Chapter Five - Deal

Chapter Five - The Deal

“Anything.” I say it again because he needs to hear conviction, even if my voice cracks on the word.

He studies me for a long moment. The forest is dead silent except for my own ragged breathing and the drip of coffee still sliding down his collarbone. I can smell it — caramel and burnt espresso mixed with something warmer underneath, something that's just him.

“Turn around.”

My stomach drops. “What?”

“You heard me.”

I turn slowly, my back now pressed to the same tree that had my front a second ago. He's still got my wrist loosely in his grip, like he knows I won't run again. He's right. I won't. I can't.

He steps closer, and in the moonlight I can see the mess I made of him — coffee soaked into the white of his shirt, dark and spreading, ice melting down toward his waistband. My cheeks burn just looking at it.

“You made this mess.” His voice is low, almost bored, like we're discussing the weather and not whatever is about to happen. “Clean it up.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're going to lick it off. Every drop.”

“Absolutely not.” I try to push past him, but he doesn't budge. He's a wall. A very large, very unimpressed wall.

“Anything, you said.” He tilts his head. “Or was that just words, princess?”

I hate that nickname on his tongue. I hate it more that my body doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that I'm supposed to hate this entire situation.

“Zane—”

“Ava.” He says my name like a warning. “I could scream right now too, you know. Tell everyone the ice princess assaulted me outside a cafe. I have witnesses. I have a stained shirt. Who do you think this town believes?”

He's right, and that's the worst part. My name is already mud tonight. One more headline and I'm not just the clown — I'm the girl who attacked an NHL prospect in the street.

My hands are shaking as I reach for the hem of his shirt.

“Slower,” he says, and I could swear there's a smirk buried somewhere in that granite voice.

I peel the wet fabric back, exposing skin I have spent an unfortunate amount of time not thinking about. The coffee has gone cold, sticky, tracing lines down toward the ridges of muscle I refuse to admit I'm cataloguing. I hesitate.

“Having second thoughts?”

“No,” I lie, and lean in before I can talk myself out of it.

The first touch of my tongue against his skin makes him go rigid. Good. At least I'm not the only one affected. I work quickly, humiliation burning hotter than my face, tracing the sticky trail up toward his collarbone, refusing to meet his eyes, refusing to acknowledge the way his breathing has changed, shallow and controlled, like he's fighting something too.

When I finally pull back, my lips are stained and my dignity is somewhere back at the cafe, still drying on the floor.

He's watching me with an expression I can't read. Then he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone.

“What are you—”

The flash goes off before I can finish the sentence.

“No. No, delete that.” I lunge for the phone, but he holds it high above his head, completely unbothered by my useless jumping.

“It's not a photo.” He turns the screen toward me. A video. Timestamped. Every mortifying second of it, starting right from ‘turn around' to me licking coffee off his chest like my life depended on it. Because apparently it did.

“You're disgusting.”

“I'm resourceful.” He pockets the phone. “And you just handed me exactly what I needed.”

“For what?”

“Leverage.” He straightens his ruined shirt like it's suddenly not the least of his problems. “You're going to work for me, Ava.”

“I'm not doing anything for you.”

“You'll do exactly what I say, or this video goes out to every East Rivers group chat by morning. I'll even caption it. Something like—” he pretends to think, “—Ice Princess Melts For West Rivers Captain. Has a nice ring to it.”

My throat closes up. If Maddox thought I was a joke before, this would end me completely. There'd be nothing left of the life I built. No reputation, no school, no way to hold my head up in that building ever again.

“What do you want.”

“Simple.” He crosses his arms, and even soaked in cold coffee he manages to look like he owns the entire forest. “You're going to be my eyes at East Rivers. Every plan your team makes against the Titans — every dirty trick, every plot, every whisper about sabotaging us — you report it to me. All of it.”

“You want me to spy on my own school.”

“I want you to spy on people who dropped you the second you stopped being useful to them.” His eyes flick over my face, and for a second the mockery slips, replaced by something sharper. “Or did you forget already how fast they turned on you?”

I hadn't forgotten. That was the problem.

“And if I refuse?”

“Then everyone gets a very entertaining video tonight, and you can go back to being the girl no one invites anywhere.” He shrugs like it costs him nothing either way. “Your choice.”

It isn't a choice. Not really. Not when the alternative is public ruin, and not when the tiny traitorous part of me that's still humiliated and furious and something else I refuse to name is already calculating what I could get out of this.

“And if I do this,” I say slowly, testing the words, “what's in it for me?”

That gets his attention. He raises a brow, clearly not expecting me to negotiate with a gun to my head.

“I want Maddox to pay for what he did to me,” I continue, my voice steadier now. “Publicly. The way he humiliated me.”

Something dark and satisfied moves behind his eyes. “Careful, princess. That almost sounded like you have a spine.”

“Do we have a deal or not?”

He considers me for a long moment, coffee still dripping slowly off his chin, and then he holds out his hand like this is a business transaction and not blackmail wrapped in a bad joke.

“You spy for me. I help you burn Maddox Callahan to the ground.” His grip is warm despite the night air, engulfing mine completely. “Deal?”

I should say no. Every rational part of me is screaming that this is how girls in true crime documentaries get their start.

“Deal,” I say instead.

His mouth curves, slow and wicked, like he's already won something bigger than he's telling me.

“Good girl.” He drops my hand and turns to walk back toward the car, completely unbothered, like he hasn't just ruined my entire life in the span of ten minutes. “Get in. I'll drop you home.”

I stand there a second longer, staring at the space where he'd been, my lips still tasting like caramel and my life officially no longer my own.

What did I just agree to?