Page 93 of Hot As Ice

Dread grows in my stomach with every minute of the drive to my penthouse.

As soon as I get home, I grab a bottle of water and down it. Running a hand through my hair, I sit down on the couch and look through the notifications on my phone. There’s some messages from Jamie and Ryder in our group chat, but I don’t want to read them right now.

I get up and pace to my bedroom, then pace back to the living room. I open the university paper website on my phone and read the paragraph about me and Stevie again. The invasion of privacy is nauseating. I can’t figure out how anybody could’ve found out about it. And that pisses me off the most.

I’m only home five minutes when there’s furious pounding on the front door. I open it and Stevie barrels in like a tornado, walking past me and whirling around with an accusing finger pointed at me.

“Who did you tell?” she yells.

I take a deep breath. “I didn’t tell anyone anything.”

“Yes, you did! It was you! You and your stupid hockey friends and your locker room talk and your bragging and, and, and…” She bursts into tears. “I hate you!”

“Baby, calm down.”

“Don’t call me baby! I’m not your baby!” She swipes at her tears angrily, then looks around the room like she’s trying to find something to throw. At me.

I walk toward her carefully. “Can we please sit down and talk about this?”

“I never, ever, ever want to see you again. I hate you. You’ve ruined everything. This is all your fault.”

I raise my hands in a placating gesture. “Yes, it is. And I’m going to fix it, alright? Please just trust me.”

She shakes her head and backs away from me. “Don’t. Don’t come near me. Don’t touch me.”

“Baby—”

“Don’t call me that. I can’t believe I ever trusted you. I can’t believe I ever had sex with you. I can’t believe…” She takes a deep breath as another sob racks through her. Fuck. I want to hold her so badly. I want to wipe every last tear away and I want to do everything in my power to make sure she never cries again. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.

“Let’s talk about this,” I try again. “Please. I don’t know how that shit ended up in the fucking paper, but it wasn’t me. I swear to god. I swear on my mother.”

She looks at me in surprise at that last sentence, then quickly looks away.

“I’m leaving,” she says, sniffling and looking so devastated it nearly brings me to my knees. “Please don’t come after me.”

Before I can say anything, she’s gone, and I’m sitting on the couch with my head in my hands. Utterly fucking defeated. I smack myself on the face a few times, then rub my eyes and sigh. I want to kick my own ass for making Stevie cry. She doesn’t believe me, and I had nothing to do with it, but it doesn’t matter, because making her happy and taking care of her have become as important to me as breathing. I don’t even know when this happened, but she crawled inside my fucking soul at some point and I never want her to leave.

I grab my phone and finally check the group chat with Jamie and Ryder.

Jamie

Um, are you in the gossip section of the paper?

Ryder

What the fuck did I just read?

Jamie

Do I need to find the editor of the paper and knock some sense into him?

Ryder

I volunteer my knocking-out services.

I close out of the messages app, then reopen it almost immediately. Jamie’s text spurs me to get off my ass and actually try to do something about this whole fucking mess.

Me