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Coming back to Hade Harbor after five months in Colorado was jarring at first. It was like everyone had moved on already. My best friend, Beckett, had settled down, with my fucking twin sister of all people, something I had yet to get used to. The Hellions were playing averagely without me, something I’d remedy as soon as I was allowed back on the damn ice. My friends, the Ice Gods, were already halfway through their freshman year at HHU. I was stuck playing catch-up and sitting on the bench, thanks to the transfer rules.
The only place that was unchanged was The Dunes. It was still stuffed full of the kind of privileged dickheads I couldn’t stand. The ones to spend a thousand bucks on dinner and kick the waitress a five-dollar tip.
At The Dunes there were also their kids to contend with. All trust fund babies looked the same to me. With their designer clothes and fake nails and noses, their faces all melded into one. With a single exception, and she was standing right in front of me. She hadn’t noticed me lurking in the doorway of the staff locker room.
Winter DeLaurie. Ice Queen. Cheerleader. Stuck-up brat. The girl I couldn’t stand. The one who wouldn’t leave my fucking head. For a year she’d haunted my mind, where she didn’t belong or fit. Where I didn’t want her. She wasn’t my type, not by a long shot, and yet, I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about her while I was in Colorado.
She was hard to forget.
Currently, she was rummaging through Ramona’s locker, my coworker at the bar. She shoved something in her purse and closed the locker. The little thief thought she’d gotten away with whatever it was she was up to, until I spoke. It was the first time I’d been alone with her since before I’d left for Colorado. My memories of senior year were a crush of training and part-time work. Sore muscles and tired eyes, pushing to get the best scholarship I could, working to make enough to be able to go anywhere. I barely remembered the days that had passed not that long ago, and yet, I remembered every single moment with this girl.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
She froze, her shoulders tight for a long moment, before turning. She took me in and raised her chin. I saw the moment she decided to lean into our usual dynamic.
“Who are you to interrogate me? Do you have any kind of authority here?” she asked in a bored tone.
“If you think being a stone-cold bitch is going to distract me from the question, you’re wrong.” I stepped closer to her.
Her dress was a fucking joke. Pink satin that looked like it was one good tear away from disintegrating at her feet.
“If I’m a bitch, what does that make you? An empty-headed degenerate with daddy issues?” she shot out, raising a caramel eyebrow at me.
She’d always had claws, this one. Too bad for her they didn’t work on me.
“Very insightful…If I gave a fuck what went on in your vapid head, I might be hurt.”
“I thought you went to Denver…couldn’t hack it?”
“Keeping tabs on me, were you? Maybe I came back just to fuck with you,” I smirked at her.
“Whatever, Martino,” Winter sighed and made to walk past me. “I don’t answer to you.”
I reached out and grabbed her arm before she could take two steps. “That’s where you’re wrong. You will answer to me if I tell you to. Confess what you took, before I search you for it.”
She scoffed, her patented derision oozing from every pore. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I chuckled darkly. “Test me and see. I fucking dare you.”
I let my gaze slip down her bronzed shoulders and over that pink nothing of a dress. Christ. I could make out the entire shapes of her nipples. She’d clearly mistaken underwear for a dress. Every fucking old man in the building had to be staring everywhere she went.
I stepped closer, until I could make out the spirals of indigo in those ocean eyes. “Make me the first commoner to feel what’s under those designer clothes and bratty attitude.”
Her nostrils flared a touch. Her eyes fell to my lips and jumped back up to my heated gaze.
“Like I said, you wouldn’t dare. I could have you fired with a snap of my fingers.”
I nodded. “Maybe so, but the reality is that you were sneaking around the break room, going through a staff member’s locker. Are you fine with everyone knowing what you were searching for? Do you mind daddy dearest knowing?”
She swallowed, the first crack to appear in her cool façade. I was betting, given that she’d been rooting around in Ramona’s locker, the club dealer, that she wouldn’t want the great Charles DeLaurie to find out what his princess got up to behind his back. After all, she was still the only person in school whose parents wouldn’t miss work to see her.
She tried to stare me down, and when it didn’t work, she huffed, wrenching her arm free from my hand. “Fine, no need to manhandle me. Here.”
She grabbed an envelope out of her bag and waved it in front of my face.
“I have to confiscate this. Can’t have it on club property, you understand,” I murmured, reaching out and snagging the envelope before she could move it.
Her pouty, pink-glossed lips opened in outrage, and she swayed toward me, reaching for it. I lifted it far above her head. The Ice Queen might be on the taller side for a woman, but she was still small to me. She narrowed her eyes at me, her head tilted back, her mouth set in a determined line. She jumped for it exactly once, her firm tits in that sorry excuse for a dress pressing into my chest, before stepping back.
