Spiral (Off the Ice, #2) (109)
I offer Aleena breakfast, but she only shakes her head in response before walking out the front door. I smile to myself. There is nothing better than a one-night stand who doesn’t try to be your girlfriend after.
Eli watches the exchange with raised brows. “That’s a first.”
“What is?”
“It’s past ten. You’ve never had a girl stay that long. Did you finally find the one?” His eyes widen with a grin that I’d like to punch off his face.
“I fell asleep last night before we got to do anything. It was only right.”
“How chivalrous,” he says dryly. “You’ve been exhausted lately. Think you need to cut back?”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. Elias Westbrook, “Eli,” as everyone knows him, and I have known each other since we were in diapers. His worry doesn’t irritate me like everyone else’s because I know he says it with great caution, and I must really be cutting it close with practice and school if he’s saying something. “I’m fine. I’ve made it work for this long; what’s a few more months?”
He doesn’t seem to like that answer, though he only nods and plates his eggs.
“Sick party, guys.” An early-morning straggler walks out of the house wearing just boxers, the rest of his clothes dangling from his arm. The pin on his jacket tells me he’s one of Dylan’s fraternity brothers.
Dylan is the only one out of us who is part of a frat. Kappa Sigma Zeta treats him like royalty, and although he lives with us, he could easily have the master suite in the Greek Row house. But according to him, having to be in the same house as the “ass-kissing freshmen” is the last thing he wants.
I eat a spoonful of oatmeal. “Where are the rest of the guys?”
Eli scrolls through his phone and shows me the screen. It’s a picture of Kian passed out on the grass at the front entrance of our campus. Behind him, the monument of Sir Davis Dalton is trashed. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping there is a simple explanation for this. Maybe a really good Photoshop job. “Who took that?”
“Benny Tang.”
I pause mid-bite. “Yale’s goalie? What was he doing here?” Having Yale come here after we slaughtered them in a game before winter break would be the worst possible scenario. The last thing I remember before heading upstairs was telling Dylan to shut it down soon. Clearly, he didn’t listen.
“Might wanna ask Dylan. I wasn’t here.”
Of course he wasn’t. If Eli, the only other responsible one, hadn’t been at the party, that means the two overgrown children, Dylan and Kian, were in charge.
This all started when they lost a bet last semester that has us throwing the majority of the parties on campus. The parties we don’t throw, we have to provide the booze. When I found out, I had both of them benched for two games straight.
Despite everything, I’m hoping this is a nightmare and I’m still in bed with Aleena. “And do I wanna know where Dylan is?” I ask cautiously.
When Eli picks up his phone again, I groan.
He chuckles. “I’m kidding, dude. He’s passed out in the living room.”
“IT WAS ME.”
Every eye in the room zeroes in on me, and I regret ever learning how to speak. The pounding in my head persists because Coach wanted to torture us with practice before we gathered in the media room for a mandatory meeting. The bright white of the rink had sent my headache doubling in pain. I don’t drink often, and my body never lets me forget when I do, so today was no exception. Everything was intensified, including Kian’s loud voice, which spewed paranoia about why Coach called a meeting. The kid woke up with grass stains on his body and still wondered what was happening.
When Coach Kilner entered, he was fuming, his pale skin glowing red. He even knocked the hats off the heads of the juniors, who immediately cowered to the back row, and I began regretting my decision to sit up front. Kian and Dylan were way in the back too, hiding behind our goalies.
“A fucking party that trashed campus?” Coach yelled, and suddenly everything made sense. “Is this a fucking joke to all of you? Never in my twenty-five years of coaching have I had to deal with this kind of blatant disregard for the school code of conduct.”
That part wasn’t all true. I know for a fact that Brady Winston, the captain from the year before mine, threw a house party that landed a yearlong ban on Greek Row. The dean’s car went missing, the swim team’s pool was trashed, and all extracurriculars were canceled. So I’m pretty sure trashing the campus and vandalizing the monument of Sir Davis Dalton isn’t the worst thing to happen to the school.
“When I became a coach after years in the league,” Coach started as Devon muttered, “Here we go,” beside me, “never did I think I would be giving my senior players a lecture on throwing parties.”
“Coach, the party—”
“Shut it, Donovan,” Kilner scolded. “We are in the fucking qualifiers that will get us to the Frozen Four and you are messing around with other colleges. At this stage?”
“Yale came here. Shouldn’t they be getting the brunt of this?” asked Tyler Sampson, our alternate captain, and one of the smartest guys on the team. He’s headed to law school instead of following in his hockey superstar father’s footsteps.
“They are not my problem, you idiots are! I should have every single one of you suspended,” he says, rage pouring out of his sweat-covered forehead.