Chapter 2
Ivy
I woke up to the smell of dust and the taste of regret.
No. This was a jagged, violent return to consciousness.
My back was screaming. A sharp, rhythmic throb radiated from my lumbar spine down to my hips, a direct result of sleeping on a mattress that I was ninety percent sure was filled with gravel and old hockey pucks.
The air in the room was stale, biting cold, and smelled faintly of cardboard and... was that floor wax?
I cracked one eye open.
I was staring at a stack of printer paper boxes labeled DEFENSIVE LINE GAME TAPE: 2019-2022.
Memory crashed into me like a semi-truck on an icy highway. The blizzard. The flooded apartment. The desperate trek through the snow. The giant, tattooed gargoyle of a man who had looked at me like I was a piece of gum stuck to his shoe before dumping me in his storage closet.
"Oh god," I groaned, rolling over and pulling the scratchy wool blanket up over my head. "It wasn't a nightmare."
I was homeless. I was destitute. And I was currently squatting in the "Ice Box," a frat house inhabited by the Blackstone University hockey team—a species of human known for excessive volume, questionable hygiene, and a complete lack of emotional intelligence.
I lay there for a moment, huddled in the dark, and let the panic nip at the edges of my mind. It was a familiar sensation lately, a cold tightening in my chest that made it hard to draw a full breath. It felt like a corset laced too tight, cinching my ribs until they cracked.
“You’re a decoration, Ivy. Expensive, pretty, and utterly useless.”
My father’s voice echoed in the silence of the storage closet.
I could still see him, sitting behind his mahogany desk in the Manhattan office that cost more per square foot than most people earned in a decade.
He hadn't even looked up from his paperwork when he’d said it over speakerphone yesterday.
“I’m cutting the cards. I’m stopping the rent checks. If you want to dance, dance. But do it on your own dime. I’m tired of funding a hobby that goes nowhere.”
A hobby.
I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the sting of tears. I had been training since I was four years old. I had feet that were more scar tissue than skin. I had missed proms, parties, and vacations to spend six hours a day at the barre, bleeding into my satin pointe shoes until my toenails fell off.
And to him, it was just a cute little hobby. A tax write-off.
"Don't cry," I whispered to the dust bunnies. "St. James women don't cry. We get even."
I sat up, shivering as the blanket slipped off my shoulders.
The room—Ben’s "office," apparently—was freezing.
There was a small window high on the wall, and through the grime-streaked glass, I could see nothing but white.
The blizzard hadn't stopped. If anything, it had gotten angry.
The wind was battering the house, shaking the old Victorian frame.
I was trapped.
I looked down at myself. I was still wearing my skinny jeans and the cashmere sweater I’d slept in. I felt gross. My teeth felt fuzzy. My bladder was full.
"Okay, Ivy," I muttered, swinging my legs off the lumpy mattress. "Game face. Armor on."
I dragged my Louis Vuitton suitcase—which, miraculously, Ben the Butcher hadn't thrown into a snowbank—toward me. I unzipped it, the metallic zzzzzzzip sounding obscenely loud in the quiet room.
I needed to pee, I needed coffee, and I needed to navigate a house full of hostile giants without getting eaten.
I dug through the silk and chiffon until I found my toiletries bag. I grabbed my toothbrush, a tube of face wash that cost seventy dollars an ounce, and my hairbrush.
I stood up, straightened my spine, and lifted my chin. It was a reflex. Shoulders back, core engaged, neck long. The ballerina’s posture. It was the only shield I had left. If I looked perfect, maybe they wouldn't notice I was falling apart.
I unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway.
The house was quiet. Suspiciously quiet.
It was massive. The hallway was wide enough to drive a car through, with dark wood wainscoting that had seen better days and framed jerseys lining the walls. The floorboards creaked under my socks as I crept toward the bathroom I’d spotted last night.
I pushed the door open and flinched.
It wasn't empty.
A guy was standing in front of the mirror. He was tall—because apparently, they bred them that way in this house—with shaggy blond hair that looked like he’d just stuck a fork in an electrical socket. He was wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his hips.
He was currently singing into a toothbrush.
"I came in like a wreeeecking baaaall!"
He spun around, using the toothbrush as a microphone, and froze when he saw me standing in the doorway clutching my seventy-dollar face wash.
We stared at each other.
He didn't scream. He didn't cover up. A slow, lazy grin spread across his face. It was the kind of grin that probably got him out of speeding tickets and into girls' dorm rooms on a nightly basis.
"Well, hello," he drawled, lowering the toothbrush. "I thought Ben was hallucinating. He said he found a drowned rat in the kitchen last night."
I bristled. "A rat?"
"His words. Not mine." He leaned back against the sink, completely unbothered by his near-nudity. "I'm Jax. Right Wing. Chief Morale Officer. And you must be the refugee."
"I'm Ivy," I said, my voice clipped. I tried to keep my eyes on his face, but it was difficult when there was so much... skin. "And I need the bathroom. If you're done performing Miley Cyrus."
Jax laughed. It was a loud, booming sound that seemed to shake the toothpaste on the shelf. "Feisty. I like it. Ben hates feisty. This is going to be fun."
He grabbed a t-shirt from a hook on the door and pulled it on, though he didn't bother with pants. "So, what's the deal, Ivy? Storm chaser? Ben's secret girlfriend? No, wait, Ben doesn't have a girlfriend. He has a relationship with his protein intake and his frown lines."
"I'm not his girlfriend," I said, the very idea making my stomach flip. Not in a good way. Mostly. "My apartment flooded. Ty Miller is my cousin. He said I could crash."
"Ty!" Jax snapped his fingers. "Good guy. Terrible slapshot, but a good guy. Welcome to the Ice Box, Ivy. Try not to die."
"Die?" I stepped into the bathroom as he moved past me. "Is that a likely outcome?"
Jax paused in the doorway, his expression turning mock-serious. "With this storm? We’re snowed in, sweetheart. The roads are closed. Power is flickering. And Ben hasn't gotten laid in three years." He winked. "Tensions run high. Watch your back."
He slapped the doorframe and sauntered down the hall, singing again.
I shut the door and locked it. I leaned back against the wood, letting out a long breath.
Snowed in.
I walked to the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked wrecked. My mascara was smudged under my eyes like war paint. My hair was a bird's nest. My skin was pale.
"Pull it together," I hissed.
I washed my face, scrubbing until my skin tingled. I brushed my teeth aggressively. I ripped a brush through my hair and twisted it into a severe, perfect bun at the top of my head—the "don't touch me" hairstyle.
I didn't have fresh clothes in here, so I was stuck in yesterday's sweater. I dusted off the lint, applied a layer of lip gloss—because armoring up meant looking untouched—and unlocked the door.
I needed coffee. Caffeine was the only thing that was going to get me through a day trapped in a cage with the beast.
The kitchen was brighter than it had been last night, thanks to the wall of windows facing the backyard, but the view was terrifying. It was a whiteout. The snow was piled halfway up the glass. We were effectively in a snow globe that someone was shaking violently.
I stepped onto the linoleum, my socks sliding slightly.
He was there.
Of course he was.
Ben Sterling was standing at the kitchen island, his back to me.
He was wearing a black hoodie with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and gray sweatpants.
Even from the back, the tension radiating off him was palpable.
His shoulders were set in a hard line. He was whisking eggs in a bowl with a ferocity that seemed unnecessary for breakfast food.
Whisk-whisk-whisk-whisk.
The sound was aggressive.
I hesitated in the doorway. Part of me wanted to turn around, go back to the closet, and starve. The other part of me—the part that had been told my whole life to sit down and shut up—wanted to poke the bear.
I cleared my throat.
The whisking stopped instantly. He didn't turn around.
"You're loud," he said. His voice was deeper than I remembered. A morning rasp that dropped straight to my ovaries, which was incredibly rude of him.
"I didn't say anything," I said, walking into the room. I aimed for casual, but my heart was thumping against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"You breathe loud," he countered. He turned around.
The air left my lungs.
God, he was unfair. In the daylight, he was even more intimidating. His face was all sharp angles and shadows, the scar on his neck standing out pale against his tan skin. His hair was messy, falling into eyes that were currently narrowing at me with surgical precision.
He looked me up and down. It wasn't a check-out; it was an inspection. He was looking for flaws. He was looking for weakness.
"You're still here," he said flatly.
"The snow is four feet deep, Ben," I snapped, moving toward the coffee maker. "Unless you have a team of huskies and a sled, I'm not going anywhere."
"I have a Jeep."
"Great. Drive me to the Four Seasons."
"Roads are closed. State of emergency." He turned back to his eggs. "You're stuck."
"Trust me," I grabbed a mug from the cabinet, "I'm not thrilled about it either. I'd rather be in a Siberian gulag than in your frat house."
"This isn't a frat house," he grumbled. "It's a sanctuary for elite athletes. And you're contaminating the ecosystem."