Chapter One
“You never come out with me anymore. Please, Katie?”
My roommate Lizzie steps into my room, hands pressed together in prayer. She’s one of the few people who get away with calling me Katie, and I love her to death. Most days.
“Please, pretty please? I’ll pay for your keg cup.”
As tempting as that is…I’m not falling for it.
I raise my beer in one hand, barely looking up from my book. First semester finals are in one week and I plan on acing mine. “Stay in if you want to drink with me. I’m not against fun, I’m only over frat parties and sticky bar floors.”
We’re seniors at Chicago College and I’m not exaggerating. I’ve risked losing enough heels in the last couple of years from the amount of alcohol spilled on our campus bar floors. And fraternity parties? They’re even worse. I’ve seen the aftermath of them, too.
At twenty-one, I want to spend my last year solely focused on school. It’s time to buckle down to ensure I’ll be accepted into the graduate program. Nothing will risk throwing me off my planned track.
Not even Lizzie, cutely pouting at the side of my desk, bottom lip plumped out and giving me sad puppy dog eyes. As I speak, a twinkle appears in her pretty blues.
“Then it’s a good thing it’s at the hockey players’ house, isn’t it?” She points a finger at me before I can say anything. “And you’ve never been there, so you can’t say it’s gross and germ and STI infested. You don’t know that.”
I’m a girl of facts. The hockey players on campus catch more tail than any other sport combined. I can hypothesize with the best of them, and my best-educated guess is that Lizzie is absolutely wrong about this one.
I tap my pen on my opened Advanced Statistics book. In truth, I’ve got this. Science, math, and I go together like peanut butter and jelly—grape only, though. I’ve wanted to be a physical therapist and work in the medical field for as long as I can remember, so I’ve worked my tail off for years.
My eyes are scratchy from staring at my computer screen for so many hours this week despite using my blue-light blocker glasses when I study. Frankly, I can use the break.
But the hockey players’ house? Ugh. It’s larger than the fraternity houses and more than once I’ve walked by and there’s been what looks like a clothesline filled with a variety of women’s underwear hanging from it.
They’re animals. Sweaty, bulky, shaggy-haired, and full-bearded animals.
“I hate hockey.”
Lizzie snorts. She always knows I’m caving when I break out the worst excuses.
She also knows when I’m lying. I’m not a sports fanatic, but I’ve learned a lot over the years. It comes with the territory of having labs and putting in hours in the college’s training facility helping student-athletes with minor injuries.
She slaps closed my textbook.
“Hey!”
“The only studying I want to do tonight is figuring out if they really know what they’re doing with their hard sticks. Consider it medical research.”
She eyes my book playfully and waggles her eyebrows.
I lean back in my chair and cross my arms. “No researching their sticks.”
“Not even to measure?”
“You are crazy.”
“And you’re growing cobwebs where no one virile twenty-one-year-old woman should, Katie. Come out with me. We only have a semester left and we need to live it up, create as many memories as we can before I leave.”
Oh, yay, the guilt trip. After this year, Lizzie’s heading off to study economics in England for graduate school. She’s not only a party animal, she’s wicked smart, invested in everything she does, which is probably why she’s able to talk me into anything.
“I have to work tomorrow. I need to be home early.”
“One?”
“Midnight.”
She pouts but knows when I’ve negotiated all I’m willing to.
She holds out her hand. “Deal.”
I grab it, going to shake it, but as I do, I yank my arm back and tug her forward. She loses balance on her heels and her arms pinwheel across my bedroom until she braces herself right before she collapses onto my bed.
“You’re a brat,” she says, laughing, blonde hair covering her face before she blows it out of the way.
“Call me names again and you’ll be going by yourself.” I’m out of my chair, heading for my private bathroom in the apartment we share right off campus. “I need to shower and get ready but I’ll be ready in thirty.”
“I’ll be on drink number three and ready to party!”
Of that, I have no doubt.
To my surprise, the front yard of the three-story, all brick, turn of the century home is completely clean when we arrive. The trees lost their leaves weeks ago and there isn’t a single stray leaf blowing across the yard. And while the tips of my ears and my nose are already frozen from the cruel, whipping wind all Chicagoans complain about, I’m only thankful we haven’t already had snow.
As a girl raised mostly all along the western coast, the bitter cold is my enemy, but I might hate having to be out in snow more. Thank goodness for Ubers and taxis and the El train. Without them, I might never step outside from the months of November through April.
My hands are warm, enclosed in fluffy wool mittens I splurge on every year. I’m already cringing at the idea of having to ditch both my mittens and my North Face coat. It’s not uncommon for coats to be taken at parties or completely forgotten about, and it’s not like there’s ever a good place to store them.
“See? No panties and no naked women yet.” Lizzie bumps her hip into mine and almost sends me slipping across a patch of ice.
“It’s like, ten degrees below with the wind chill. Any girl out here naked now is stupid. Or dead.”
As if I’ve summoned stupidity, a guy bursts through the front door of the house. He’s as burly and rough as all the other hockey players I’ve seen on campus and his chest must be warm, covered beneath his own thick matting of hair all over him. He tumbles through the door, slams his fists to his chest and throws his head back, howling at the moon.
“What in the hell?”
Next to me, Lizzie laughs. She tugs on my hand and we move to skirt around him, but as we begin climbing the steps, three other men come out from behind the wannabe werewolf and shove him forward.
“Hey!” I cry, but it’s too late, my heels slip on the wood step and just like Lizzie did earlier, my arms spin and flail for balance. I reach for the hairy guy in front of me, but he’s too slow on his feet, or he hasn’t even noticed me. Regardless, I fly up in the air, and I can see it in slow motion.
My feet are in the air, my arms flailing. I’m imagining a fractured tailbone and taking my finals sitting on an inflatable toilet looking seat cushion and I brace myself for the impact of slamming onto the cement.
But it never comes.
Two warm arms slide beneath me and catch me just in the nick of time, and then, I swear maybe I already hit my head, I’m concussed. I have to be.
Because the most beautiful voice I’ve heard lands right on my ear.
“It’s okay, beautiful. I’ve got you.”