Charm made a sound so rude it barely qualified as human. “You’ve been thinking about it since Simpson assigned it.”
“I have not.”
Aura’s head appeared around the closet door. “You wrote his name in the margin of your syllabus.”
I froze with one arm halfway through the sleeve.
Charm’s grin turned lethal. “You wrote his name?”
“It was for academic purposes.”
“You wrote Cade Mercer’s name in the margin and called it education. That is the sluttiest thing you’ve done since sophomore year.”
I shoved my other arm through the sleeve and yanked the shirt down. “I hate both of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Aura said calmly. “You need us. Without us, you’d wear oversized hockey hoodies to parties and pretend you don’t notice six-foot-four hockey captains staring at you like you’re the answer to a question they’re too emotionally repressed to ask.”
The room went hot for a second.
Charm’s mouth fell open. “Aura, that was terrifying.”
“It was truth.”
“It was poetry.”
“It was evidence.”
I turned toward the mirror because looking at them was dangerous when they were like this, all sharp smiles and sister energy, ganging up on me with love disguised as harassment. The black top did look better. Of course it did. It skimmed instead of swallowed, soft enough to look casual but fitted enough that I could already hear Charm taking credit for Cade’s imaginary reaction.
“He doesn’t stare at me like that,” I said.
Charm stood, abandoning her pizza crust on a napkin like a woman preparing for war. “Bliss.”
“What?”
She came up behind me in the mirror and met my eyes through the reflection. “That man looks at you like he’s mentally removing everyone else from the room for efficiency.”
Aura nodded from the closet. “Very organized obsession. Honestly, on brand for him.”
My stomach did the stupid fluttery thing I refused to name because naming things made them real, and Cade Mercer did not need to be real in that way. He was a human-interest subject. A good idea. A year-long project centered around identity and public image and the carefully curated mythologysurrounding college athletes who walked through campus like they’d been built by donor money, ego, and people telling them yes too often.
Which honestly made him perfect for the assignment.
Athletes were performers before they were people half the time. I’d spent most of my life around them. My brothers. Their teammates. The endless rotation of cocky boys raised on attention, competition, and the certainty that rules somehow bent softer for them. Hockey players were the worst of all. Beautiful, worshipped, emotionally allergic to accountability, and somehow always shocked when girls eventually got tired of being treated like temporary entertainment.
My ex-boyfriend Luke had confirmed everything I already thought I knew. He was the poster child for what happened when charm gave a man access he never should’ve had.
Which was exactly why Cade Mercer could never be a real possibility.
Interesting? Absolutely.
Attractive? Unfortunately.
But actually date an athlete? Fuck no. A hockey player? Hard fucking no. You know that trend where women say whether they’d trust a bear or a man?
I will always trust the bear.
Besides, Cade was not a crush and definitely not the reason my pulse had started acting weird every time I imagined walking into Hockey House tonight and seeing him there, calm and unreadable, probably leaning against a counter like the entire party had formed around his boredom.
