Chapter 4 Roommate From Hell

ETHAN'S POV

I didn't sleep. Not really.

Ares Cole was breathing eight feet away, and my door doesn't lock. Those were the facts I had to work with. I lay on my back and turned them over while the water stain above my bed looked down at me — brown at the edges, rotted through the middle, shaped like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from some leak nobody ever bothered to fix. Seventeen years in this room and I'd never once looked at it. By three a.m. I knew it by heart. The Keweenaw point. The long slow curve of Lake Superior.

Every creak of his mattress, every drag of the sheet across his skin, landed like a message pushed under the door. I'm right here. I know what you did.

I blinked and got the scar on his lip. Blinked again and got the locker room — that flat certainty in his voice when he said wrong answer.

At 6:47 I gave up. Feet on the carpet, quiet as I could make them. He was sprawled across the spare mattress in black boxer briefs, one tattooed arm thrown over his eyes, sheet kicked down to his waist, the ink on his chest rising and falling with every breath. I looked long enough to know I was looking. Then I grabbed sweats off the dresser and got out of there.

Hall bathroom. Teeth. The same routine I'd been running at that mirror for twelve months: one drunk night. Means nothing. Doesn't make you anything.

My own scar had mostly faded. I pressed my thumb into it anyway. Still there. Same place as his, same night — I split his lip and something split mine, and a year of saying it never happened hadn't taken either mark off.

When I came back he was up, elbows on his knees, hair a wreck from sleep. The light coming through the blinds found every line of ink across his shoulders. He gave me the crooked half-smile, the one where the scar pulls tight at the corner.

"Morning, roommate." His voice was rough. "You always bolt out like the place is on fire?"

I went to my closet. "Breakfast is at seven. My mom makes eggs. Don't be late or she'll trap you for twenty minutes about team nutrition."

"Wouldn't risk it."

He stood and stretched somewhere behind me. I pulled on a clean Wolves shirt and kept my back to him the whole time. This room had held me fine for seventeen years. One night and it fit around him instead.

I took my bag downstairs without another word.

April was setting the table, humming to herself. She crossed the kitchen and hugged me around the waist, nineteen years old and still doing it. Same strawberry shampoo she'd used since middle school.

"Morning, Captain Big Shot." She pulled back, eyes bright. "You guys killed it last night. That new guy Ares — is he even human? Those goals? And he's staying in your room? This is insane."

"Yeah." Flat. I ruffled her hair the way I always did. "It's temporary. Don't make it a thing."

Too late for that. Her cheeks went pink just saying his name. I wrapped both hands around my coffee mug and held on. April still believed her big brother had it all together. The guy she was blushing over had proof on his phone that I didn't. If Ares Cole took that from her, I'd never get it back — for either of us.

Mom came through with a stack of towels. "Ethan, honey, set another plate. Your roommate coming down?"

"On his way."

Dad sat at the end of the table, tablet propped up, glasses sliding low. "Heard the transfer scored twice his first night out. Coach must be thrilled. You two getting along?"

The mug creaked in my hands. "It's fine. He's a lot."

The stairs answered before I could say anything else. Ares walked in wearing gray sweats and a plain black shirt that hid nothing from the sleeves down, and he moved like he'd eaten in this kitchen a hundred mornings already.

"Morning, Mrs. Drake. Mr. Drake." A nod for each of them. "April." Then the little tilt of his chin, aimed straight at me. "Captain."

Mom turned from the stove with the look she gets around strays she's already decided to keep. "Ares, sit, sit. How do you like your eggs?"

"However they come out is perfect."

He took the chair directly across from mine. His knee bumped mine under the table and I jerked back like it burned. Nobody saw. I checked.

April handed him the orange juice, practically glowing. "That wrist shot in the third — I thought the goalie was gonna walk off the ice."

He laughed, low. "Your brother set up most of it." His eyes came to mine and stayed. "Right?"

"Just running the plays." I put my fork into the eggs the second the plate touched the table.

The conversation rolled on without me. Dad asked about his old school. Mom offered seconds before he'd finished his firsts. April leaned in every time he opened his mouth. I kept my face doing nothing and watched the clock, and every time his foot found mine under the table I counted who was looking before I let myself move.

He wasn't just in my house. He was in every room of my head I'd spent a year hosing down.

After breakfast I went up for my gear. His footsteps followed mine down the hall, unhurried, like he already had the run of the place. My door clicked shut behind him.

I zipped my bag in hard little jerks. "You don't have to do all that down there."

"Do what?" He leaned against the door, arms loose, watching me.

"Act like we're tight. Flirt with my sister. Charm my parents." I turned on him. "This isn't a game, Cole. I've got a scholarship. A captain spot. One wrong story and there's nothing left of any of it. So whatever you think happened last summer—"

"I don't think." Calm. A step closer. The scar caught the light. "I know. You kissed me. You wanted it. I've had a whole year to sit with that while you tried to erase it."

My back found the closet door. He was close enough that I could smell the soap on his skin, close enough to catch his eyes drop to my mouth and come back up. Below us the house went on being a house — April's laugh, water running — every sound a reminder of how thin this door was.

"Stop," I said. "Just stop."

He didn't move.

I got the words out before they could mean anything. "It was a mistake."

What came after was worse than anything he could have said back.

He went completely still. Nothing moved — not his hands, not his eyes. The confidence, the half-smirk, the patience: gone, all at once.

"A mistake." He tried the word out like he was checking whether it cut as deep going out as it had coming in.

The truth was sitting right there. I said nothing.

He let out a breath that wanted to be a laugh and didn't make it. "I spent a year looking for you." Quieter now. Rougher. "Twelve months. Two transfers. A scholarship I walked away from. I watched that blurry video so many times I memorized the way your hands looked on my shirt."

He stepped back. The room got wider than it had any right to.

"So was I," I said. Too quiet. Too late. "Looking for you."

He picked his bag up off the floor and left without looking back. Stairs. Front door open. Front door shut.

I stayed where I was, the word still sitting in my mouth.

What had I done?

Practice was hell.

Not because Coach ran us hard — he always runs us hard. Because Ares wouldn't look at me. Wouldn't pass to me. Gave me exactly what the drills asked for and not one thing more. He skated like a machine, all precision and no fire, and that was worse than any smirk he'd ever aimed my way.

The team clocked it. Asher kept glancing between us with a crease in his forehead. Martinez asked if we'd fought. Everything's fine. Same line. Same lie.

At home I dropped my bag by the front door and went straight up.

His bed was empty. His bag gone. Charger pulled out of the wall.

For one bad second I thought that was it.

Then I found his duffel shoved into the corner of the closet, half-unzipped. Still here. Just gone for now.

I sat on the edge of my bed and put my head in my hands. The stain looked down at me. The Keweenaw point. Lake Superior.

My phone buzzed.

Sara.

Sara. My buffer. The girl I'd been seen with just enough times that people made their assumptions, and I'd never corrected a single one. Sweet, pretty, safe. She had no idea what job she was doing.

People already think we're dating.

Then, before I could even put the phone down: Maybe we should make it real.

I sat there holding it. The timing was terrible.

I thought about Ares's face when the word landed. Out like a light hitting a switch.

I thought about the rain. His mouth. Maybe next summer, whispered against mine.

I thought about the scholarship, the C on my jersey, my parents, April. Everyone holding a version of Ethan Drake I'd built for them to hold.

This was the move. One text and the whole school would have its story, and nobody would ever look at me and wonder.

I typed Let's talk tomorrow. Deleted it. Typed Yeah. Deleted that too.

I sent the only thing I could stand to send: Lunch this week? Just us.

Not a yes. The coward's cut of a yes — close enough to keep her, far enough that I hadn't technically done it. I let it be that size because the real size wouldn't fit in a room this small.

Downstairs, the front door. Footsteps on the stairs. Slow. Heavy.

Ares stopped in the doorway. Hair damp — he'd stayed late at the rink, skating alone. Eyes red-rimmed, face giving nothing away. The armor back up and bolted down.

He crossed to the closet, pulled out the duffel, and started unpacking like the room was empty.

"Ares—"

"Don't." He didn't turn around. "You made yourself clear."

I had. That was the whole problem with it.

He got into bed fully dressed and put his back to me. The streetlight cut the room into strips. I watched his shoulders rise and fall until my eyes burned.

My phone lit up one last time.

Sara. Noon Thursday? 🙂 Already turning a maybe into a plan on a calendar, the way she turned everything.

I shut the phone off and looked at the ceiling.

The stain hadn't moved. Lake Superior, right where I left it. And Ares six feet away, further than he'd ever been.