Called out my father and his own for not intervening fast enough. Told two grown men, two coaches, two Alphas with decades of authority between them, that their reaction time was unacceptable and that he would not apologize for doing what they failed to do.
At twenty-three.
With a voice that sounded like it belonged to someone much older, much more certain, much less interested in performing the role of the harmless nerd the world expects him to be.
Who the hell are you, Archie Hale Rosedale?
I pull back from the door.
The shower is still running behind me, steam filling the small bathroom until the mirror fogs and the tiles grow slick beneath my bare feet. My reflection is a ghost in the condensation-covered glass, blurred and indistinct, features dissolving into the mist like a version of me that has not fully formed yet.
Might as well actually shower.
Cannot face the music with this strange stalker of a nerd while smelling like four hours of community center ice and the lingering evidence of extremely poor romantic judgment.
I strip. Oversized shirt peeled off and dropped on the tile. Sports bra following, the elastic leaving red lines across my ribs. Running shorts and underwear kicked into the corner where they land on top of a pile of training gear I have been meaning to wash since Tuesday and will probably mean to wash until Thursday.
The water is hot. Almost punishing. I stand under the spray and let it flatten my hair against my skull, let it run in rivulets down my shoulders and over the muscles of my back thatare wound so tight from the day's accumulation of stress that they feel like braided rope beneath the skin. The heat loosens them incrementally, coaxing the fibers to release their grip on a day that started with disappointment and escalated through confrontation and culminated in kissing a stranger on my mother's white bedspread.
Not a stranger.
Archie.
The coach's son. The Valenridge scholarship recipient. The quiet Alpha with the cedarwood scent and the hidden muscles and the multiple personalities his own father warns people about.
And the man currently standing in my bedroom, arms crossed, deep in thought, while I shower on the other side of a door that is not locked because I forgot to lock it because my brain is apparently operating at the cognitive capacity of a concussed goldfish.
I wash quickly. Efficiently. The specific speed-shower of an athlete who has been trained to maximize hygiene while minimizing water usage because shared locker rooms operate on a timer and luxury is for people who do not have morning skate in forty-five minutes.
Soap. Shampoo. Rinse. The scent of my body wash, peppermint and eucalyptus, fills the steam and mingles with the underlying notes of my natural pheromone profile. Fresh-cut grass emerging through the chemical overlay. Cherry blossom surfacing beneath the eucalyptus. My scent, clean and amplified by hot water and open pores, saturating the bathroom's enclosed atmosphere with an intensity that will seep under the door and into the bedroom and directly into the olfactory receptors of the Alpha standing fifteen feet from where I am naked and wet and thinking about the texture of his lower lip against my teeth.
Stop it.
Stop thinking about his lip.
Stop thinking about the way he groaned against your mouth and the pressure of his fingers on the backs of your thighs and the dimples that appeared when he grinned and the specific register his voice dropped to when he whispered Wildcard.
You have bigger concerns. You have a Valenridge envelope sitting in your room that could contain your future or your final rejection. You have a mother who just tried to sell you to a pack of middle-aged chain smokers. You have a father who is probably composing a lecture about Alpha boys in bedrooms that will be delivered over breakfast tomorrow with the intensity of a playoff halftime speech.
Focus, Sage. Prioritize. Stop letting a pair of green eyes and a cedarwood scent rearrange your entire nervous system.
I turn off the water.
Towel. Clothes. The faded black t-shirt and a pair of clean panties pulled from the bathroom cabinet where I keep emergency clothing for exactly these situations, although "these situations" have historically referred to "coming home from practice too tired to walk to the dresser" rather than "hiding from an Alpha you just kissed while your father conducts an interrogation on the other side of the wall."
I towel my hair. Pull the damp navy-and-emerald strands into a messy knot at the crown of my head. Stare at my reflection in the partially defogged mirror, where my features have resolved from ghost back into flesh: flushed cheeks, swollen lips, green eyes carrying the specific brightness that follows an adrenaline crash.
You look like a woman who just made a terrible decision and is about to walk back into the room where it happened and face the consequences with wet hair and no plan.
Classic Sage.
I take a breath.
Let it out.
Open the door.
And prepare to face the music with this strange stalker of a nerd.
