze dissecting the crowd, cataloging threats, judging the mess. He looked bored. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.

His eyes swept over the booth where Brittany/Bethany was currently trying to take a selfie. Then, the ice-blue gaze landed on me.

It didn't slide past. It stuck.

For a second, the noise of the club fell away. It was just me and him, separated by twenty feet of crowded floor and a chasm of social standing. He looked at my wild hair, my flushed face, the way I was clutching my drink like a lifeline. His lip curled—a microscopic movement, but I saw it.

Disgust.

He thought I was a mess. A spoiled, drunk little princess playing dress-up.

Well. If he thought I was a disaster, who was I to disappoint him?

The alcohol surged in my bloodstream, mixing with the adrenaline of my panic and creating a volatile cocktail of defiance. I stood up. My heels wobbled on the slick floor, but I locked my knees. I wasn't going to let him look down on me. Not tonight. Not when I had already lost everything else.

I navigated through the crowd, my path unsteady, aiming for the bar where he had just stopped. He wasn't drinking. Of course not. He ordered a sparkling water with a twist of lime. Even his hydration was boring.

I slid into the space next to him. I was close enough to smell him now—a crisp, sharp scent of winter air, expensive scotch, and sterile, clean soap. He smelled like money. He smelled like control.

"You're blocking my light, Vance," I slurred slightly, leaning an elbow on the bar. It slipped a little, but I recovered.

Cameron didn't turn his head. He stared straight ahead at the rows of bottles, his profile carved from granite. "You're drunk, Sterling. Go sit down before you fall down."

His voice was deep, a low rumble that I felt in my chest more than I heard with my ears. It vibrated through the floorboards.

"I'm not drunk," I countered, the lie tasting sweet. "I'm festive. There's a difference. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Robots don't get festive."

He slowly turned to look at me then. Up close, his eyes were terrifying. There was no warmth in them, only a razor-sharp intelligence that seemed to peel back my skin and look directly at the terrified girl hiding underneath.

"You're vibrating," he observed. It wasn't a question. "Your hand is shaking."

I stiffened, gripping my glass tighter. "It's the bass."

"It's pathetic," he said. His voice was flat, devoid of cruelty but somehow crueler for it. He was just stating a fact. The sky is blue. Ice is cold. Camila Sterling is pathetic.

"Excuse me?" I bristled, shifting my weight. "I didn't realize the hockey team required a lobotomy for entry, but clearly, you lost your manners somewhere on the ice."

"And I didn't realize the art department gave degrees in wasting oxygen," he shot back, his tone bored. "Go home, Camila. You're making a scene. Again."

He turned his back on me.

He dismissed me. Like I was nothing. Like I wasn't even worth the energy of an argument.

Something inside me snapped. The fear, the rejection from my father, the shame of the declined card—it all boiled over into a hot, irrational flash of rage. I needed him to see me. I needed to break that perfect, pristine, icy exterior.

"I'm talking to you!" I shouted over the music.

I reached out to grab his arm, to force him to turn around. But my coordination was shot. My hand missed his bicep. My other hand, the one holding the overflowing, sticky, neon-blue cocktail, flailed.

Physics took over.

I watched in slow motion as the contents of my glass launched into the air. It was a beautiful, cerulean arc of sugar and dye.

It landed directly on the chest of Cameron Vance’s three-thousand-dollar charcoal suit.

The splash was audible. The liquid soaked instantly into the expensive wool, turning the dark grey into a wet, black stain that dripped down his lapels, over his crisp white shirt, and onto his polished shoes. The sticky cherry garnish bounced off his tie and landed on the floor with a wet plop.