Chapter 2
Cameron
Control is not a luxury. It is a biological necessity.
Some people wake up and hit the snooze button. They doom-scroll through social media, they let the morning light dictate their mood, they stumble into their day like accidents waiting to happen. I don’t do accidents. I don’t do stumbling.
I swung my legs out of bed, my feet hitting the polished concrete floor of the penthouse.
The temperature in the room was exactly sixty-eight degrees.
Perfect for sleeping, perfect for thinking.
The air smelled of nothing. No dust, no old food, no lingering traces of another person. Just filtered, conditioned emptiness.
That was how I liked it. That was how I survived.
I walked to the en-suite bathroom, the motion sensor lights flickering on to illuminate the stark white tiles and chrome fixtures.
I looked at myself in the mirror. There were dark circles under my eyes, faint bruises of exhaustion that even twelve hours of sleep wouldn't cure, not that I ever got twelve hours.
The image in the glass was the one the NHL scouts wanted to see. Cameron Vance. The Wall. Six-foot-five, two hundred and twenty pounds of goalie. A machine built to stop projectiles moving at a hundred miles an hour.
But as I leaned closer to the sink, splashing freezing water onto my face, I didn't see the athlete. I saw the stain.
It wasn’t there physically—I had scrubbed my skin raw in the shower last night—but I could still feel the phantom sensation of sticky, sugary blue liquid soaking into my chest.
Camila Sterling.
My jaw tightened at the thought of her name. Just thinking it felt like introducing a virus into my operating system.
I had dropped her off at the Gamma Phi Beta house last night.
She had been silent for the entire drive, shivering against the heated leather seat, staring out the window with a look of devastation that I had tried, and failed, to ignore.
I had watched her walk up the path to the massive colonial house, her heels slipping in the snow, until she disappeared onto the porch.
Problem solved. Variable removed.
So why was my heart rate elevated? Why was I gripping the edge of the marble sink hard enough to turn my knuckles white?
Because she was a variable I couldn’t calculate.
She was messy. She was loud. She was the daughter of Richard Sterling, the man who held the keys to the kingdom I had spent my entire life trying to enter.
And last night, for a fleeting, insane second in the freezing cold, I had wanted to wrap her inside my coat and keep her there.
I pushed the thought away, physically exhaling it through my nose.
"Focus," I commanded the empty room.
I turned away from the mirror. I had a schedule. 6:00 AM: Nutrition. 7:00 AM: Ice time. 9:00 AM: Video review.
There was no room in the schedule for blue cocktails or doe-eyed brats with daddy issues.
The Westbrook University ice rink at 7:00 AM was a cathedral of cold.
The air inside the arena was different than the air outside. Outside, the cold was wet and biting. Inside, it was dry, crisp, and smelled of ozone and Zamboni exhaust. It was the smell of my childhood, my sanctuary, and my prison.
I was already in full gear, my pads strapped tight, my helmet resting on the crossbar of the net. The arena was empty except for me and Jagger Cole, who was currently doing lazy circles at center ice, flipping a puck into the air with his stick.
"You're brooding," Jag shouted, his voice echoing off the empty stands. "I can feel it from here. You're emitting brooding radiation. It's going to give me cancer."
I ignored him, dropping into my butterfly stance, testing the slide of my pads on the fresh ice. Thwack. My knees hit the surface. Slide. Left post. Slide. Right post. Precision.
"I'm focusing," I called back, my voice muffled by the mask I hadn't pulled down yet.
Jag skated toward me, spraying a wave of ice shavings as he stopped just outside the crease. He leaned on his stick, grinning. Jagger was everything I wasn't: loose, chaotic, perpetually happy. He played hockey like it was a game. I played it like it was a war.
"You're thinking about her," Jag said, waggling his eyebrows. "The Blue Hawaiian Bomber."
I stood up, tapping my stick against the posts to check my angles. "I am thinking about the game against Boston University on Friday. Their power play is running at twenty-eight percent efficiency."
"Bullshit," Jag laughed. "I saw your face last night, Cam. You looked like you wanted to either murder her or mount her right there on the sidewalk. Maybe both. Kinky."
I shot him a glare that usually made rookies wet themselves. Jag just winked.
"She ruined a three-thousand-dollar suit," I said flatly. "She is a liability. Her father is the Commissioner. Do the math, Jag. Getting involved with Camila Sterling is career suicide."
"But..." Jag dragged the word out. "She's hot. In a 'might ruin your life and key your car' kind of way. Which, coincidentally, is my favorite flavor."
"She's a child," I snapped, the irritation flaring in my chest again. "She's spoiled, she's reckless, and she thinks the world owes her a living because of her last name."
I dropped back into my crouch. "Shoot the puck, Cole. Or get off my ice."
Jag shrugged, scooped up a puck, and skated back to the hash marks. He snapped a wrister toward my glove side.
My hand moved before my brain even registered the shot. Thwack. The puck died in the webbing of my trapper.
I dropped the puck and reset.
Thwack. Blocker save.
Thwack. Kick save.
We fell into the rhythm. The physical exertion usually quieted my mind. It was simple physics. Action, reaction. Angle, velocity.
But today, the silence wasn't working.
Every time I blinked, I saw her face. Not the bratty, arrogant mask she wore at the bar, but the face she had shown me in the car. The vulnerability. The way her lower lip had trembled.
“You don’t have friends, Mila. You have an audience.”
I had been cruel. I knew that. Cruelty was a tool I used to keep people at a distance, a perimeter fence made of barbed wire words. But with her, the cruelty had felt different. It felt defensive.
Why had she been so terrified? Why had her credit card been declined?
The rumors were that Richard Sterling had cut her off. If that was true, she wasn't just a spoiled princess having a bad night. She was prey. A girl like that—soft, sheltered, used to luxury—wouldn't last five minutes in the real world without a safety net.
Not my problem, I repeated the mantra. Not. My. Problem.
"Heads up!" Jag yelled.
I snapped back to reality just in time to see a slap shot screaming toward my head. I ducked, deflecting it with the crown of my helmet. The impact rang in my ears like a bell.
"Jesus, Cam!" Jag skated over, looking concerned. "You usually catch those with your teeth. Where is your head at?"
I stood up, ripping my mask off. The sweat was dripping down my temples, stinging my eyes. My chest was heaving.
"I'm done," I said, skating toward the bench. "I have class."
"You never leave early," Jag called after me.
I didn't answer. I needed to get out of there. The ice, usually my sanctuary, felt too open today. Too exposed. I needed walls. I needed my routine.
I needed to make sure that the chaos of Camila Sterling stayed exactly where I left it: somewhere else.
By 2:00 PM, the grey sky over Wickfield had turned from a dull slate to a threatening charcoal. The wind was picking up, swirling the snow into miniature tornados that danced across the campus green.
I walked out of the Business Building, my collar turned up against the bite of the wind. I had just spent three hours in a lecture on Advanced Microeconomics, a subject I usually enjoyed because it was all about rational actors making rational choices.
Today, however, the professor’s voice had sounded like static.
I adjusted the strap of my leather messenger bag and headed toward the parking garage. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it. Probably my agent, talking about the draft projections. Probably my mother, asking for money from whatever rehab facility she was currently checking herself out of.
I reached the garage, the concrete structure shielding me from the worst of the wind. My Range Rover was parked on the fourth level, in a corner spot where no one could ding the doors.
I unlocked it, the chirp echoing in the concrete cavern. I got in, the silence of the cabin wrapping around me like a blanket.
I started the engine, waiting exactly thirty seconds for the oil to circulate—a ritual—before putting it in gear.
I drove out of the garage and turned onto University Avenue.
The route to my apartment took me past the freshman dorms, past the library, and past the sprawling, columned mansions of Sorority Row.
I told myself I wasn't looking. I told myself I was just watching the road, scanning for pedestrians, being a safe driver.
But as I passed the Gamma Phi Beta house—a massive white building that looked like a wedding cake made of brick—my eyes flicked to the porch.
Empty.
Of course it was empty. It was snowing. She was inside, probably drinking hot cocoa, probably complaining to her friends about the ogre who drove her home last night. She was warm. She was safe.
I drove another block.
Then I saw it.
Or rather, I saw the color.
In a world of grey slush, white snow, and black coats, the bright pink was an assault on the eyes.
It was a suitcase. A massive, hard-shell Louis Vuitton trunk in neon pink, sitting forlornly on a park bench at the edge of the campus green, rapidly accumulating a layer of snow.
And sitting next to it, curled into a ball so small she looked like a child, was a figure wrapped in a coat that was clearly not hers—it was too big, worn denim, likely bought from a thrift store or stolen.
I didn't make a conscious decision to stop. My foot hit the brake pedal before my brain gave the command. The Range Rover skidded slightly on the slush before coming to a halt.