Chapter 2 He Kissed Me First

ARES'S POV

Found you.

Forty-three seconds in and I’d already scored. Not bad for the new kid everyone had been talking about all week.

Trouble. Attitude. Don’t get comfortable.

They had no idea.

I hopped the boards and dropped onto the far end of the bench, legs stretched out, helmet still on, sweat running down my back under the pads. Bigger rink than my last school. Brighter lights, louder crowd. Division I. The real deal. None of it mattered. The only thing in the building worth looking at was two seats over, trying hard not to notice me.

Ethan Drake.

Captain. Golden boy. Face on every poster in the student center. The guy who kissed me like the world was ending last summer and then disappeared before I even got his name.

I flexed my fingers inside the gloves and looked over. He stared straight ahead, shoulders locked under the red and white, gloves clamped on the boards. Number 19. Hadn’t looked at me once since that half-second on the ice.

He still felt me watching. I made sure of it.

The scar on my lower lip tugged when I smirked. Still there. Still mine. Thin silver line where his teeth caught me—cheap vodka, string lights, his fists twisted in my shirt like he was drowning and I was the only solid thing left. He was drunk. I wasn’t.

I remember every second.

Bass thumping through the walls. Rain on the windows. Some guy in the corner laughing too loud. Ethan pressed against me on that basement wall, eyes half-closed, breath sharp with vodka and something sweeter underneath. His hand fisted my collar like he meant to shove me away but pulled me in instead.

“Who are you?” he’d whispered, mouth already on mine.

“Whoever you need me to be.”

Then he kissed me. Hard. Desperate. Like he’d waited his whole life for somebody to give him permission and finally ran out of patience.

I’d kissed plenty of people before him. Nobody kissed me like that.

By morning he was gone. No name, no number. Just a Ridgewood hockey bag half-buried behind a couch and ten blurry seconds some girl filmed before I took her phone. You could see the bag. You could see how he held onto me. His face never made the frame—too dark down there—but I didn’t need his face. I had the number sticking out of that bag.

Nineteen.

A year of looking for him. Twelve months of rosters and highlight reels and team photos until my eyes burned. Two transfers. Every bridge behind me burned. All of it to land me on this bench, two seats from the only person I’d ever wanted this bad, watching him act like I was a stranger.

He didn’t flinch when they called my name. Didn’t react when I scored. Didn’t blink when I sat down close enough to touch his knee.

If the guy in that basement only existed when he was drunk, I’d burned my whole life down chasing somebody who was never real. I flexed my hands inside the gloves until they steadied, then shoved the thought away. Looking untouchable was the one thing I did better than anybody.

Coach Harlan clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Nice goal, Cole. Keep that fire.”

“Working on it, Coach.” Flat. Easy. I’d had a lot of practice sounding like that—after a teammate at my last school outed me for laughs, after the scholarship went, after twelve months of packing boxes. Armor, built piece by piece. Tattoos up both arms. A mouth that cut first. A reputation that told people to back off.

Worked every time.

Whistle. Next shift. I stayed down two minutes and watched Ethan work the ice—good, better than good, clean passes, hard checks, guys moving the second he pointed. But his eyes kept flicking my way and yanking back like I was a hot stove. After a missed shot his stick came down harder than the ice deserved.

He was losing the fight to hide it. Good.

Coach tapped my shoulder and I was already up. “Cole—you’re running with Drake’s line. Let’s see it.”

I vaulted the boards and hit the ice smooth. The crowd kicked up. I didn’t check the Jumbotron. I could feel Ethan’s stare on the back of my neck the whole way to center.

He lined up straight across from me, close enough that I caught the salt on his sweat and the wax off his tape. His eyes met mine for the first time since the goal—blue, sharp, every wall up. No smile. No welcome. Captain mask bolted on.

I let the slow half-smile slide across my face. The scar tugged.

The ref dropped the puck.

I won the draw clean, because I wanted him to feel exactly how easy it was. Puck on my tape, I spun past their center and carried it up ice. Ethan matched me stride for stride like he had something to prove. I could’ve passed to him. Probably should’ve. I wanted to see what he’d do if I pushed instead.

Faked left, cut right, drove the boards. He read it perfect and threw the shoulder. I took the hit on purpose—half a second of him flush against me, solid and warm through all that gear, and my whole body remembered that basement before my head could catch up and stop it. His mouth falling apart on mine. Same heat. Wrong building.

I spun off the check and fed Asher Kane clean off my tape. Kane buried it. 5–1. Horn. The crowd losing its mind.

I tapped gloves down the line like a good teammate. But when Ethan skated past toward the bench, I let my blade graze his calf—just enough.

He jolted.

“Good hit, Captain,” I said, low enough for only him.

His head snapped around, eyes wide for half a second before the mask slammed back down. “Stay in your lane, rookie.”

I laughed, quiet. “My lane’s wherever you are tonight.”

His eyes cut to the bench—Asher cracking up at something Coach said, the rest of the guys chugging water and arguing defense, nobody watching—and his hand tightened on his stick. He didn’t step back. He didn’t look away. Neither of us did one thing about how close we were standing to something we couldn’t take back.

He didn’t answer. Just skated harder.

I followed him in and sat down right beside him this time, shoulders almost touching. The bench was packed and loud, helmets getting slapped, plays getting yelled. Nobody noticed his thigh go rock-hard against mine.

He didn’t move away.

There you are, Drake.

I pulled off a glove and wiped my face. The tattoos caught the arena lights—black constellations up my forearm, inked after my old team turned on me, proof the sky didn’t fall just because people saw who I really was. I wondered if he’d noticed them yet.

The game ended 5–2 and we filed toward the tunnel. Ethan two steps ahead, shoulders square, every inch the untouchable golden boy—until he glanced back once, just once, and our eyes locked.

He looked away fast.

The locker room doubled the noise. Pads coming off, goals getting replayed, somebody’s speaker fighting the showers. I found my stall, dropped my helmet, started unlacing. The scar throbbed and I ran my tongue over it without thinking.

“Cole.” His voice cut through all of it. Three stalls down, jersey off, pads half-undone, chest still flushed from the ice, hair dark with sweat, his hands too busy with a buckle that was already open. “Good shift.”

I held his eyes. “Thanks, Captain. You set me up clean on that second one.”

He didn’t smile. “Team game. We go up together.”

“Or we go down together,” I said, lifting one shoulder. “Depends how honest we decide to be.”

For one second his face forgot every rule it had. Then he turned back to his stall too fast and yanked at a pad like it had personally wronged him.

I pulled my practice jersey over my head. Let him look.

I wasn’t here to make this easy for him. I was here until he stopped running from what he wanted and admitted I was his.

After the game, Coach Harlan called us both into his office. Expectations, chemistry, first line with Drake by next week if I kept producing. Ethan stood rigid beside me and nodded at all the right moments and gave all the right answers, voice ironed flat, eyes fixed on Coach like I wasn’t even in the room. Captain mode. I knew it on sight by now.

“Coffee?” Coach gestured at the pot on his filing cabinet. “Either of you?”

“No thanks,” Ethan said.

“I’m good,” I added.

Coach leaned back. “Cole, you’ll be in Drake’s room starting tonight. Drake, I expect you to get him up to speed—systems, schedules, team culture. You two figure out your rhythm, and we’ll be unstoppable by playoffs.”

Ethan didn’t react. Didn’t so much as blink. Whatever this was going to cost him, he’d already decided not to let it show in here.

“Got it,” he said. Already halfway to the door.

“Dismissed.”

I followed him out. The arena had gone quiet—most of the guys off to the dorms or the bars—just the overheads buzzing and the Zamboni humming somewhere out on the ice. His footsteps cracked off the concrete, picking up speed, like distance was going to fix this.

I let him get ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty.

Then I stopped walking.

“So…”

He froze.

The hallway stretched between us, and his shoulders rose and fell on a breath I could see from twenty feet away. He didn’t turn around.

I took one step. Then another. Slow. The same glide I’d used to score on him in front of three thousand people.

“Coach mentioned the housing situation, by the way,” I said. “Looks like we’re sharing a room, Drake. Starting tonight.”

His back went stiff, slow, from the bottom up. “Okay. Cool.”

He turned to walk off again, and I couldn’t stop myself.

“Do you really not remember me?”