Page 8 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 1

I jerked my chin in reply.

His eyes blazed with fury, although I wasn’t exactly sure what he was fuming about. Still, his gaze slid down my bare torso as he came down to the ground floor, then passed inches away from me. The large, open plan floor included a spacious common room and a kitchen with a massive island. I pulled back behind it, leaving him on the other side, but I could feel his gaze on the back of my head. It was as though he was deliberately moving slowly just so the weight of his staring would burden me.

I pretended not to notice and got busy replacing the filter in the coffee maker.

Riley’s steady movement behind my back flustered me, but I pursed my lips and poured water into the tank, then searched for coffee in the cabinets. He wasn’t leaving. Instead, he just stared at me from the other side of the long kitchen island. The longer he stared, the clumsier I got with the cabinets.

“What?” I asked, shutting one of the cabinets and opening the next, where I finally found the precious powder.

“What ‘what?’” His voice was rough and groggy. Was this seriously the first thing he did in the morning? A jog? Jesus Christ, what a show-off.

I exhaled, shut the lid on the coffee maker, and pressed the button our lives depended on. Then, as calmly as I could, I turned on my heels and faced him. “Wipe your chin, Riley. You’re drooling.”

His cheeks burst into flames and his black eyebrows contorted. “You’re such an asshole.”

“You’re the one who’s staring,” I taunted. It wasn’t like I expected a warm welcome when my move here became imminent. I’d always known that being around Riley was a necessary evil. And I had accepted it as the price of a second chance at greatness.

“It’s just beyond me that you would do this,” he said in a restrained tone.

“Actually, having coffee first thing is a very common habit throughout the world.” Mine was dripping merrily into the glass pot.

“Ha-fucking-ha.” He added a slow clap for good measure. “I’m talking about transferring to Northwood in your final year. What’d you do, Cam? Ran someone over in Santa Barbara?”

My face flattened and eyes deadened. “Cameron.”

Riley rolled his eyes. “Eminent Mister Martinez.”

“No. Cameron is enough,” I pointed out. I wasn’t a child anymore and Riley had no reason to use my shortened name. Cam had been a different person. Cam had been a coward. Cam had let other people push him around for way too long.

“That fact you’re not answering makes me think it’s worse than that,” Riley said, crossing his arms on his broad chest.

“One, you have no idea who I am or what I went through. Two, we’re not friends anymore, Riley, so don’t bother. And three, aren’t you on your way out?” I turned away from him after counting it on my fingers and watched my coffee dripping.

“You come onto my team and cram yourself into my house, after years of silence, and you expect me to just…go along? You’re ridiculous. And worse, you are cruel.” His tight voice was enough to pull me back around.

“Why am I cruel? Because I don’t want to share my business with someone I knew in high school?” I knew that this stung. But it was better for him to learn this lesson early on.

“That right there,” Riley said, his voice audibly hurt. “That’s what’s cruel, Cameron. I’m not just someone you knew in high school am I?”

“What would you call it?” I asked in an expressionless tone.

“I dunno, Cam,” he huffed and I winced. For a moment, I thought he was taunting me, but then I realized he wasn’t even aware. “Someone you knew in high school sounds about right.”

There was silence for a while and I filled it by pouring coffee into my mug. It was too hot to drink right away, so I stared at it before lifting my gaze to meet his. “Aren’t you supposed to bring me up to speed around here?” It was a cheap trick to get this conversation moving and get Riley to leave.

Something went out in his eyes and he stared at me in silence for a moment. Then, he pointed his finger away from us. “Rink’s that way,” he said, then dragged his finger to the right. “Gym’s that way. Consider yourself at full speed.”

“Great job, Captain.” The sneer in my tone was unmistakable, but it did the job. Riley stormed to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and rushed out of the house for his morning run.

The first half of the day went by uneventfully. Despite Riley’s half-assed directions, I found the rink without problems. It wasn’t like Santa Barbara, where all the facilities were scattered around the city. This campus was a city of its own. Or, at the very least, a town. If I never left it for the rest of the year, I wouldn’t get to explore all of it. Not that I was Dora the goddamn Explorer looking for adventure. At most, I might look into bringing a guy or ten over once in a while.

Old habits die hard.

Drills were nothing to write home about that day. Coach Murray did several rounds of pairing us up to practice standard moves and maneuvers. We were trying out each other’s positions, which resulted in me playing defense most of the morning. It wasn’t my preferred position. I didn’t have it in me to wait in the back and protect the ground. I was an attacker by nature or design. My place was in the thick of it, hard checking and getting myself into danger. I’d been badly bruised more times than I could count, and still, the warmth of swelling flesh was the most comforting sensation I knew.

So to say that I underperformed today would be the understatement of the century.

On the bright side, I lowered everyone’s expectations so that our first scrimmage next week might bring a few surprises. I also knew that these drills with swapped positions weren’t all that important. Not when the true battle of wills and skills began. The idea was to broaden your understanding and have the basic set of skills for emergencies. And those boxes I checked.