Chapter 1
Lennox
The espresso machine hates me.
I'm convinced it's sentient and has decided that six in the morning is the perfect time to stage a rebellion. It sputters, hisses, and sprays scalding water directly onto my hand.
"Fuck!" I yank my hand back, shaking it out.
"Language," Isla calls from the register, but she's smiling. "Customers can hear you."
"Customers can deal with it. This machine is possessed."
"It's temperamental. There's a difference." She finishes ringing up a bleary-eyed freshman and comes over to help. "Here, let me."
I step aside and watch Isla work her magic. Within thirty seconds, the machine is purring like a satisfied cat, producing perfect espresso shots.
"How do you do that?"
"Practice. Patience. Not screaming profanities at inanimateobjects." She hands me the completed latte. "Table six."
I deliver the drink and the morning rush is in full swing. Students desperate for caffeine before eight AM classes. Professors who haven't learned that nothing good happens before nine. The occasional townie who wanders in looking confused by all the Thornhill merchandise.
This is my life now. Six to ten every morning, slinging coffee to pay for the journalism degree I'm barely keeping afloat after losing my soccer scholarship freshman year.
Not bitter. Not at all.
"You look exhausted," Isla observes during a rare lull around eight-thirty.
"I was up until two finishing an article." I pour myself an espresso shot and down it like medicine. "Had to rewrite it three times because Mitchell keeps saying it's 'too aggressive.'"
Mitchell is my editor atThe Thornhill Tribune, the campus newspaper where I've been working my ass off to prove I belong. He's brilliant and infuriating in equal measure.
"What was the article about?"
"The hockey team. Specifically, their toxic masculinity problem and how the university enables it."
Isla's eyes widen. "Lennox. That's?—"
"Journalistic integrity? Truth-telling? My job?"
"Brave or possibly suicidal." She lowers her voice. "Carter Lynch is not someone you want to piss off."
Carter fucking Lynch. Thornhill's golden boy. Hockey captain, campus royalty, walking cliché of everything wrong with elite sports culture. He's also the primarysubject of my article, though I was careful to make it about the culture, not just him.
Doesn't matter. He's going to take it personally.
"I'm not afraid of some overgrown jock with an ego problem."
"You should be. He has influence. Friends in high places and from what I've heard, he doesn't handle criticism well."
"Then he shouldn't create cultures where freshmen get hazed until they puke or where women are treated like accessories. Or where academic standards mysteriously don't apply." I wipe down the counter with more force than necessary. "Someone needs to call it out."
"And that someone is you."
"That someone is me."
Isla sighs. "Just be careful. Sebastian told me about the hockey team, they protect their own and Carter especially, he's got a reputation."
