My hoodie suddenly feels too hot.
I pull it off, but even the T-shirt I’m wearing underneath feels cloying and tight.
Gripping on my skin.
Constraining me.
Like I can’t. Fucking. Escape.
I tell Weston I need a sec to myself, and I start to walk away. But across the room, it only takes another minute before things become colossally worse.
Oliver Ashford is here.
Oliver.
Oliverfucking Ashford.
When I see him at the corner of the room, it’s as if someone’s pushing on that deep, dark bruise until the skin fucking breaks.
My former high school hockey rival is apparently an Onyx member.
He’s in an expensive-looking dark blazer with a crisp white collared shirt underneath. I haven’t seen Oliver in nearly a year, and his light brown hair has grown out a little. He has natural sun-bleached highlights now, and he looks like he belongs in a catalog.
All fucking perfect, as usual.
I see him before he sees me, and for a split second I consider running.
Getting far away from here before Oliver realizes I’m here.
But he turns a moment later, and then those green eyes are on me.
And he comescloser.
He has the fucking nerve to approach me, after everything that happened?
Something fizzes in my blood.
The top few buttons of his fancy shirt are undone, and I can see a little constellation of freckles at the top of his chest. Little mottled brown marks, like someone flicked a paintbrush over his tan skin.
Memories flood back in, things that I thought I shoved away when high school came to a bitter end.
“Niko,” he says as he approaches me. “Was wondering when you’d get here.”
He’s tall.
Strong.
The shy, quiet version of Oliver Ashford has been replaced with someone who looks right at home among these elite frat jocks.
I cock my head to the side. “YouknewI was coming?”
“Gotten in any fistfights yet?” he asks me. “Maybe out in the parking lot?”
I feel my fingers twitch.
I’m two seconds away from snapping.
Stay cool.
