Chase: You're a journalism major, right?

Bailey: I am...why?

Chase: Does that mean you're good at editing?

Bailey: What's your angle, Carter?

Chase: My history paper is a fucking tire fire.

Bailey: Wish I could help, but I don't know anything about history.

Chase: Turns out, neither do I.

Chase: Help me, James. I'm just a pretty face.

Bailey: I guess I could read it over and make sure it flows smoothly. Email it to me - [email protected]

Chase: I owe ya.

Chase: In fact, I'll give Morrison an extra hit next time we play the Bulldogs. I'll crush him for you. Like a bug.

Bailey: Oh my god, don't do that. Still Team Bulldog here, remember?

Chase: For now.

Bailey: Forever.

Chase: We'll see.

Bailey: We really won't.

Turned out that texting with Chase right before bed was a recipe for insomnia. I was way too keyed up to sleep. Given that it was Monday and I had an early class Tuesday mornings, this was a highly problematic development. I pulled out all the stops—reading a boring textbook, re-watching comfort shows, even making some chamomile tea, but nothing could calm the buzz in my body.

Finally, I took some melatonin and fell asleep sometime around midnight, only to be startled awake by a loud crash, like something falling over and hitting the ground. Probably just the neighbor's cat, who loved to prowl around on our fire escape. I sighed, rolling over in bed to find my alarm clock staring back at me with 3:12 AM in glowing red letters. Not even close to morning yet. Might as well go pee while I was up.

Sliding out from underneath the covers, I shuffled to my door and down the hall with my eyes half-closed, over to our single shared bathroom. As I was trying to enter, the door swung open and I ran smack into a large male body trying to exit.

I jumped back, trying to figure out who was standing in front of me in the moonlit hall.

Then I realized it wasn't Eddie or Paul.

It was my brother.

What in the actual hell?

"Oh my god!" I put a hand to my chest, heart racing like I was watching a game in overtime. "Derek, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Shhh," he said, gently grabbing my arm. "Keep it down."

"You're in my hallway in the middle of the night and you're shushing me?" I yell-whispered. "I want an explanation."

Derek leaned closer, voice low. "Can we go downstairs at least?"

"Fine," I hissed.

He turned, heading down the stairs with me following behind. I flipped on the light over the stove, getting a glass of water while he sank into a stool at the island, slumping over the laminate counter. I could pee later; right now I needed to know what the hell was going on.

"Explain." I leaned over the counter, pinning him with my stare.

He lifted his head, looking up at me with his brows knit together. His dark blond hair stood up everywhere, dark circles beneath his brown eyes. He looked like he'd just woken up after a night of terrible sleep. His throat bobbed.

"I was...with Jill."

"What?!" The glass I was holding nearly slid out of my hand.

I mean, knew something suspicious was afoot, but hearing him say it out loud was a different story entirely.

"Would you keep your voice down?" He glanced at the stairs nervously. "No one is supposed to know."

But I bet Amelia did.

I stared at him, my breath growing faster. A whirlwind of hurt, betrayal, disappointment, anger and other unidentifiable emotions swirled in my gut.

"How could you—How could she—" I shook my head. "I mean, I don't understand. Eddie is your friend."

"I know." Derek glanced down, jaw clenched. "It's complicated."

"I'm sure it is. How long has this been going on?"

He looked back up at me and shrugged, guilt all over his face. "Since August?"

"You mean this has been happening for months? What hell, Derek? That's so shady."

Then it hit me. Oh my god. I bet it happened at Paul's parents' cottage. After a huge blowout fight with Jill on Friday afternoon, Eddie stormed off and went back to the city instead of staying at the lake house for the weekend with the rest of us.

Jill had been really upset, crying and taking it hard, but then she'd gone to bed early. Then my brother had done the same not long after.

And they had always, always flirted.

"I know."

"She's using you," I said, anger beginning to overtake my other emotions. I knew Derek was a grown adult, but it still pissed me off. "I don't know what for, but something. It's not like her motivations can possibly be innocent here. You're a side piece."

And now I had to look at her every day pretending I didn't know this? How twisted was that? How many people did know, and were covering it up? Had Luke known too and not told me?

He blew out a heavy sigh. "I have feelings for her, okay? It's not that simple."

"You're an accomplice to a crime," I snapped, placing my glass in the dishwasher.

I had always sort of suspected he had a crush on Jill. But I didn't know it ran so deep that he would compromise his morals and ethics, potentially hurting one of his friends—and teammates—in the process.

As for Jill, she'd always been kind of self-centered. But I didn't expect this from her, either.

"What about you?" Derek's expression turned harsh. "Carter?"

"I didn't know he had a girlfriend. What's her name?"

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

My skin prickled at his tone. Of course I knew he meant, I just didn't care.

He added, "Carter is one of our worst enemies, B. Me, the whole team."

"Oh, grow up," I said. "It's just hockey."

"Hockey is one of the most important things in my life. You don't even respect that anymore."

"You're literally helping someone cheat and you're trying to give me grief about a consensual relationship between two single people?" I said, gesturing angrily. "And what it's worth, Chase has been ten times nicer to me than your best buddy Luke ever was. Or you lately, for that matter."

"I know I've been a shit." He sighed again, shaking his head. "I've been so preoccupied with this Jill stuff that my head has been up my ass."

I crossed my arms, leveling him with an icy glare. "I'm glad we can agree on something."

"I've been avoiding everyone because I'm scared it'll come out." He sounded sad, like he wanted me to feel sorry for him, but he was the creator of his own problems. It wasn't like him to play the victim like this.

"As you should be," I said. "Why doesn't Jill just break up with Eddie? Please don't tell me this is about hockey. Are you scared it'll mess up his game?"

It was sad that I needed to ask that, but I did. Hockey came before everything else for the team, even personal relationships. It was totally within the realm of possibility that they'd cover this up to preserve their goalie.

"It's more complicated than that."

I arched an eyebrow. "Do tell."

Derek glanced over at the stairs again, leaning in closer and lowering his voice until it was barely audible. "Last time she tried to end things with him, he threatened to kill himself."

My stomach lurched, eyes widening. I blinked, trying to process what he just said. "That's messed up."

"I know," he muttered.

Though, as terrible as it was of me to think, part of me wondered if it was true. If this intel came from Jill, I wasn't totally sure it could be trusted. She was playing puppeteer with my brother like a pro.

"If that's true, he needs help." I drained my water, setting it down. "Her staying with him is like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot."

"I know," he said again, but he sounded defeated.

I studied his face in the shadowy light. Our mother's eyes, father's nose, same hair color as me. Never did I think he would do this.

"I don't even know what to say to you right now. I'm just super disappointed. This is wrong and you know it."

"You aren't going to tell anyone, are you?"

"No." I shook my head. "But I hope you wise up and do the right thing. I'm going to bed. Lock the front door handle behind you, please."

*

After we texted Monday evening, Chase sent me a copy of his essay and scammed me into coming over to help him with it the following day. And by scammed, I mean he was both incredibly charming and insufferably persistent until I relented. In other words, impeccably on-brand for him.

That's not to say I minded. But that was a whole other ball of hockey stick wax.

Plus, it was a nice distraction from my rapidly disintegrating social life and the new Derek-Jill revelation.

And so, I found myself in Chase's bedroom for the second time recently, albeit under dramatically different circumstances. A bedroom that held the delicious, lingering leather-vanilla scent of his cologne, which made me think he'd likely applied said cologne before leaving to pick me up.

Combined with the fact that I changed my outfit three times at home while waiting for him and even applied lip gloss on my way out the door, there were some major questions as to what, exactly, we were doing.

But I wasn't sure I was ready to know the answer.

I perched on the end of the bed across from the computer desk, rifling through my backpack for printout I'd marked up with my suggestions.

Chase straddled the computer chair facing me and turned his red Falcons baseball cap backward, waiting.

"I made a few edits." I handed him a copy of his paper, corrections and suggestions marked in red ink. Using track changes within Word would have been less work for both of us, but this way he had to do more of the heavy lifting by inputting the changes manually, rather than accepting them all with one click of a mouse button.

While I didn't mind helping him, I wasn't going to enable him, either.

Chase scanned the front page, glancing back up at me with his dark eyes wide, like a deer in headlights. "Holy hell. I didn't think it was that bad."

"It's not, really. You've got some good insights and the conclusions are well-supported. It's just a little... jumbled."

"That sounds like a candy-coated way of saying it sucks."

I shrugged. "My rough drafts are messy too. You have to revise and rewrite to polish a piece."

"Ugh." He folded his arms over the back of his chair and hung his head, sighing dramatically. His forearms flexed, veins tracing their length. I watched, mesmerized for a split second. Since when did I develop a thing for forearms? And were his hands always that big?

"That sounds like so much work."

"That's sort of the point of schoolwork, Carter."

Chase was a top-notch grinder—one of the grittiest players on the Falcons, known for his physical gameplay. He made life hell for our defense, cleared bodies out of the way for snipers to score, and won puck battles more often than not. For someone who was a powerhouse on the ice, he was awfully lazy when it came to school. I could tell he was intelligent; he just needed to apply himself a little.

"Not gonna lie, it's incredibly hard to give a fuck about any of this knowing this won't matter down the road."

"It matters now," I said. "I thought you said you were on probation."

"I am. Dicks." Chase rolled his eyes.

"Plus, what if you need to finish your degree later? You never know. You could get injured or something."

"If that happens, I'll bigger problems than a lacking a degree. I'm basically unemployable in any other capacity." Chase raised his dark eyebrows. "Can you picture me wearing khakis working in some cubicle, James?"

"No," I admitted.

"And let's face it," he said. "I'm way too corruptible to be something like a cop. So, for the greater good of society, let's polish this turd of a paper and help me keep my grades up enough to stay on the team. I have to get signed. It's that or homelessness for me, there is no in-between."

I shifted, criss-crossing my legs. "Anyone ever tell you that you're a tad dramatic?"

"I prefer to think of it as having a zest for life." His mouth tugged at the corners.

"You have something, that's for sure."

Chase got a gleam in his eyes that I couldn't identify, other than to say he was definitely up to no good.

"You're going to stay for little bit while I work on this, right?" He lowered his voice, which I was starting to realize was an intentional tactic to get into my head...or maybe my pants. And yet, even knowing that, the voice totally worked. At least on the first part. Possibly a little bit of the second.

Maybe being in his bedroom wasn't a good idea after all.

I raised an eyebrow, pretending like I wasn't having all kinds of inappropriate thoughts. "Well, you picked me up so I'm not sure I have a choice."

"That's true." He nodded. "Do any of us really have a choice? Or is free will just an illusion?"

"I actually do have an exam to study for, so if you want company, no need to get all philosophical on me. All you have to do is ask."

I grabbed my textbook and binder, scooting back on the bed until I was sitting against the headboard. Not like I was all that eager to spend time at home, anyway. Things were tense with Amelia and Jillian, and they were downright hostile when Paul was there, which was several days a week. Lately, I felt like a stranger in my own home.

"You're the best." He spun around to face the computer, cracking his knuckles and stretching his neck. "I'm going to bang this out in no time."

I suppressed a laugh as I bit back a dirty jokethat leapt to mind, and I wondered if I'd been spending too much time withChase after all.

I guess that's what was up with Jill the other morning. Shady, shady.

Is this a date in study date clothing?