Playing with a player

Chapter 5

Yuri

The dorm hallway was very quiet by the time I got back, the kind of quiet that made me walk on my tiptoes. I fumbled my key into the lock twice before it opened, and immediately I got inside I leaned against the door like I'd been running instead of walking.

I hadn't been. But my heart didn't seem to know the difference.

Jessica and Lori's side of the suite was dark. I took off my jacket and lay flat on my bed without bothering to change, staring up at the ceiling and replaying the way Fern had looked at me across that packed arena, like the thousands of people between us weren't even there. Like I was the only thing worth finding.

It didn't make sense. None of it did. I barely knew him. A few strange encounters, a smudged-mascara moment in a stranger's dorm room, and now apparently I was someone he could pick out of a crowd without trying.

I told myself it meant nothing. I told myself a lot of things that night.

I found it very difficult to fall asleep that night and I woke the next morning to Jessica bursting through my door already talking.

"You missed the best part," she said, sitting onto the foot of my bed still in yesterday's clothes. "Fern scored the game-winning goal with four seconds left. The whole arena lost it. Where did you even go?"

"I wasn't feeling well," I said, which wasn't a complete lie.

Jessica narrowed her eyes at me, the way she always did when she suspected that I wasn't giving her the whole story. "This doesn't have anything to do with a certain hockey captain, does it?"

"No," I answered immediately

"Uh-huh." She didn't push it, but she also didn't look like she believed me for a second. "Well, Lori heard there's a team thing tonight. Some bonfire out by the lake. Everyone's going to be there."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not? It'll be fun. And Mason's going to be there with Lisa, so go,show up looking amazing and remind him what he lost."

I groaned and put my pillow over my face. Somehow, being reminded of Mason didn't hurt the way it used to. What kept replaying no matter how many times I tried to push it away... was the memory of Fern's stare cutting through a crowd of thousands like I was the only person in the building.

"Fine," I said into the pillow. "I'll go."

Jessica screamed excitedly and was already going through my closet before I could take it back.

By the time we reached the lake that evening, the bonfire was already lit, throwing long shadows across the sand and the crowd of students gathered around it with drinks in their hand. Someone had brought a speaker; the vibration it made thudded low under the sound of laughter and the lake lapping quietly at the shore. Jessica dragged me towards a cluster of girls she knew, but my eyes were already scanning through the crowd without me wanting to.

I found him before I meant to.

Fern stood near the fire with a few of his teammates, a red cup loose in one hand, looking every bit like a king holding court, except unlike the others, he wasn't laughing at whatever joke had just been told. He was looking straight at me again, that same unsettling stillness in his gaze, like the fire and the noise and the entire party had gone soft and unimportant to him.

I forced myself to look away first this time.

"Yuri."

His voice found me anyway, low and close, only a few minutes later. I turned and he was there, closer than I'd expected, the light from the fire carving warm gold lines along his jaw.

"You left early last night," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I wasn't feeling well," I said again, the same half-truth.

Fern tilted his head, studying me the way you'd study something you were trying to decide whether to trust. "You looked fine to me. Right up until you saw me looking back."

My face went hot. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." The corner of his mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Walk with me."

It wasn't a request either, not really, but something in me wanted to go before he'd even finished his sentence which scared me even more than anything else about him so far. I looked back at Jessica, who was too carried away by her conversation to notice, then Fern lead me a little way down the shore, away from the noise and the fire, until the music behind us sounded distant.

"Why do you keep doing that?" I finally asked, wrapping my arms around myself against the cool air coming off the water.

"Doing what?"

"Looking at me like that. Like I'm... I stopped myself, not sure how to finish the sentence without sounding insane. Like prey. Like something he was hunting.

Fern was quiet for a while, watching the water instead of me for once, and then he finally spoke, "Because I've never met anyone who made it this hard to look away."

The honesty in it caught me off guard. I looked into his face while trying to search for the smirk, the joke, the easy charm he wore like an armor around everyone else but it wasn't there. Just something steadier. Something that looked almost like restraint.

"That's not an answer," I said quietly.

"It's the only one I've got right now."

Behind us, the fire cracked and someone shouted with laughter, and for a moment neither of us moved to go back toward it. The lake was dark and endless in front of us, and Fern was standing close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him despite the cold, and I still couldn't shake the feeling, impossible, ridiculous that whatever he was, he wasn't just a boy who played hockey.

"We should head back," I said, even though I didn't move at all.

"We should," he agreed, and didn't move either.