Chapter 2

AUREL

I’ve been holding the same red plastic cup for an hour just so people stop handing me new ones.

"Hey man, great game," some guy I’ve never met before says, clapping me hard on the shoulder. "You were absolute fire out there."

"Thanks," I flash my practiced, easy smile. The room erupts into another chant of the North Bay Ice Bears, and I let the noise wash over me, nodding politely.

"You're doing that thing again," Finn says, dropping onto the arm of the couch beside me.

"What thing?" I turn to my best friend and housemate.

"The thing where you smile at everybody but your eyes go completely dead. It's honestly disturbing." Finn takes a sip of his drink, nodding toward the beer pong table. "You know you've said 'great game' to like nine different people in the last twenty minutes?"

"Somebody has to keep track of how weird you're being."

I don't argue with him. I take a sip of my drink just to have something to do with my face. If I drop the smile, people will ask questions, and I can't tell anyone in this house the truth: I am suffocating.

I have a Constitutional Law paper due in eleven days, and I haven't written a single word. If I fail, my father cuts off my trust fund. If I fail, I lose my spot as captain. I am drowning in everyone's expectations of the "Golden Boy," and I have absolutely no idea how to save myself.

"You should break up with Elise," Finn says casually, completely out of nowhere.

I nearly choke on my beer. "Where did that come from? We're at a party, man."

"That's exactly why it's a good time to bring it up. You can't turn it into a big dramatic thing when you can barely hear me." He shrugs. "Look, she's been talking about you like you two already broke up. It's all 'Aurel used to be more fun' and 'we're figuring things out.' Nobody says they're figuring things out unless they already figured it out."

My chest tightens. Finn is the only person who reads me this well, and I hate it. Elise and I have been running on empty for months. But the last time I tried to pull away, her mother called me from the ER at two in the morning, begging me not to upset her because she was "fragile." I can't go through that manipulation again. It’s easier to just let the relationship exist in a cold, hollow standstill.

"It's complicated," I mutter.

"It's really not. You just don't want to be the bad guy, so you're waiting around for her to pull the trigger."

The words hit entirely too close to home. I stand up, needing to escape the conversation. "I'm gonna go get some air."

I turn toward the kitchen, weaving through the crowded, sweaty living room.

And then, I freeze.

It happens in a fraction of a second. A sudden, violent jolt rocks through my entire body, starting at the base of my skull and shooting straight down my spine. The heavy bass of the party music seems to instantly mute. The chatter fades into white noise.

My heart slams against my ribs—hard, fast, and heavy, like I just skated a full-speed shift on the ice.

What the hell?

I grip my plastic cup so hard it cracks, spilling warm beer over my knuckles. I don't care. All of a sudden, my senses feel dialed up to an unbearable maximum. And slicing through the smell of cheap alcohol and sweat is a scent that makes my mouth physically water. It smells like ozone, rain, and something sharp and entirely intoxicating.

My head snaps up, my body acting on a pure, unfiltered instinct I didn't even know I possessed. My eyes lock onto her.

She is leaning against the kitchen doorframe. She is wearing a red dress that shows off long, athletic legs, her striking dark purple hair tumbling over her shoulders. But it isn't her clothes that paralyze me. It’s her eyes. They are a piercing, icy blue, and they are scanning the room with a cold, guarded intensity.

She isn't just bored. She looks like a predator stuck in a cage full of loud, oblivious prey. Something deep in the very center of my chest violently wrenches awake. A heavy, possessive warmth floods my veins. My feet are moving before my brain can issue a single command.

"Don't," Finn’s voice filters in from somewhere behind me. "You've got a girlfriend, dude. Remember last time?"

I hear him, but I can't stop. I literally cannot force my body to turn away from her.

She watches me approach. She doesn't smile. She doesn't fix her hair or try to push off the doorframe like most girls do when the hockey captain walks over. She just watches me with a flat, unimpressed stare.

"Hey, Red," I say, flashing a smile, desperate to mask the fact that my hands are inexplicably shaking.

She blinks at me, slowly. "What did you just call me?"

"Your dress." I gesture to it. "It's red. I like it."

"That's the worst thing anyone has said to me all week, and I had a conversation with Elise Beaumont this morning."

A laugh rips out of my throat before I can stop it. The sheer, blunt honesty of it hits me perfectly. Even though she doesn't laugh back, something in her icy expression shifts, just a fraction.

"You're on the swim team," I say, stepping slightly closer. Her scent is stronger now, making my head spin. "I'm Aurel."

"I'm aware of that," she says, her voice dry. "Everyone in this house is aware of that. They've been chanting it for an hour."

I open my mouth to reply, to find some way to keep her talking so I don't have to walk away from her...

But then, her eyes leave me.

She looks over my shoulder, toward the far end of the room, and her entire face changes. The guarded, bored wall drops completely. For one second, she looks like someone who just found water in a desert. She looks at someone else with pure, unadulterated interest.

A dark, vicious wave of anger crashes over me.

It is entirely irrational. It isn't a bruised ego—it feels like a territorial roar tearing through my chest. My muscles lock tight, and I have to physically fight the urge to bare my teeth at whatever guy she is looking at.

Mine, a dark, unfamiliar voice whispers in the back of my mind.

I step to the side, trying to block her line of sight, trying to force her attention back to me. "Hey, Red. Who has your attention when I'm standing right here?"

But when I turn back, she is already pushing off the doorframe.

"It was nice meeting you, Aurel," she says. Her voice is completely devoid of the interest she just showed the guy across the room.

Before I can say another word, she walks right past me.

For the first time in my entire life, I walked across a room for a girl, and she walked away toward someone else. And as I watch her go, rubbing my chest where my heart is still pounding a frantic rhythm, I realize I am in terrifying, catastrophic trouble.