CHAPTER ONE - CELESTE

“This year, you’re having fun.” My best friend Nat declares this from the passenger side of my Tahoe as if it’s been etched on a stone tablet and therefore must be gospel. 

“Nope. This year, I’m focusing on getting my Master’s degree,” I remind her. I didn’t come to Coldwater University for fun. I came to work. I worked like hell to get through undergrad and then I worked like hell to secure a teaching position that would allow me to go to grad school at all. I was here to work.

“And you’re also focusing on having fun.” Natalie Wheeler was relentless. She shot me a grin as she dropped her feet from where they’d been resting on the dashboard and began peering out the windows like we were on a sightseeing voyage. “Right up here, then a quick left. We’re about 20 minutes out.”

“Nat, the GPS is still working.”

“You don’t need that. I’m your personal GPS. And I’m more entertaining than he is. I’d never sound annoyed if we needed to reroute, either.” Nat was in her third year at Coldwater, but we were going to be rooming together in the mixed-year apartments just off campus. Even though focus was my complete and total plan this year, I was glad to have a friend here. Natalie and I grew up in the same neighborhood and played together as kids. We’d remained tight through school, and hung out whenever we were both back in Columbus during holidays and breaks. 

“So you told me almost nothing about your fancy summer resort gig,” she said, pulling a Twizzler from the pack in the center console for herself and handing me one. 

“It was pretty low on the fancy.” 

“It’s a five-star resort on Lake Miranda, CeeCee. How could it not be fancy?” 

I raised an eyebrow at her. Natalie’s family had taken those kinds of vacations, so I couldn’t blame her for not understanding that working your ass off for a bunch of entitled rich people at a resort was not the same as being on an actual vacation at the same resort. “There was one part I didn’t tell you about,” I ventured, wondering if I’d regret telling her anything about the high point of my summer. 

She sat up straighter, her dark eyebrows climbing toward her hairline as she shifted in her seat to face me fully. “Now I’m intrigued. You’re giving hot male encounter vibes.” 

“Shit, am I that easy to read?” 

“Oh, now you’ve gotta tell me.” Nat was bouncing in her seat. 

“It was just a fling. Literally no last names, no numbers exchanged. But it was…” How did I explain it? A fling with the single hottest man I’d ever met, and by far the best sex I’d ever had. A week with a guy who told me only his first name, and who had a knack for making me feel seen, special, and alive, even when I was just ‘the help’ and he was there with his uber-rich family? “He was a guest. It was totally against the rules.” 

“That’s what makes it so hot!” 

“Actually, no. The guy is what made it hot. He was just… this… “ Words really couldn’t do justice to the guy I’d given myself to for a week—just before he ghosted me completely. “It was hot, but it was a fling. And the last night we spent together… he left when I fell asleep. I didn’t see him again.” It still hurt a little bit to say aloud.

“Oh man, that’s so fucking sexy. Anonymous. Dirty…” 

Or was it maybe just kind of sad? Like every other man in my life, my summer fling had not chosen me, even though I’d begun to believe the things he said to me when we were together. That I was different. That he wished he could spend his life with me. 

Water under the bridge. “It was sexy. And it was good to get that out of my system. Because I really need to focus this year.” 

“Out of your system. Like sex with a hot guy is a one-time need. Your box is checked.” Nat laughed to herself. “I’ve got a few boxes that could use checking,” she said in a breathy voice.

Soon we were turning up the hill toward campus. 

“Oh, turn in there,” Nat practically yelled, startling me as the mixed-year apartment complex came into view. 

“The GPS never yells at me,” I told her, making the turn into the U-shaped parking lot in front of the building. There was a long curb for unloading, and a completely full lot on the other side of the curb. And a huge black truck with a trailer was parked diagonally, taking up most of the curb that wasn’t red. “Where am I supposed to stop? This guy’s completely in the way.” 

We pulled to a stop in the red zone behind the poorly parked truck, which gleamed with more chrome accents than I would have thought were available. There were guys all around the truck and trailer who appeared to be in various states of lounging and pretty much unconcerned with either unloading their shit or getting the monstrosity of a truck out of the way so other people could unload. 

“Ah, that makes sense,” Nat said, eyeing the guys. 

“What does? You know those guys?” 

She lifted a shoulder. “A couple of them. Hockey players. They always live in this building. Act like they own the place, think they’re god’s gift. I mean… they kind of are.” She grinned at me. 

I blew out a frustrated breath. We’d been driving for hours. I wanted to check in, unload, and park my car. No way was I waiting for a bunch of entitled jocks to take their sweet time loitering around the loading zone. I pushed open the door and hopped out, moving toward the driver’s side of the ridiculous truck. 

Of course there was no one in it. 

I wandered around the front of the vehicle, hoping to spot someone with keys who could get the thing moved enough to let me in. 

The guys didn’t seem to notice me, moving slowly back and forth with boxes and other items. There were more of them hanging off a second floor balcony—with beers in their hands, of course—yelling down to the guys on the ground. 

What the fuck? Was this a party? 

“Hey,” I called to a group of big, over-muscled guys standing in a cluster at the curb. “Is this your truck?” 

One of them turned, gave me a leisurely up and down look, and smiled at me. He wore a backwards ball cap and jeans, and his dark eyes and thick eyebrows gave him an air of mischief as he said, “Who’s asking?” 

The other guys turned to see who he was talking to, and the area around us quieted down as they all gave me assessing looks.

“I am. I’d like to pull up to unload, but this truck is blocking up the whole curb.” I pointed to my car behind the trailer. 

“There’s no rush, sweetheart. It’s called moving day. We have literally the whole day to move in,” the guy said, stepping closer. 

I bristled. No one called me sweetheart. I was about to open my mouth when Nat jogged up behind the guy. 

“Griff, can you assholes get this monstrosity out of here, or at least pull closer to the curb so we can get by? Being hockey gods does not make you actual gods.” She crossed her arms and scowled up at the guy with the hat. 

“You think I’m a god, Nat?” He grinned. 

“That is definitely not what I said.” They continued to argue about his status as a potential diety, but the back and forth faded to a muted buzz as someone standing to one side of the guy called Griff caught my attention. He wasn’t facing me—I could only see his profile. 

But I’d know that profile anywhere. 

I only knew him for a week, but there wasn’t a cell in my body that could fool itself into thinking I’d be forgetting him any time soon. 

“Logan?” His name was out of my mouth before I’d consciously decided to speak. And my feet were carrying me toward him. Could it really be him? The guy I’d fallen hard for this summer? The one who’d disappeared into the night? What was he doing here?  

The guy turned, and for a split second, my heart exploded in my chest. It was him! 

His eyes caught mine and I saw the recognition hit him, watched as his mouth curled up on one side into an almost-smile. And then I saw his expression shift, shutting down and turning to ice. “Sorry, do I know you?” 

“Excuse me?” I said, confused. “From this summer? Miranda Lake Resort? Celeste.” I smiled again, thinking this little reminder would bring back the warmth I’d known from him, turn him suddenly back into the guy I’d never intended to fall for, but might be willing to shift my no-distractions rule for if I ever saw again. 

He gave me a wry smile and then glanced around, seeming to notice all his friends watching. “Sorry, no. Not ringing a bell. I think you’ve got the wrong guy.” 

I had a flash of memory—his hand on the side of my face as the sun set over the glittering dark surface of the lake, a whisper of his lips brushing mine as he pushed inside me, sparks flitting through my body. There was no forgetting that. Not for me. Not for him. 

“Seriously?” I gaped at him, humiliation threatening to rise up into my chest, my neck, my face. Hurt was chasing close behind it. Was he really going to pretend nothing happened, that we didn’t know each other? I swallowed it down, cold fury replacing the pain.

He’d ghosted me at the end of the week. Why would I think he would acknowledge me now? And now that I thought of it, I’d told him I was coming to Clearwater that last night. And he’d said… nothing. 

“Sorry,” he said, but the word was so far from sincere I wanted to catch it in midair, ball it up, and stuff back into his smug mouth. So what if he was handsome? So what if he’d done things to my body I hadn’t even known were possible? 

He’d known we’d see each other this fall the second I’d told him my plans. He hadn’t even bothered to tell me he was in school here. What the fuck? Clearly, he was an asshole, and if he wanted to play this game, I could play too. 

“Is that your ridiculous truck?” I pointed at the vehicle in my way.

“It is,” he said, grinning like he thought my next line would be a compliment about his car. 

“Compensating for something, I guess,” I said, eliciting a series of cheers and laughs from his friends. Unfortunately, I already knew it wasn’t true. 

Logan raised an eyebrow at me. It was infuriating. He knew I knew it wasn’t true. My hands balled into fists and I felt like I was about to explode.

“Can you get it the fuck out of the way so other people can move their shit in?” 

“Wait, you’re living here?” His bravado fell for a fraction of a second before he remembered he didn’t know me. 

“Yeah, and if you don’t move your over-sized, over-blinged, loser truck, I’ll call a tow truck and have it moved for you.” I stormed back around to the driver’s side of the Tahoe and honked twice for good measure. 

I heard a few of the guys calling out and laughing. “Feisty!” 

Nat hopped back in. 

“Do you know Ren?” Nat asked me, eyeing me suspiciously. 

“Who?” 

“Logan Renshaw. Captain of the hockey team? Campus god? The guy you were just yelling at?” 

Should I tell her? Or would she just feel sorry for me since it was clear I wasn’t worth acknowledging if you were a hot hockey god? For now, I decided not to tell her how I knew him. 

“Nope, mixed him up with someone else. So many assholes look alike.” 

She nodded, but it was clear she wasn’t buying it. 

Finally, Logan got into the truck and it began to move forward. I pulled the Tahoe to the curb. Five minutes later, we had our apartment keys and I spent the rest of the afternoon lugging our stuff inside and pretending it was no big deal that I was going to be living in the same building as my hot summer fling, directly across the hall.

Not a big deal at all. 

CHAPTER TWO - LOGAN

Shit. 

It wasn’t like I hadn’t been expecting to see her at some point. She’d told me she was a grad student at Clearwater. That was why I’d snuck out like some kind of midnight thief that last night.

But I had definitely not been expecting to see her in my fucking apartment building. Directly across the fucking hall.

“Yo Ren. Catch!” I turned just as Griff threw a beer my way, glad I’d caught it before it smashed to the floor of the apartment we’d just finished moving all our shit into. 

Griff and I shared an apartment, and our teammates had the apartments all around us—next door, down the hall, above us. This building was always the hockey team HQ for upperclassmen. I don’t know why I’d expected it to be any kind of sanctuary. Other students lived here too.

Other students including Celeste, the girl I’d met this summer at Miranda Lake. The girl I’d thought might be different—might let me be someone different. Even just for a week. 

But the second she told me she was coming to Coldwater, that she was a TA in the psych department… 

Well, that was the end. It had to be.

She had been a dream. An escape. A woman so perfect there was no way she could hold up to the challenges of my real world. And she wasn’t supposed to. 

Fuck, I still remembered what she felt like in my arms, breathing her in as she arched into me, the way she’d moaned my name like a prayer… And then she’d told me who she was. And it had ended everything because it had to, even though walking away from her felt something surprisingly like heartbreak.  

She was a TA in my department, and I was captain of the hockey team. Anything between us would be seen as totally unethical, and I’d lose my season. And my future. And what little respect my father had left for me. 

 “Dude, what’s going on?” Griff was in my space. In my face. 

I stepped back into the kitchen, twisting the top off the beer and downing half of it. “Nothing. What?” 

“You’ve been acting weird since Nat and the hottie with the Tahoe pulled in and told you to move the truck.” 

I shook my head at him, hoping he’d drop it. 

“Careful with that.” Burns and Hashimoto were yelling down from the balcony at the other students moving their stuff in. “Looks expensive!” 

I followed their raucous laughter out and leaned over the railing, glad to be away from Griff’s first degree. But it was no better out here. 

Celeste was carrying a huge mirror from the back of the Tahoe to the front doors of the building. She glanced up at us and spotted me, her face going cold. 

“Nat’s friend is pretty cute,” Hashimoto said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Got a mouth on her, too.”

I lifted a shoulder and finished my beer. 

“Whatsamatter Renshaw, the blond twins tire you out this summer?” 

I shot a glance down at Celeste, worried she might’ve heard that before I remembered that I didn’t care. 

“You know me. In and out. Hit it and quit it.” The guys hooted and slapped my back, but I was exhausted by the usual macho banter bullshit. I hadn’t been with the blond twins except to walk them back to their car after the expo game and wish them a good night. 

There’d been only one girl on my mind all summer. At least since we got back from the lake. She stayed there no matter what I did to try to banish her. And she was 100 percent off limits. 

When moving day quieted down, and it was just Griff and me in the apartment, I lay in my room staring at the ceiling. I tried to stop the constant replay on loop in my head, but I couldn’t. Celeste coming around my truck and calling my name, the hopeful look on her face at seeing me again, and then that look dropping when I pretended I had no idea who she was. 

Fuck, she knew it was an act. You didn’t spend the kind of time together we had and just forget about it. 

The week we had this summer wasn’t like anything I’d experienced before. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before. She was fierce and tender, sweet and determined… so fucking sexy. Her body, yeah—that was one thing. But it was everything else about Celeste Moreno that had gotten under my skin. The way she fought for what she had, the way she worked for what she wanted… 

And then I’d just left. 

Before I’d seen her this afternoon, I’d hoped the worst thing I’d ever do would be to just walk away from a girl I could have fallen for. Maybe did fall for… But now? The worst thing I’d done was treating that same girl like a piece of trash when everything inside me wanted to reach for her and thank heaven and earth I’d found her again. 

I thought I’d prepared myself to see her this fall. 

But I was wrong. 

I was completely fucked.