Page 26 of Beneath the Surface

“You’re fucking ripped. Look.” With zero concept of personal space and propriety, he yanked up my T-shirt, placing his palm flat against my abs. “See?”

“I know I am.” I shoved his hand away, my heart pounding. “I do a lot of martial arts, and I work out. But I’m never gonna have the bulk he wants me to. He hates that I take after my mother—his ex-wife—rather than him.” A thought suddenly occurred to me. “How did you know I was ripped?”

His cheeks flushed, and that was a sight I thought I’d never see. Grayson Cross embarrassed?

“I saw you at the lake. Earlier that day, when we were swimming. Before—” He cut himself off with a grimace, and just like that, my compartmentalizing went to shit.

“What are we going to do?”

“I’m gonna shower, and you’re gonna text Ava and Martinez. Get them to meet us at the library. We need to find out everything that happened that day at the lake.”

My mind wouldn’t stop racing, replaying that night over and over again. After packing up my stuff and texting the others, I headed into the locker room, my heart still racing and my palms sweating. As much as I had complicated feelings about Grayson Cross, he was the only person around right now who could distract me from my spiraling thoughts. And he was one of only three people who had an idea of what I was going through. The rest of the hockey team had been and gone while Graysonwas rinkside with me, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone wondering what I was doing there.

When I pushed open the doors, I heard the shower running. Instead of taking a seat on the benches and waiting, I lowered my bag to the floor, and then crossed the locker room to the entrance to the showers.

My eyes widened, my cheeks instantly heated, and I couldn’t move or breathe, caught in place by the shock of the sight in front of me.

Surrounded by billowing steam, rivulets of water running down the chiseled lines of his body, Grayson Cross stood in the shower with his head tipped back and his eyes closed, his hand wrapped around his dick. His large, hard dick.

Fuck. I needed to get out of here, but I couldn’t make my body move. If he opened his eyes, he’d find me staring at him, and there would be no explanation I could possibly provide.

He groaned, the sound echoing around the showers, and my dick jerked, lengthening inside my sweatpants.

What thefuck?

Somehow, I got my feet to move, stumbling backward and around the corner into the relative safety of the locker room. Collapsing back against the bank of lockers, I gasped for breath, desperately willing away my hardening erection. The only thing in my head was the image of Grayson in the shower, and my dick stubbornly refused to deflate. Why was this happening to me? As if my life didn’t have enough complications, now my dick was betraying me like this?

The shower cut out, and Grayson strolled in with a towel wrapped around his hips. I threw myself onto the nearest bench, tugging my bag from the floor and throwing it onto my thighs, barely suppressing the wince of pain when it hit my erection.

Lucky for me, Grayson didn’t notice, making a beeline for his locker. My eyes were dragged back to him against their will, trailing down the powerful lines of his back.

He opened his locker.

A piece of paper fluttered to the floor, and all hell broke loose.

16

GRAYSON

Istared at the words, block capitals scrawled in black ink, scratched deep into the torn paper.

DOES COACH PIERCE KNOW WHO HIS STAR PLAYER WAS HANGING OUT WITH AFTER THE GAME?

They’d been here. They knew which locker was mine.

“Fuck. They’re watching us,” I whispered. “Whoever they are, they’ve got eyes on us.”

Micah came to stand next to me, and it was only when he gripped my arm that I realized I was shaking. No, he was shaking. Or we both were.

“They’re sending a message,” he whispered. “They want you to know that they can access your locker. That they’ve been watching us. That they could go to my dad with the information about where we were after the game.”

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. When we’d first started getting the texts, yeah, I’d been afraid and fucking worried about the situation, but now I was gripped with an icy terror. We hadto find out what had happened that night, to piece it all together, and maybe then, we could work out who was behind this all.

“I’m scared,” Micah confessed, and that was what broke me. Twisting around, I wrapped my arms around him, burying my face in his hair and taking comfort from him, just as he was taking comfort from me.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I said, even though I didn’t believe it. At least my captaincy had been good for one thing—being a strong leader, supporting my teammates when they were having a hard time. Now, I had a new team, made up of four people that would never have come together if it hadn’t been for this incident, and it was up to me to be strong for them.

Micah hugged me back just as hard as I was hugging him. When we’d both calmed down and it seemed like his breathing was back to normal, I pulled away from him, clearing my throat.

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