KEANE: Her Ruthless Ex

He didn’t notice her at first.

But when he did, she became all he could see.

For seconds…minutes…eternities on end.

Keane marked him less than five minutes after stepping foot into Boston Prep’s main school building. Skinny. Short. Brown…but not the kind that fights back. He’d bet his new custom Bauer Supremes the kid signed up for band freshman year.

He studied Band Nerd stuffing books into his locker and jabbering with some girl. He could only see her profile, but he clocked that she was also brown and wore her hair in a long practical braid. She kept her face turned toward Band Nerd as she stowed her books. Like she actually gave a shit about whatever he was talking about.

Girlfriend, Keane concluded. Probably played for the band, too. Keane had yet to encounter a lunch money mark who actually knew how to bag a girlfriend without getting band involved. Flute or clarinet, he guessed. Something delicate and useless like that.

Yeah, this kid would definitely make for perfect prey.

He thumped his suite and teammate, Con, on the shoulder. “Watch this,” he said. Then he cut left in Band Nerd’s direction.

Time to show everyone at this new school who not to fuck with….

“Just so you know, I plan to kill myself if Mr. Marchetti refuses to let us play anything from the current millennium this year,” Band Nerd was saying.

He had an accent, Keane noted. Not Puerto Rican. Indian maybe?

His girlfriend made a chiding sound in the back of her throat, half laugh, half groan. “Sweetie, don’t say that. I’d be so sad.”

“I am completely serious—”

Keane grabbed Band Nerd by his lapels and slammed him against the locker before the kid had the chance to finish his lame-ass declaration.

“Lunch Money.” Two words. Spoken calm as fuck. Keane didn’t bother with a follow-up threat.

He didn’t have to. He could tell from the about-to-piss-my-fucking-pants look on Band Nerd’s face that the kid knew what was up, and understood exactly what would happen if he didn’t fork over the cash.

Yeah, he’d snagged the right mark for sure. Hardly any effort required. So instead of growling threats in his face, Keane simply stood there, dangling Band Nerd in the air as he waited for his money.

But then somebody tugged on his arm. “You—you can’t do that! Boston Glenn has a zero tolerance policy against bullying. Put him down! Put him down right now!”

Well this was a new twist. Keane had been rocking the stronger-than-any-of-you-fucks look since the age of nine. And thanks to that implicit promise of beating the shit out of anyone who tried to come between him and his lunch money, he’d never had any guy, much less a girl attempt to stop him from taking someone else’s lunch money. Yet, here Band Nerd’s girlfriend was, running interference.

Keane looked down, only meaning to shake her off of him. But the full-on sight of her hit him harder than a T-train.

She was fucking gorgeous. Creamy brown skin, deep brown eyes, and a wide mouth that looked like it would be smiling if she weren’t here, trying to get him to let go of her boyfriend.

He dropped his gaze down to the rest of her body, and immediately regretted the impulse decision.

She was the kind of big he hadn’t known he liked until this very moment. Curves for days. Lush hips and a spectacular rack—he could tell, even though she had them way too covered up under the blue and red Boston Glenn uniform jacket. Quite a few BG girls had introduced themselves to him already, and most of them had tugged down their red uniform ties and unbuttoned their shirts to show him some skin. But this girl wore her blouse buttoned all the way up, with the knot of her tie squeezed so tight under her collar, he wondered if it was choking her.

His hands itched to reach out and tug the tie down. To let that perfect braid loose, too. Then haul her to him and kiss that disapproving frown off her mouth. Would her plump lips taste as good as they looked?

No, he hadn’t noticed her at first. But when he did, she became all he could see. For seconds…minutes…eternities on end.

A memory crashed into him. His first game at Andrews Arena. Cheering for the Boston Hawks with his mom. It was close. Less than 30 seconds left on the clock in the last period, and the game was 0-0. This had been before the NHL killed that tied game shit with the shootout, so everybody had been shifting in their seats. Restless and scared they’d paid for tickets and got ass-fucked by the arena’s parking prices for literally zero result. His mom was tapping her acrylics against the arm rest in a way Keane had come to recognize as her needing a drink real bad, even though she’d already knocked back two beers.

But then in the very last seconds of the game, the Hawk’s star right wing had Holy Fucking Mary-ed the puck into the enemy’s net. That win had stopped his mom’s jonesing. She, Keane, and just about everybody in that stadium jumped to their feet, Caw-Cawing for the Hawks, as the band Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” started playing overhead.

Gazing down at this girl…it felt like that moment. Like “More Than a Feeling” blasting after an unexpected win. And, a new arousal delivered an unexpected dick punch.

“Okay, okay! I’ll give you my lunch money.”

Band Nerd’s voice ripped Keane out of the eternity stare, reminding him of his original intention. Not to gape at some weirdly alluring band nerd’s girlfriend, but to complete his important first day of school ritual of establishing himself as the resident alpha. Plus, after spending all his summer funds on his new Bauers, he was broke as fuck.

This one act was supposed to kill two birds with one nerd. So good thing Band Nerd had brought him back around to the main point.

But get this, Band Nerd’s girlfriend had something to say about that, too. “No, Vihaan. You don’t have to give him anything. I’m going to get a teacher.”

“Con, back me up here,” Keane said without turning his attention from his real target this time. He couldn’t risk letting himself look at her again. Popping a tent in his slacks while dangling a guy in the air just wasn’t a good look.

But Keane knew his roommate had it covered when he heard Band Nerd’s girlfriend start rattling off her Boston Prep school zero tolerance rule to him, too. Like it actually applied to hockey players.

“Lunch money,” Keane said again, this time letting some pissed off seep into the demand.

“It’s in my front pocket! Just take it!”

Keane gave him an aggrieved look. “You a fag?”

The little brown nerd blinked. “N-no.”

“Then why the fuck do you think I’m going to reach into your pocket. I’ve already got all my school supplies. Not looking to pick up any pencils.”

Con snickered behind him, along with everyone else in the large group of students who’d gathered to watch the show.

Well, everyone else except for Band Nerd and his girlfriend. But at least the kid seemed to get it now.

No more hesitation. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a five.

Keane snatched it from him and let him go at the same time.

“Vihaan! Are you all right?” Band Nerd’s girlfriend called out.

He wanted to look at her. Fuck, did he want to look at her. Devour her with his eyes and try to figure out how to get her to spread her legs. But winners don’t look back. They keep it going, dusting all the losers in their wake.

Keane forced himself to continue strolling down the hallway. Smooth, like shaking Band Nerd down for his lunch money was all in a day’s work.

But his heart pounded as he walked away, and it had nothing to do with the very tiny bit of exertion it took to pick up that skinny nerd.

No….

Keane, didn’t let himself look, but he could imagine her rushing over to her boyfriend and helping him up. Like she was the man and he was the damsel in distress.

It made him sick to his fucking stomach. Seriously, what was a girl like that doing with an ass tool like Band Nerd?

“Who was that?” Keane asked, when Con fell in beside him.

“The Paki or the fat girl?” Con asked. Technically his name was William, but he was one of three guys on the team from Wisconsin, so they all called him Con, and the other two Wis and Sin.

“The fat girl,” Keane answered.

“That’s Lena Kumar. She’s black, but her dad’s a Paki, too…or an Indian—I can never tell which is which. But they’re not rich like the other Indian kids. Both of them are here on scholarships.”

“They fucking?”

Con shrugged. “Truth be told, I thought he was a fag up until today. But I guess maybe he isn’t the way she tried to get in between you two.” He waved his hands hysterically and put on a high-falsetto as he mocked Lena. “Put him down! Put him down! Boston Glenn has a zero tolerance policy against bullying!”

Keane forced a laugh, but his heart… “More Than a Feeling” wouldn’t stop blasting.

“Lena, just drop it, okay? I gave him the money,” Vihaan said, squeezing her hand as they headed back to Vihaan’s place in Dorchester on the T. “I don’t think he’s going to come after me again.”

“Yes, you gave him the money. That’s exactly why he’ll come after you again,” Lena argued, anger still churning in her belly at that new student who threatened her friend…and made her heart beat wildly in her chest when he hit her with his hard green stare. “That’s bully psychology 101. You’re an easy mark, so he’ll keep coming after you, not just for the money, but for the rush of adrenaline he gets from dominating you. Bullies are like jungle animals—they live for this stuff.”

Vihaan snorted. “Please tell me you didn’t spend your lunch period, researching bullies in the computer lab.”

“How else was I supposed to spend it?” Lena asked. “I’m honest to God worried about you.”

Vihaan shook his head. “It was probably a onetime thing. He doesn’t look like any of the bullies back in middle school. And at least he asked if I was a fag. Didn’t just assume it like Con and the other Sticks. That means it’s working. We’re working.”

His words paused Lena’s argument. Vihaan was right. The boy who slammed her best friend against the lockers sure didn’t look like any of the bullies she’d seen in action back when she met Vihaan at Dorchester Middle.

This bully wasn’t bulky and beefy, but cut and broad shouldered in a way that made his uniform strain against his flexed back. His eyes hadn’t been set in a perma-glare like the world owed him something for giving him a too big body and too big emotions at the same time. And he also hadn’t been poorly groomed.

No, he’d struck her as handsome, actually. Even when he had Vihaan pinned against the lockers. Clean cut and sharp jawed, with hair that somehow managed to look soft and perfectly gelled at the same time. For a moment she’d gotten lost in that profile. If he looked this good from the side, what he would look like from the front?

She’s soon found out when he’d shifted his violent gaze from Vihaan to her.

Had she thought him handsome? Upgrade that to hot. Insanely hot. Forget his muscular body, or the fact that he stood so tall, she barely reached his shoulder. His face alone made his school uniform look like something being modeled in a catalog for rich people who only liked to look at beautiful things. He was so hot he sucked all the oxygen out of the air and made it hard to breathe. To see even.

She had been pretty sure there was still a school and a hallway jam-packed with rich kids doing exactly nothing to help Vihaan. But for moments on end, all she could do was fall into his intense green eyes.

“Lena? Lena? Are you listening to me?”

She snapped out of her memory daze to find Vihaan flapping her arm over their held hands, his expression set to what the hell?

“Sorry,” she said, shoving that first look memory down into the cellar of her mind where it belonged. “I was just thinking about this one Psychology Now article I read about a bully who escalated from taking lunch money to sexually assaulting a boy in the showers. Sadly, the victim never reported what happened to anyone, so now after years and years of therapy he’s finally figuring out how to live with the trauma. What were you saying?”

Vihaan shot her an annoyed look. “It’s not like the school would do anything about it anyway. He’s a Stick. He could murder me in the hallway, and the principal would probably cover it up as long as we were able to win the New England championship this year.”

Vihaan had a point. The Sticks were considered gods at Boston Glenn. And even worse, according to the rumor mill, Keane had been poached from Beaumont Academy, the prep school who had won the state championship last year, so he probably thought he had a permanent ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card to carry around in his uniform pocket. She wanted to believe Keane wouldn’t get away with murder, but Vihaan’s lunch money…well, yeah, her friend might be right about that.

But she couldn’t stop fretting over the problem as they got off the T still holding hands and started the twenty-five-minute walk to Vihaan’s house. “There’s got to be something we can do to stop this Masshole from ruining your last two years at Boston Glenn.”

“Stop, Lena,” Vihaan begged. “If he comes after me again, I’m just going to give him my lunch money.”

“No, no, it’s not right. Your mom works two jobs. That Southie doesn’t deserve that money. I don’t care how well he hits a ball.”

“Puck, and how do you know he’s a Southie?”

Lena cut him a frank look. “I know you only moved to America three years ago, but you have got to start learning to tell us Bostonians apart. If they sound like they’re about to hawk a spit wad and tell you to go fuck yourself at the same time, then they’re from one of the Irish sections of South Boston, okay?”

“This is somehow oddly specific and hopelessly confusing at the same time,” Vihaan told her. He dropped her hand since they were getting close to his house. “Besides, it doesn’t matter either way. Sticks get what they want. Whatever they want. Everyone knows this.”

Lena sank into miserable silence. Hating that Vihaan was right.

“Don’t pout,” Vihaan said, when they reached the three decker where he lived in a third floor apartment with his mother and brother. “Besides Keane is so hot, I find myself wishing I could afford to board at Boston Glenn, so that he might find me in the shower and assault me. In fact, I think I will fantasize about this tonight.”

Lena scrunched her face at him. “So politically incorrect, Vi. And way to make me feel good about bearding for you.”

“Yes, I am a horrible fake boyfriend,” Vihaan agreed with an easy grin. “So you can cease worrying about me.”

Lena knew what he was trying to do, but… “It’s not a joke.”

Vihaan sighed, his expression turning serious. “I know. So just let me pay him. It will be all right. I promise.”

“Will it, though?” Lena asked, her voice cracking with worry.

“Hey, Lena, do you need me to walk you to your father today?” a voice called down before Vihaan could answer.

Lena raised her eyes to see Rohan, Vihaan’s older brother, leaning out of one of their front windows.

Their mom maintained very strict rules about them inviting girls into the house, so she’d never stepped foot in her best friend’s apartment. But his older brother, Rohan, always offered to escort her the rest of the way to her dad’s store, which was about another twenty-minute walk from their three-decker.

Technically, Lena shouldn’t have attended middle school in Dorchester, but her dad had transferred her there, using the store’s address for seventh grade. He’d betted that her superior grades would stand out here more than in their fast-gentrifying Upper Roxbury home district and he’d been right. Both Vihaan and Lena had tested into Boston Glenn and received full merit scholarships.

Rohan had thanked her profusely for setting a good example and helping his little brother achieve during his first years in America, and he’d been walking Lena to her father’s convenience store ever since she started at Boston Glenn.

Usually she took him up on his offer in the colder months, when the sun set early, but it was still bright out. So she waved up and said, “No, that’s okay. See you tomorrow.”

Lena kept her voice light, but as soon as Rohan disappeared back through the window, she returned her worried attention to Vihaan. “Maybe you should tell your brother. He might have some ideas about how to help you.”

Vihaan started shaking his head before Lena was even finished with her suggestion. “He is very stressed about his sophomore year in university. All he does is go to class and study. He does not need this additional stressor.”

Her heart sank a little. “But—”

“Let it go, Lena.” Vihaan said. Then he turned to walk away before she could protest any further.

Lena plodded the rest of the way to her dad’s convenience store, still fretting over what had happened with the new school bully.

“Were you given much homework then?” Dad asked when she walked into the EasyStop.

Lena couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to clock her glum expression. He was sitting behind the bulletproof counter, just like he’d been since 12am, his suspicious eyes glued to the four-camera security monitor he’d mounted next to the counter.

She glanced at the security camera. There were only a few customers in the store. Two teenage girls in the candy aisle and a large black man in a Dickies workman jacket, studying the beer, like his choice would determine whether the Boston Revolutions won or lost their basketball game tonight.

The man’s relaxed shoulders told Lena he wasn’t any threat. But the girls…they were whispering and pointing.

“Hold on,” she said and went over to stand at the end of the aisle.

Sure enough, the girls abruptly stopped whispering. Lena lingered, pretending to have a hard time choosing between the old-fashion Hubba Bubba and one of the new-fangled, way more expensive Big E-Paks of Eclipse gum they’d recently started carrying. And a few minutes into their can’t decide standoff, the girls made a hasty beeline for the door.

When she went back up to the front of the store, her father gave her a quick, tired smile before returning his suspicious eyes back to the security monitor. “You are good at spotting these criminals. I think this skill will help you very much when you become a doctor. You will know when someone is truly in need of medicine or trying to scam the system. There are so many of those these days. I saw it on an episode of Boston Hope.”

Lena rarely received compliments from her father, and they usually lit her up. However, the way her stomach knotted every time she thought of spending the rest of her life in a hospital, like the doctors on Boston Hope, made it hard to enjoy this bit of praise.

But her father had dropped out of medical school to raise her alone after her mother had died in childbirth, she reminded herself. The least she could do after all he’d sacrificed for her was make the dream he’d had to give up for himself finally come true.

“Where is Rohan?” he asked, drawing her away from her guilty thoughts. Usually he stopped in and exchanged a few words with her Dad in Punjabi.

“It’s still light out, so I told him I could walk here alone.”

Dad finally tore his eyes away from the security monitor. “You should let him escort you, even when it’s light out. His walking you here is a good way to show he is needed. Indian men are not like Americans. We appreciate smart females. But we don’t like too much independence. Also this is a way for you two to spend time together—and before you go saying something like, ‘Eww, Abba, he is four years older than me!’ Let me remind you these few years will not matter at all when you reach university age. Also, you must start your campaign to earn a proposal from him early, as his mother will be a hard sell. It will take time to work your way into her good graces.”

Lena could have pointed out that Vihaan’s and Rohan’s mother held down two jobs and was never home anyway. And even if she worked a nine-to-five, she was probably hoping for a nice Indian girl for both of her boys. A nice full-Indian girl like the ones Rohan was probably currently meeting at college, not a half-black one like her.

But she already knew what her father would say. He had a long-range plan. This was why he favored Rohan over Vihaan for her. Vihaan was bright and bubbly when he wasn’t getting picked on by bullies—it would be easy for him to net a nice girl her dad had declared. But Rohan was too studious and conscientious to attract the attentions of a normal Indian girl. He had every faith that his mother would become increasingly desperate and eventually decide to accept a half-Indian daughter into her home.

Lena loved her dad and couldn’t be more grateful for him. Just the fact that they were standing in a convenience store he was way too overqualified to run showed how much he loved her, how much he had sacrificed. But he had a plan for everything, and sometimes it felt like she’d never be able to execute all of them. Never be able to make him happy the way a full Indian daughter would have. And deep inside that knowledge hurt.

“I don’t have too much homework today,” she said, changing the subject. “You should go upstairs and take a nap.”

Even when she had a lot of homework, Lena never admitted that she did. What she’d referred to as a nap was technically the only sleep her father got on weekday school nights, since he refused to hire an assistant clerk with money that would be better invested in her college fund.

He must have been tired, because he didn’t give any protest. Instead he tapped a finger on a thick envelope and said, “The Irish will be by tonight. This is for them.”

Lena simply nodded, though the sight of the envelope filled her with disgust. This was another reason she didn’t love Southies. Her father had been paying bogus protection money to them since he saved up enough to buy the original owner out of the store.

She continued to scowl at the envelope, even as she pulled out the stack of books and plays she’d borrowed from the school library after receiving her AP English syllabus. They hadn’t been assigned any homework on the first day of school, but in her experience, it always paid to get a jumpstart on all required reading, especially the Shakespeare.

She rang up a few sales and started perusing As You Like It, scanning down often to the translation notes at the bottom. But it was slow going. She kept on thinking about what had happened with Vihaan that morning. And that unexpected zap of…something she didn’t quite understand when the bully had hit her with his green gaze.

“Think that envelope belongs to me.”

She looked up to see a hulking Southie. Now this guy looked like a bully. He had a weird combination of big muscles and an even bigger beer belly. His ears stuck out and his hair was cut close to the skull. And though he was here to pick up his protection envelope, his mouth sat at a permanent downturn. Like she’d come into his store to extort him out of money he didn’t deserve, not the other way around. But the eyes were the same. Intense, like they could blink to violent any second now.

If he had come into the store as a regular customer, Lena wouldn’t have just gone to stand beside him, she probably would have picked up the landline, and kept her finger hovering over the 9-1-1 speed dial until he left.

But as it was, Lena wordlessly handed over the envelope. Hating that he snatched it from her the same way Keane had snatched that five from Vihaan.

Like it had been his money all along.

This was why she hated Southies, she reminded herself as she watched the Irish mobster swagger out of the store. And this was why she had no business feeling any kind of way about the new bully, much less obsessing over his good looks and the way his eyes had bored into hers. Southies were the worst—

But then her disgusted thoughts suddenly cut off as a new idea began to form. An idea which could solve Vihaan’s bully problem….

When you grow up like Keane did, you put away those superhero comics pretty quick. His suitemate, Con received a whole stack of the damn things on the first day of school from a loving pa back in The Cheese State. But Keane had held up a hand, a wave of disgust rolling through his stomach, when Con offered to let him read Viking Wolf, the first spin-off comic from that Viking Shifter game he and a few of the other guys on the team liked to play after second practice.

He appreciated the offer, but those comics were full of it. Previous to his ascension into fancy muckety-muck schools that gave talented hockey players full rides, he’d learned the hard fucking way that nobody ever showed up to save you when bad shit went down in Southie. You only had two choices in life asshole or get assholed. (And if you didn’t understand asshole as a verb of life, then you had absolutely no chance of making it out of his neighborhood at all.)

Keane hadn’t read a comic since his balls dropped.

So, it was surprising to find himself reading one when Lena knocked on his suite door, loud and hard, like she knew what she wanted. “Hello, Keane,” she called on the other side of the wood. “It’s Lena. You there?”

Was he there? Hell yeah, he was. He leaped out of bed, only to freeze at the sight of her when he yanked open the door. She looked different from this morning. The tie was gone and the hip hugging uniform skirt was at least six inches shorter. She’d also unbuttoned her shirt, so low he could see the edges of her bra.

His cock instantly turned to concrete.

He’d been right about her. She had been hiding a fantastic pair of tits under that uniform. But now she stuck them out and said, “I’m here to see what I can do to make you leave my boyfriend alone.”

“That right?” Keane asked, his voice low as his dick pulsed, panting for a taste.

Normally he had a policy about messing with other guy’s girlfriends. It was a hockey thing. Don’t shit where you skate and all that. Bros before hos who could ruin your team’s chance at a championship.

But Band Nerd wasn’t on his team, Keane reminded himself. Also, he didn’t deserve a set of tits like the ones Lena was shoving in his face. Probably didn’t even know what to do with them.

Keane crooked his head to the side, pretending to take her request under serious consideration. “What if I told you to dump that chump and get with a winner.”

She grinned, like he was the coolest bro on the planet. “It depends, are you the winner I’d be getting with?”

“Hell yeah,” he answered with a smirk.

“In that case…”

She stood on her tip toes and leaned forward, pressing her incredible tits into his chest as she grabbed him around the shoulders. Then she…

Shook him hard and yelled, “Wake up, Boston. C’mon, bro, wake up already!”

Keane jerked awake. Con was standing over his bed.

Fuck! It had only been a dream.

“That for me?” Con asked, lifting both his eyebrows.

Keane followed his roommate’s gaze down to the morning wood tenting his sheet. “Fuck no,” he answered, throwing back the cover and hopping out of bed. “I gotta take a shower.” For more reasons than one.

Con just snorted as Keane shoved past him. “Yeah whatever. You don’t have time for a shower. We only got ten til practice.”

“Fuck!” Keane yelled again.

“Yeah, I was surprised to find you still sleeping.”

Keane was surprised, too. He usually got to practice fifteen minutes early. He liked to show coaches why he was always a ten times better pick than any of the entitled rich shits that riddled most hockey teams like a fucking venereal disease.

He made it on time to their morning session, but just barely, and Coach Neilson asked if he needed a reminder about the Shower Before Practice policy as he skated by—loud enough for the whole team to hear.

And a few guys snickered, which meant Keane would have to spend the rest of the week checking them into walls whenever they even thought about going for his side’s puck. As violently as possible. He’d learned early never to let a rich prick get away with laughing at him.

On top of that, he hadn’t gotten the chance to eat breakfast this morning, and there was no time to sneak in a bowl of Wheaties after practice, just a shower. He opted for the shower. Because he hated getting laughed at…he told himself. But a small, no-bullshit part of him knew the real reason.

That real reason stood around 5’5 with deep brown eyes, tits to literally dream for, and had made “More Than a Feeling” blast inside his head with just one look. And no, he didn’t want to smell when he slammed the real reason’s boyfriend into a locker this morning.

But he did take a moment to text his little brother who was still in middle school before heading off to the campus’s main classroom building.

“How’s it going.”

“Fine.”

Shit. The single word answer from his normally chatty brother meant he was anything but. Also…why wasn’t he in school?

He didn’t bother to ask, because he already knew the answer. It was six feet and liked to beat on whoever was around when it got drunk and pissed off about its shitty left behind life. This was one of the reasons he’d agreed to transfer from his boarding school in Connecticut to one in Boston. He needed to be able to go home on the weekends. Protect his brother as much as he could from their asshole father.

But apparently his father had decided to switch things up and get punchy on a week night.

So yeah, Keane’s mood was charting at Pretty Fucked by the time he got to school. He ignored all the people calling out to him as he strode down the main hallway. There were mostly girls anyway. And none of them were her.

In fact, Band Nerd and his girlfriend were suspiciously absent when he walked past their section of lockers.

More F-bombs exploded in his head as he continued down the hallway, without today’s lunch money offering. Obviously, Band Nerd & Co. had decided to avoid him, but after he stowed his books, he’d hunt them down like a Catholic priest whose collection plate had come back to the front empty.

Just like the dorm rooms on the fourth floor of the residence hall, the school kept all hockey players’ lockers together. Sin, Con and a few of his other teammates had already arrived and were shoving books into their lockers.

“Boston!” they intoned as he opened his own locker.

Unlike Con, and Sin, he hadn’t had to split up his name. Not to say Boston Glenn was elitist as fuck. But the only other Boston propers who attended the school were either brown and here on scholarship (like Lena), or descended from Founding Fathers, which he guessed made them too anemic and inbred to play hockey. Whatever, he liked having Boston all to himself. And it really didn’t matter today anyway. The main point was him needing to hunt that ass tool down to beat the five out of h—

The imaginary film of him beating Band Nerd to a pulp froze frame when he saw the envelope waiting for him at the top of his locker.

A white envelope…his heart stopped beating. If there was one thing he’d learned after two years at elite boarding schools, it was that rich kids were a bunch of mean cunts. And the guys were the worst. None of them knew how to fight for shit, so if they had a problem with you, instead of settling that beef with fists, they took the girly way out and fucked with your head.

Had one of those skinny pale-ass Founding Daddy fucks figured out his Dad collected envelopes for the Charlie Gang and decided some mocking was in order? Keane fisted a hand, wondering who he’d have to knock out first.

But then he caught sight of the words written across the top of the envelope in neat looping letters. A girl’s handwriting for sure. When he and most guys he knew bothered to write neatly, it was always in block letters, spaced out with nothing touching. No fucking loops.

Keane picked the envelope up and read:

Dear Keane (sp?), It has come to our attention that your Boston Glenn Scholarship does not cover your lunch money needs. In the spirit of helping, here is the first of five dollars that will be delivered every weekday, so that you may enjoy your mid-afternoon meal without impeding the lunch time needs of others.

All our best, Scholarship Kids Helping Other Scholarship Kids.

Keane read the words on the front of the envelope, then looked inside. Sure enough, there was a five-dollar bill.

He’d noted all the “our” this and “our” that, but he knew exactly who had left this envelope for him. And a slow grin spread across his face as he went from simply wanting to bang the girl with the big tits to actually starting to like her. Sending a note like this to a guy like him required major balls, and he had to give her respect. Not just the mental kind, either.

From that day forth, he never messed with Band Nerd again. And even though he put himself on a monthly rotation of easy pussy after a week of not seeing her in the hallway, he continued thinking (and occasionally dreaming) about the girl who left an envelope with a five-dollar bill in his locker every school day.

That had been the first time she surprised him. But it wouldn’t be the last.

“Excuse me, could I have your autograph?”

Keane raised his head from the glass of whiskey he was about to down, already preparing to say fuck no. Politely, if he could manage it. His brother, Bono, had warned him before this year’s annual black-tie event for the Keane Hockey Academy that his habit of telling anyone who asked him for his John Hancock to go fuck themselves might not help them hit this year’s fundraising goal.

Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Five minutes before going on stage to deliver his required speech, he had zero desire to talk to anything but a stiff drink.

But he reconsidered his no when he spied who was doing the asking. Perky blonde. Early 20s. Hopefully not younger. But rich enough to be milling around this six-figure a table black tie fundraiser. Plus, she held his Hawks Upper Deck card in her perfectly manicured hand. Not a napkin or some bullshit like that.

“Yeah, you can have an autograph.” He took the card from her and immediately flipped it over, before the younger him could give him any grief. Yeah, technically he made more money off the ice than he ever did on, but pictures from when he was whole still hit him like a puck to the chest.

“What’s your name?” he asked, giving her lots of eye contact.

“Oh, it’s not for me. It’s for my dad. He got called away on business, but he’s a huge fan still. His name is Gary.”

Well, shit. He scribbled his name across the card and asked bluntly, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” she answered, dipping her head in a way she probably practiced in the mirror. It was wicked cute. “How old are you?”

He handed the card back to her. “Thirty-three. You coming back to my place for dessert after this is done?”

He watched her calculate out a response. The younger women knew how to put on event make-up like nobody’s business thanks to YouTube. But they couldn’t hide their feelings for shit when it came to sober, in person come-ons. He knew her answer way before she carefully gave it. “I’d like that. I’d like it a lot.”

Huh…nothing.

Keane liked winning. He’d built a hockey career and then a multi-million-dollar real estate investment group on winning. But this didn’t feel like a win. There was no victory flare, no stirring in his pants. Just a whole lot of hollow numb. Same as before the blonde had walked up to him, right before he ordered his usual pre-speech drink.

Speaking of which. “You want one?” he asked, beckoning over the man bun tending the bar in a crisp white shirt and bow tie.

“Yes, thank you,” she answered, laying a hand on his arm.

Without warning “More Than a Feeling” started blasting, flooding him with memories of the last girl who had made him hear that song with just one touch.

Logically, Keane should have been on top of the world. His two years at Boston Glenn couldn’t have gone better. They’d won the state championship twice. He’d yet to go more than three or four days without pussy. And now here he was dancing with the hottest girl in school with a crown on his head. He’d morphed from a South Boston peasant recruit to king of the school, with little to no off-ice effort required.

“Babe, I’m going to blow your mind tonight,” Cordelia whispered in his ear, giving him even more reason to show some gratitude for getting named prom king along with his current girlfriend.

If he had to listen to her talk for more than a few minutes, Cordelia annoyed the hell out of him, but she fucked like a porn star. Always down for head. Knew how to give him plenty of eye contact and seemed to have been born without a gag reflex. She kept everything bare, didn’t even have hair on her arms. And she knew what she was doing when she got on top. He could already see her taking her pretty blonde hair out of that princess bun, and swishing it back and forth as she rode him like the horse she boarded in the Boston Glenn stables.

Yeah, euphoria should be running through his veins, like the good stuff he was known to peddle at college parties when his funds ran low.

But instead he continued to psycho stare over Cordelia’s shoulder. Not at another girl, but at Band Nerd, who was dancing with some skinny Jewish-looking guy. Keane had never seen him before, but he had his arms wrapped around Band Nerd, and was dancing just as close to him and as Cordelia was to Keane.

Band Nerd was gay. That motherfucker had been letting Lena pay Keane five dollars every school day for two years, but then couldn’t even wait until after prom to come out of the closet. Couldn’t even take her instead of that equally band nerd looking fuck.

Anger continued to rise, filling his body until it became so rigid, his normally self-absorbed girlfriend, leaned back to ask, “Are you all right?”

Instead of answering, he walked away from her.

“Keane? Keane? Where are you going?” Cordelia demanded.

He ignored her as he headed straight toward Band Nerd with his fist balled. Nearly two years, he’d been whacking off to fantasies of Lena Kumar. But he’d never touched her. Never let himself approach her. Because she was already taken. And now her “boyfriend” was here with another guy? If this fucker thought, he was going to get away with this…

Unfortunately, Con popped up in front of him halfway through his beeline. “Hey, hey,” he said, following the direction of Keane’s gaze. “We’re all pissed about that fag showing up with a date, but hockey season’s over, bro. If you say or do something to him, the gay student coalition’s going to shit a sheep. The school will kick you out just to be PC and that could put your place on the UBoss’s hockey team in danger. Think, bro, think.”

Keane did think about it. True, if he kicked Band Nerd’s ass, the school would probably expel him. Now that they’d gotten what they wanted; they didn’t need him anymore. He understood that. But with his record and NHL trajectory, he doubted much would endanger his hockey team placement at the University of Boston—or UBoss as the locals called the division one school.

Still, he held only three basic truths to be self-evident since discovering hockey.

1.Don’t get assholed.

2.Do whatever it took to make it to the NHL.

3.Don’t let shit come between you and the NHL.

He went back to his girlfriend. Let her fuck him good for making her prom queen dream come true.

But was that enough?

Did he stop obsessing over Lena? Or the fact that she was free? Had been free this entire time?

No, no…he didn’t.

By Monday morning, he’d decided to do something nearly as fucked up as Band Nerd showing up at prom with a guy on his arm.

He arrived earlier than usual to school the Monday after the big dance, with a plan to ask Lena Kumar out. Thanks to the Mindfuck gods, all the other seniors’ lockers had been grouped right up the hallway from the hockey players’ this year. That meant he’d been gifted season tickets he didn’t want to the show of her and Band Nerd, laughing together, like besties since September.

Keane had figured his chances of putting her in the monthly pussy rotation were zero to negative, which was why he’d stayed away. Yet watching them had made his chest burn funny. He couldn’t keep his interest up for a girl more than a few weeks, much less the two years Lena and Band Nerd had been together. And despite himself, his heart had pounded at the thought of someone like Lena being as sweet and loyal to him as she was to her weak as fuck boyfriend.

But lucky, Con had stopped him from bashing Band Nerd’s face in, because that shit had been a total illusion. Apparently, Lena had known all along that “her boyfriend” was gay and had volunteered for beard duty to make his life easier.

Con had sounded especially pissed when he reported all this back to Keane on Sunday. “I knew that guy was a fag, but I let him get away with it, while we were still on hockey god status, because I thought what he had with Lena was for real.” He’d shaken his head bitterly. “I should have trusted my gut and beat him down.”

But Keane couldn’t figure out whether to admire her for her loyalty or go bitter, like Con over the wasted opportunity. Did she know…did she have any idea what he would have done to her if he’d known she was free?

He knew now, and his heart pounded louder than ever as he strode from the front entrance of the school toward the senior lockers. He could see her at the end of the hallway, laughing with Band Nerd. So yeah, Con must have gotten it right about her not being mad.

Keane headed straight toward her. No pretending not to see her today. No more sneaking looks.

“You’re here early!”

His heart went from pounding to a full-on sink when Cordelia appeared out of nowhere and grabbed his arm. Latching on to him like a fucking leech. Seeing the two of them walking down the hall together, people started calling out congratulations. Hell, if it didn’t feel like prom night all over again. Especially with Cordelia waving back, like she was still wearing a tiara.

But fuck that. “Cord, we need to talk,” he said, figuring in public would be as good a place as any to dump her. Less chance of her making a scene.

Instead of answering, Cordelia’s scrunched her face and asked, “What’s that girl doing at your locker? Is she…is she trying to give you a love note?”

Keane blanched when he saw Lena standing at his locker with an envelope in her hand, obviously preparing to slip it between the front metal grate.

Fuck!

Before he could stop her, Cordelia rushed over to her with a “Ew, what are you doing?”

Then she snatched an envelope Keane had gotten to know well out of Lena’s hand. Over the years, Lena had gone from handwriting her made-up slogan to printing it out in a pretty-legitimate-looking capital letter font with a logo and everything.

He could see the orange-and-black SCHOLARSHIP KIDS HELPING OTHER SCHOLARSHIP KIDS logo from here, but instead of chuckling like he usually did at the sight of it, he cursed himself.

“It’s…it’s nothing,” Lena answered Cordelia, reaching for the envelope.

But Cordelia held it back, her perfectly made up eyes flashing angrily as she said, “No, you’re going to tell me why you are putting envelopes in my boyfriend’s locker.”

“Cordelia, seriously, just give it back—”

Instead, Cordelia opened the envelope like she was auditioning for Mean Girls 2: Over the Top. Probably expecting to find a love letter she could read out loud to the crowd of kids that had gathered to watch this post-prom show go down. However, she scrunched her face even tighter when she saw the five-dollar bill. “Money? Why are you putting an envelope with money inside my boyfriend’s locker? Is this some kind of joke?”

Keane cursed himself for letting that lunch money shit go on for so long. It had never been about money really. His dad was mafia for Christ’s sakes. Low down on the totem pole, yeah, but still, Keane could make $500 in the time it took her to put her Abe Lincoln in an envelope and slip it in his locker. All it took was one call to the any of the many uncles he wasn’t really related to, and a trip to a frat house on any one of Boston’s many college campuses.

He’d thought about telling her to knock it off a few times over the past two years, but he’d never been able to bring himself to do it. The lunch money was stupid, yeah, but it was the only connection he had with this girl he’d been obsessing over.

“Yes, it’s a joke,” Lena answered Cordelia, her voice sounding weak and scared.

Cordelia had a way of inspiring that reaction in other girls.

“Just a joke, right, Keane?”

The gazes of all the students staring at them felt like bugs crawling over his skin. In an instant he was transported back to his first real deal hockey summer camp. He’d had to take a T and two buses to get to Marlborough. Those rich kids had pointed at the Southie in second-hand skates covered in duct tape, and they’d laughed every time he fell. Teaching him how things worked here at this elite summer camp, just as they had in South Boston. Here and everywhere you went you either assholed or got assholed.

Don’t get assholed. As his original truth rang even more self-evident in his head, everybody was staring at him, waiting for his answer. Including Lena.

Christ, Lena…. She was stupid loyal, wasn’t she? Too damn loyal to guys who didn’t fucking deserve it.

He slammed his hand against the row of lockers, hating her for her stupid loyalty as she jumped at the unexpected sound of his hand bashing into metal. Hating himself even more for what he was about to do.

“I told you to quit doing that shit! Listen, you gotta stop stalking me! You psycho freak! You can’t pay me enough to put my dick in you. So, stop trying.”

He put all his anger into making his words sound convincing, and fuck…it worked.

She flinched, shocked hurt widening her eyes. But instead of laughing at Keane for being poor, everyone around them started laughing at her for being a psycho.

He wanted her to protest. Maybe even hit him. He deserved that and it wouldn’t matter. Everyone would believe him and maybe he could explain in private.

But she did something even worse than hitting him. Instead of getting angry, she turned and ran. However, not fast enough for him not to see the way her eyes welled up right before she took off down the hallway. An ugly hollowness lodged in his gut and his heart pounded. Still terrified for some reason, even though he’d successfully dodged the reputation killing bullet that would have been admitting he’d been letting Lena Kumar give him “scholarship” lunch money the entire time he was here.

Band Nerd glared at him, then took off, too, calling her name as he ran to comfort her.

No, his name wasn’t Band Nerd, Keane finally admitted. It was Vihaan. And it didn’t matter how short and skinny he was or who he’d brought to prom, in that moment, he was a much bigger man than Keane.

Keane would continue to think about what happened in that hallway for years to come. Replaying it in his mind, and wishing he’d said something else. Done something else. Defended her instead of standing by while those rich assholes teased her for the rest of the year. It had become so bad, he’d never been able to figure out how to approach her privately to explain why he’d said what he had. Con and a bunch of the other hockey players even coughed, “psycho!” under their hands as she walked across the graduation stage.

No, like the coward who figures out a comeback way too late, Keane eventually constructed the perfect reaction to that envelope moment, sometime around his first year at UBoss.

He could have kissed her. He could have kissed her there in that hallway in front of everyone, including Cordelia, and let them all figure it out.

That he didn’t want Cordelia, he wanted Lena.

That the money didn’t mean shit, it had always been about keeping Lena close, even when he thought she was with somebody else.

That they were just background.

Hockey and Lena were all that mattered.

He got to keep hockey, but he lost Lena the same spring morning he’d set out to claim her.

“Ah, Keane, I think they’re calling for you to go up on stage.”

Keane blinked out of the memory, realizing that the song wasn’t coming from the blonde. He could now see Bono on stage waving him forward while the Hawks’ unofficial victory song poured out from the speakers on either side of the stage.

“Be here when I get back,” he bit out, like the blonde was one of his minions at DGK.

Then he went to give a very short speech, which would be followed by a long night of trying to fuck Lena out of his system. Again.

He hated that this was still happening sixteen years after their eyes first clashed. Hated that it was still Lena—and only Lena—who made him feel like a victory song whenever she touched him.