The second we turned onto Athlete Row, the bass from Hockey House hit hard enough to vibrate through the wet pavement beneath my boots.
Pink and yellow Fury lights glowed from the massive front windows, cutting through the misty northern Michigan night while bodies crowded the lawn and spilled off the wraparound porch in loud, laughing clusters. Music thundered through the open front door every time somebody went in or out, mixing with shouts, beer bottles clinking together, and the unmistakable energy of college students making terrible decisions before classes had technically even started.
Charm let out a low whistle beside me. “Okay, this is aggressively hockey.”
“This is a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Aura corrected as she counted all the underage partiers.
I laughed quietly, but my eyes moved automatically over the crowd anyway. Porch. Driveway. Windows. Street. Cars. Faces. Movement.
Safe.
At least for now.
The tension in my shoulders loosened slightly as we climbed the porch steps together, all three of us moving in instinctive formation after years of practice. Charm in front. Me in the middle. Aura behind me. Casual enough nobody else would notice it. Intentional enough that we all did.
The front door opened before we even reached it.
Briggs Lawson stood there shirtless for absolutely no reason except apparently the universe occasionally enjoyed testing women’s desire to make responsible choices.
“There they are,” he announced dramatically. “The only three girls at KFU capable of making hockey players temporarily normal.”
Charm walked straight past him into the house. “You say things like a man who has absolutely failed a drug test before.”
“Twice,” Briggs admitted proudly.
Aura shook her head. “You should not say that out loud.”
“Why? Transparency builds trust.”
I stepped into the entryway behind them and immediately got hit with warmth, music, and the overwhelming scent of beer, cologne, detergent, sweat, pizza, and whatever expensive candle some girl had apparently lit in the kitchen in a wildly optimistic attempt to make Hockey House smell less like twenty men with athletic scholarships.
The place was massive in the way athlete housing only got when donors confused sports with religion. Dark wood floors. Giant stone fireplace. Oversized sectional packed with bodies. Fury flags hanging from the walls beside framed hockey photos and old championship memorabilia. The kitchen island was already covered in alcohol, pizza boxes, chips, and enough liquor to qualify as a public safety concern.
And somehow, despite the chaos, my eyes found Cade Mercer almost instantly.
Fuck, remember the bear, Bliss.
He stood near the kitchen talking to Rider and Ryan Decker, one hand wrapped around a beer bottle while the other rested casually in the pocket of gray sweats that probably cost more than my monthly Jeep payment because rich people loved making loungewear financially threatening. Black hoodie pushed up at the sleeves. Dark hair slightly damp likehe’d showered recently. Calm expression. Sharp jaw. Entire body language screaming controlled while the house detonated around him.
Then his eyes lifted, straight to me. Warmth climbed my throat so fast it annoyed me immediately.
“Gross,” Charm whispered beside me.
I elbowed her lightly. “Stop.”
“You stop looking at him like he just stepped out of your fantasy.”
“I’m literally not.”
Aura glanced between us before her attention shifted somewhere over my shoulder and her entire expression softened.
Oh.
Oh, no.
I followed her line of sight toward the staircase where Easton Wade leaned against the railing watching her with the kind of quiet focus that made me want to throw up a little from secondhand emotional tension.
“There’s that look,” Charm muttered proudly. “The defenseman is down catastrophic.”
