Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
winnie
“You’ll never guess who just walked into our dorm,” an unfamiliar girl squeals and runs past Winnie to the other side of the room where her new roommate Maisie is unsuccessfully trying to stuff a sequined skirt into her overflowing wardrobe.
She and Winnie haven’t really spoken outside of a few stilted words—
“Oh, you’re here,” Maisie said as she walked into the room.
“Here I am,” Winnie chirped, spinning with an excited grin and holding out her hands. “It’s surreal, right? I can’t believe we’re in college. I feel like I’ve been dreaming about this day for so long!”
“Yeah. Totally.” Her roommate nodded, looking around the room. “So, what kind of name is Uldwyna, anyway?”
“Oh, it’s Romanian,” Winnie explained with a shrug as she turned around to pull a few paperbacks from the suitcase propped on her bed. “You can just call me Winnie.”
“Cute.” Maisie scrunched her eyes with a hint of scorn. “Is that entire suitcase full of books?”
Winnie nodded excitedly. “Do you want to borrow one?”
Maisie laughed. “Like, to read?”
The smile started to slip off her face. “…Yeah?”
“I’m good,” her roommate commented before crossing the room without another word.
Winnie knows from the few texts they exchanged over the summer that, as a soccer player, Maisie moved in two weeks early with all the other fall athletes, and apparently in that time, she’s made all the friends she needs.
The girl was absent all morning while Winnie’s parents were there to help unpack, and aside from that brief hello about an hour earlier, she’s been pretty much shutting Winnie out—muttering one-word responses or just ignoring her attempts at conversation entirely.
But it’s fine. So what if she and her roommate aren’t going to be best friends?
There are thousands of other students here.
She’ll find her group. She’ll finally understand what it feels like to belong.
This isn’t high school anymore. College is going to be a million times better.
She just needs to get settled, to get into a groove, to get—
“Oh my god.”
The two other girls in the room gasp, drawing Winnie back to the present. She knits her brow with a sigh, not needing to turn around as a polite knock sounds at their open door.
She knew he would do this.
In fact, she made him explicitly promise not to do this.
Yes, after an immense pressure campaign from her parents to not split their family up any further, she decided to attend the University of Denver like her brother.
And yes, in a lot of ways, it was her choice too.
He’s her best friend. He’s her safety net.
Having him close takes a lot of the fear of the unknown away.
But she made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t want to live in his shadow anymore.
She’s tired of people pretending to be nice to her because she’s “Rusu’s little sister” only to have them flip the second his back is turned.
Let her make her own way. Let her figure things out. Let her grow up.
Three rules.
She gave him three freaking rules. Don’t tell anyone they’re related. Don’t try to intimidate anyone on her behalf. And don’t, under any circumstance, come to her dorm.
Yet here he is, day one, breaking all three.
“Hey, sis.”
“Go away, Alex.” Winnie spins with a growl, only to freeze at the sight of the blond boy hunching apologetically behind him. “Ty!”
“Oh, sure. Be nice to him.” Her brother snorts and steps into the room without asking for permission. Oh, to live the entitled life of a star athlete. The world is his oyster. On this hockey-obsessed campus, he’s a king. Alex grins at the two other girls, who are still frozen with shock. “Ladies.”
Her roommate finally comes out of her trance long enough to bat her eyelashes. “Hi.”
Winnie rolls her eyes and glances back at Tyler, who shakes his head with a rueful twist of his lips.
He, she can’t help but notice, hasn’t even looked at the other girls.
He stares at her from the doorway, hovering within the frame with his hands in his pockets as if a little unsure.
The room seems to shrink around him, maybe because he looms so large in her mind or maybe because he’s a six-foot-three hockey player made entirely of muscle.
Either way, she feels as though she can’t breathe as he finally crosses the threshold and steps closer.
“This wasn’t my idea,” he mutters.
Winnie laughs. “Trust me, I know. This has Alex written all over it.”
“He’s worried about you.”
“I moved in like four hours ago. What could’ve possibly gone wrong already?” The edge of his lip quirks into that almost-grin she knows so well. She crosses her arms, as if to hide the way her heart pinches. “Did he tell you about my rules?”
“Yeah.” He drops his gaze to the floor and a wave of golden hair falls over his forehead.
A swallow ripples through the muscles along his cut jaw.
He glances back up, staring at her from beneath hooded brows, those blue eyes too powerful from so close a distance. “You afraid to associate with us, Win?”
“Not you,” she murmurs with a heavy sigh.
“I don’t know. It’s stupid. I guess I just wanted to see who I could be outside of Alex’s little sister for once.
I wanted to be able to stand on my own two feet, you know?
” She looks back to where Alex is still flirting with her roommate and her friend. “But that ship has definitely sailed.”
“Hey.” He touches her forearm with the back of his pointer finger, just a graze really. It barely even counts. Yet her whole body lights up like a firework, nerves sizzling up her arm and exploding across her chest. “Looks like you’re on your own two feet from where I’m standing.”
She lets out a puff of air that hardly passes as a laugh while she fails to control her racing pulse. “I heard you took a puck to the head in practice yesterday. Might want to get that looked at.”
His half-smile stretches a bit wider. Before Tyler can respond, Alex remembers he has a sibling.
“Hey, Win. Mom said she brought cookies? Where—” He starts rifling through her papers and moving things around on her desk. She shoos him away.
“Stop. STOP! They’re right here.” She pulls a carton from the windowsill. “Just take it. And get out of here.”
He rips open the container and stuffs one in his mouth. Cheeks full, he says, “We’re having a party at the house tonight. You gotta come. I need to introduce you to the guys and make sure they all know you’re off limits.”
She snorts. “I am not planning to date any of your teammates.”
“Still, you gotta come.”
“I just want to hang out with the rest of my dorm tonight.”
“Great! I’ll invite everyone. Girls, you want to come to the hockey house tonight?”
Her roommate immediately jumps in with a, “Sure!”
Winnie groans. Alex is an unstoppable force when he wants something. She knows it’s coming from a good place. He wants everyone to know who she is. He wants them to play nice. He wants to protect her. But, god, he’s annoying sometimes.
“Alex.”
He ignores her and asks Maisie for her number so he can text her the address.
“Alex!”
He absently waves his hand.
“Maybe I will hook up with one of your teammates tonight,” she mutters under her breath.
“No,” Alex immediately says, making it clear he’s been paying attention, but it’s the burning awareness of another set of eyes landing on her that makes a blush warm her cheeks. “Take that back.”
“Take what back?” she says innocently.
“Fine. Fine,” he says and looks at Tyler. “We’re leaving.”
“Wait,” Tyler interjects with more force than usual.
Alex eyes him strangely. “What?”
“I, uh—” He glances around. “I think we’re in the same class, Win.”
“Really?” She perks up as an excited buzz zips down her spine. “Which one?”
He licks his lips and points to the schedule she taped to the side of her desk. “This one.”
Alex leans closer and reads the class name, his tone growing more and more dubious with each softly spoken word. “English 103: Introduction to Shakespeare?”
Tyler nods. “That’s the one.”
“What the hell are you doing taking Shakespeare? Are you trying to get an academic suspension?”
“What?” Tyler shrugs. “I needed an English credit. It was the only one available. I just have to pass.”
“Dude, have you ever read Shakespeare?” Alex arches a brow. “The guy makes English look like a foreign language.”
“I can help,” Winnie cuts in, wincing internally at how pathetically eager that comes out. But Tyler just glances at her, a small sparkle in his eyes.
“Yeah? You wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course not.” She grins like a buffoon. “It’ll be fun! I love Shakespeare.”
“I will never understand how we’re related,” Alex deadpans.
Winnie wrinkles her nose. “You love me.”
Alex scoffs, then pushes Tyler toward the door. “Let’s go.” A moment later, he reaches back to grab the cookies and catches her eye a final time. “Hockey house. Tonight. Be there.”
“Goodbye, Alex.”
She glances behind him, briefly meeting those soulful baby blues that have a choke hold on her heart.
Tyler nods quickly as Alex shoves him down the hall.
Winnie stares at the empty space where he was standing, already fantasizing about English 103 on Wednesday.
No Alex. No parents. Sure, a class full of students and a professor, but still, it feels private somehow, illicit even. All her hope from the day returns.
College will be different.
She’ll make sure of it.
“Oh my god. Alex Rusu is your brother?” Maisie tears across the room, shattering the brief yet brilliant dream. “You have to come with us to the hockey house tonight.”
Just like that, Winnie is in, exactly as Alex intended. Of course, she has no idea if Maisie is the type of person she wants to be in with, but now that her brother is gone, she can admit this small truth. It does feel better to be included instead of iced out.
So, they go to the hockey house.