Chapter 11
eleven
MORGAN
The cold water is the last straw that turned the cold war hot.
As arctic needles drill through my scalp and down my spine, the sound that tears from my throat isn't remotely human. It's the noise you make when your body decides that over a week of pressure has finally broken through and you're done playing nice.
Seven fucking days, and they've finally found my breaking point. Not with their music, or their equipment colonizing our benches, or even with the systematic theft of our supplies that Mills has been documenting in a notebook she's titled "Evidence for the Hague."
No, they've broken me with water temperature.
Because in the hierarchy of needs at Pine Barren University, the men's team apparently requires forty-five minutes each to achieve peak male performance—which apparently involves enough hair product to stock a salon and the kind of preening that would make a peacock file for inadequacy.
I slam my palm against the shower handle hard enough to sting, and the sudden movement makes my shoulder scream, right where I'd been checked into the boards during practice.
But the pain is nothing compared to the ice-cold shard of rage and hate that feels like it's buried in my skull like an ice pick.
After a week of practicing in substandard conditions while the men's team gets the good ice, the good equipment, the good everything—I'm done. Not annoyed-done or frustrated-done, but that pristine kind of done where your prefrontal cortex takes a coffee break and lets your lizard brain drive.
The towel waiting for me is yet another insult, thin enough to read through and rough enough to exfoliate a rhinoceros. It barely covers the essentials, hitting mid-thigh if I'm generous and leaving my shoulders completely bare, but I'm past caring about modesty.
I storm into the shared locker room, and their presence assaults me with all the subtlety of a bachelor party in Vegas, a cocktail of testosterone and entitlement that comes from never having to question whether you belong. Ignoring the laughs, my eyes find him before my brain can intervene.
James stands with his back to me, and the universe officially has a doctorate in cruel irony, because it's clear he's not freezing and that he did take the last of the hot water. But now it's like I'm stuck in a trance, furious but frozen, angry but gawking.
He runs a hand through his hair, and the movement makes every muscle in his back shift in ways that should require a permit. My body responds with heat that starts low in my belly and spreads through my veins like I've mainlined pure stupid.
No. Absolutely not.
But my hormones apparently missed the memo about dignity. They're too busy cataloging the breadth of his shoulders, the way his wet hair curls slightly at his nape… all details I have no business noticing, let alone remembering how they felt under my fingertips.
He turns—maybe hearing the stomps of my feet or perhaps feeling my murderous stare boring holes in his spine—and our eyes lock. The locker room doesn't go silent and time doesn't slow, none of that cliche bullshit, but his easy grin does die mid-formation because he realizes it's me.
Dripping and furious and wearing a barely-there terrycloth ensemble.
His gaze drops, and I feel it like a physical thing—a slow, heated drag across my skin that makes my stomach clench and my thighs press together involuntarily. Water still clings to my collarbone, each droplet suddenly alive under his stare, rolling down toward the towel's edge like an invitation.
The towel suddenly feels thinner and smaller.
His eyes trace lower, following the water's path, and heat blooms low in my belly despite the ice still dripping from my hair. I imagine his tongue following that same trail, hot against my cold skin, and my nipples tighten painfully beneath the inadequate towel.
The thought makes me angry at myself for wanting it, and angrier at him for making me want it.
His chest rises sharply, a quick intake of breath that makes his abs contract, and God help me, I track every ripple of muscle like my body's keeping score. Three years, and he still affects me like this, like a single spark can ignite the room.
The locker room fades to white noise. There's just his eyes, dark and hungry despite everything, despite the audience, and despite the fact that we're supposed to be different people now. They're locked on to me, sending signals to his brain, and suddenly I wonder if he's remembering.
How I taste.
How I sound when he touches me just right.
What it's like to have his cock in my mouth.
How it felt to fill me up in the back seat of his truck.
How well we fit together before he decided we were better as a punchline.
The moment stretches, taut as wire, both of us caught in this terrible, perfect suspension where anything could happen.
I watch his throat work as he swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing.
His jaw clenches, releases, clenches again.
There's want and guilt and all sorts of messages as clear as neon on his face.
It would have been so easy.
One moment of honesty three years ago and we could be different people now.
But that's done.
I shake my head, forcing away the thoughts, and breaking my trance.
"Is there a reason," I say, "that your team feels entitled to every drop of hot water in this building? Or is basic consideration not covered in Hockey Bro 101?"
The laughter and chatter in the room die instantly, and every head swivels toward us. I can feel them cataloging the scene: their golden boy captain looking gut-punched, the ice queen in a towel that's one sneeze from catastrophe, and enough unresolved sexual tension to power the eastern seaboard.
James opens his mouth. His tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip—another tell, another memory I don't need—and for one stupid second, I think he might actually say something real. But then his gaze shifts past me, tracking movement behind my shoulder, and his whole body language changes.
"Mr. Galloway," he says, standing up straighter, the warning in his voice making my stomach drop before I even turn around.
But before he can evolve past his base programming, the new voice cuts through the humid air.
"Having some trouble, son?" Art Galloway says, stepping around me to place a possessive hand on James's bare shoulder.
Galloway's eyes find me, and his expression shifts through several distinct phases of awful. First: assessment. He catalogs my state with the efficiency of someone who's made a career of it. Second: calculation. I can actually see him doing the math on what he can get away with.
Third: consumption.
His gaze starts at my face, pauses at my throat where my pulse hammers visibly, then begins a deliberate descent.
He lingers everywhere the towel isn't—my shoulders, where the towel barely contains anything, then down to the expanse of thigh that suddenly feels like a landing strip for his attention.
"Riley," he says, and my name in his mouth needs to be burned. "I expect our captains to handle these little… disagreements… professionally."
His eyes make another pass, slower this time.
"And, well," he says, each word slow and his eyes never looking away from my body. "Perhaps with a bit more… appropriate attire."
The pause before "appropriate" carries enough subtext to require a content warning. He's managed to make me being in a towel in a locker room after a shower sound like I've committed some kind of moral crime, his female hockey captain suddenly guilty of something pornographic.
"We're out of hot water," I say, keeping my voice level despite wanting to introduce his face to a wall. "Like every day since you forced us to share."
Galloway's smile widens. "These old buildings have maintenance issues, but I'm sure you girls can… make do."
Fire burns in my stomach, but I swallow the acid I want to spit his way, because I know my team will pay the price if I talk back to Galloway. So I swallow my pride, because twenty women depend on me keeping my mouth shut and playing the game.
But James?
That might be another story.
Because I'm not looking at Galloway anymore. I'm watching James. His hands curled into fists at his sides, knuckles white against his thighs, and his chest rising and falling in controlled breaths, nostrils flaring—all the signs of someone fighting to speak.
It's clear he knows how to be a hero when it's simple and there's no cost.
But now?
With Galloway's hand on his shoulder like a brand of ownership?
When Galloway worships the ground his golden boy walks on?
Say something.
The vein in his temple throbs harder and his lips part slightly, and I stand there, waiting for words that would mean everything but cost him nothing, because the men's team has every resource, every advantage, and every ounce of the AD's favor.
Hell, if anyone could speak up without consequences, it's him.
But the silence stretches, and James does absolutely nothing.
"You boys work hard," Galloway announces to the room, giving James's shoulder another squeeze. "You deserve those hot showers."
The dismissal is surgical.
The men deserve comfort, and the girls deserve scraps.
He turns to leave, pausing at the door for one last look, then the door swings shut with a decisive click, leaving behind the kind of silence that makes you wish for death or at least temporary deafness.
Nobody fills it, not the guys who are suddenly super interested in the contents of the locker, or the few girls in here.
But then he does it.
He actually fucking does it.
He makes a joke.
"You girls are always saying you want more attention, Riley…" he says, grinning. "Guess you got it."
The joke doesn't just fail to land, it evaporates on contact with the cold fury in the room. Because he hadn't just kept quiet and failed to defend me, but he'd taken the sentiment of Galloway's slimy visual assault, repackaged it as locker-room banter, and tried to hand it back to me.
I don't say a word. I just stare at him, and I let him see the cold, hard certainty that he is the most disappointing person I have ever had the misfortune of knowing. Even his teammates look away, suddenly finding the scuffs on their boots fascinating.
His stupid grin falters, then dies completely.
Without another word, I turn and walk back to the showers, my bare feet slapping against wet tile with each step. I don't run, because running would give them satisfaction. I walk with my spine straight, shoulders back, and when I reach the shower it's still arctic when I turn it on.
But now it feels appropriate.
The universe's liquid "I told you so."
I press my palms flat against the tile wall and let the icy water punish me for my own stupidity. Let it wash away Galloway's visual assault, the heat of James's proximity, the bitter taste of expecting anything different from either of them or being disappointed.
The cold burrows into my bones, and I welcome it. I stand there until my lips go numb, until my fingers turn that concerning purple-white, until I can't feel anything except the blessed absence of feeling. It's like the water is returning me to my natural state, whether I like it or not.
Cold.