The other kiss, from the man who hated me. And it had set me on fire.
4
JAY
PRESENT DAY
“This cell is fucking grim.” Dan prodded the bottom of the wall with the toe of his Air Jordan. “I thought I was misremembering how bad they were, but they’re actually worse. Don’t ya think, Banks?”
I sighed heavily. “Still not my name, as I told you the last time you tried to make it work, when we were—what were we? Seventeen or eighteen? Nor is it ‘Coins’ or ‘Moneybags’ or whatever the fuck else you’re trying to make stick this week.”
“I thought Crypto was a good one, but let’s stick with Banks. It’s been that all summer, and it suits you.” Before I could respond with a cutting remark, he nudged me, glancing over at Ryker, who was staring down at the bed with a blank expression. We both grimaced, and Dan cleared his throat. “Shit, King. I can’t believe your dad made you come back here for another year instead of you moving into the hockey house.”
Ryker bit down hard on his bottom lip, and I noticed hishands flex at his sides before he gave a deliberately casual shrug. “Someone’s gotta keep control of this place. No one else can do the shit I do. Don’t forget Volkov’s in here too. My dad wants me to keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah, why is Volkov still here? Probably a Bratva thing.” Dan scraped the side of his shoe against a crumbling bit of wall, sending a small shower of dust to the stone floor.
My jaw clenched like it did every time his name was mentioned, but I forced that aside. He was my teammate, and I’d done well at separating my teammate from Nova’s future fiancé in my head last year. I couldn’t crack now. “I think so, yeah,” I managed. From what I’d heard, Volkov’s family believed in the tough-love approach, and honestly, compared to some of the stories I’d heard about growing up in the Bratva in Eastern Europe, he was getting off lightly.
“Meanwhile, we get the Cranham Kings’ hockey house.” Dan glanced over at Ryker, dropping his playful smile. He gave me a pointed look as he slung his arm across our friend’s shoulders. “Hey, mate. We’ve saved you a room, okay? Volks will be done with his degree after this year, and then there’ll be no reason for you to stay here overnight to keep an eye on him. You only have to get through two semesters. You’re our king of Kings, y’know, cos you’re the captain, and that means you can sleep over at ours whenever you want.”
He muttered something under his breath that I didn’t catch, but eventually, he nodded, and I forced a smile. “Yeah. That room belongs to you. No one else. Everyone knows it.”
“Yeah.” Ryker straightened up, shaking off Dan’s arm. “Leave me to get settled in, and I’ll see you down at the rink, yeah?”
We took the hint, leaving him to it. As we made our way out of North Wing, Dan jabbed his thumb back towardsRyker’s door. “I’m fucking glad to be out of there, but I feel bad about leaving him in there alone.”
“I bet you’re glad. You get to antagonise Lincoln Bellingham whenever you want, now you’re not stuck behind the prison walls.”
He turned to me with an outraged expression. “It’s not antagonising! It’s doing the Lord’s work. My family’s counting on me to make his life as hellish as possible.”
“Which you love to do because you’re a psycho.”
“Says who?”
“Says everyone who knows that you only eat the red gummy bears. That’s a sign.”
“It is not.”
We bickered all the way to our new accommodation, which was just outside the prison grounds. While the majority of the original prison still remained, and all the parts that did had been repurposed when it had been converted to a university, there had been a number of significant changes. One of the walls had been partially removed, allowing easier access to the main university campus and a new car park, and, in the other direction, there was a new access point to the student houses outside of the walls—one of which was officially designated as the hockey house. Despite the conversion, much of the barbed wire still remained around the tops of the fences and the walls, and there were bars covering the windows of all the rooms in the accommodation wings. It was like they never wanted us to forget that we were in a former prison.
I unlocked the door to the hockey house, ushering Dan inside before I followed him in and closed the door behind us. In here, outside the walls, we could almost pretend we were normal students in an ordinary university.
Almost. When we entered the kitchen, I stopped dead. Volkov was standing at the island, blending a smoothie.
“What are you doing here?” I ground out, instantly wishing I could take the words back when everyone turned to me.
Volkov’s brows rose slowly. “Making a smoothie.” He nodded towards the blender. “Do you have a problem with that?”
I have a problem with you.
Everyone was still looking at me, and I needed to cover my tracks. Shoving my hands into my pockets, I leaned back against the wall, affecting a casual pose. “I mean, shouldn’t you be settling into your room or whatever?”
A smirk tugged at his lips. “Already done.” The bastard knew I didn’t like him, but he was completely unconcerned. In his eyes, he was untouchable, thanks to his Bratva connections and alliance with the Thorpes, while I was someone expendable. I was only here because of my dad, after all.
“Glad to hear it.” I turned on my heel, pushing past Neo Clayton, another of my teammates, and headed straight for the stairs so I could escape to my new bedroom.
As long as Anton Volkov never found out why I disliked him, I’d be okay.
