Offside: Rules of the Game Book 1

Chase: You’re a journalism major, right?

Bailey: I am. Why?

Chase: Does that mean you’re good at editing?

Bailey: What’s your angle, Carter?

Chase: My history paper is a fucking tire fire.

Bailey: Wish I could help, but I don’t know anything about history.

Chase: Turns out, neither do I.

Chase: Help me, James. I’m just a pretty face.

Bailey: I guess I could read it over and make sure it flows smoothly. Email it to me – b.james@Callingwood.edu

Chase: I owe ya.

Chase: In fact, I’ll give Morrison an extra hit next time we play the Bulldogs. I’ll crush him for you. Like a bug.

Bailey: Oh my god, don’t do that. Still Team Bulldog here, remember?

Chase: For now.

Bailey: Forever.

Chase: We’ll see.

Bailey: We really won’t.

BAILEY

Turned out that texting with Chase before bed was recipe for insomnia. I was way too keyed up to sleep. Given that I had an early class on Tuesday mornings, this was a highly problematic development. I pulled out all the stops—reading a boring textbook, rewatching comfort shows, even chamomile tea, but nothing could calm the buzz in my body.

Finally, I took some melatonin and fell asleep sometime around midnight, only to be startled awake by a loud crash, like something falling over and hitting the ground. Probably the neighbor’s cat, who loved to prowl around on our fire escape. I sighed, rolling over in bed to find the glowing red letters of my alarm clock staring back at me—3:12 a.m. Might as well go pee while I was up.

After sliding out from under the covers, I shuffled to my door and down the hall with my eyes half-closed. As I reached for the bathroom door, it swung open, and I ran smack into a large male body.

I jumped back. It was probably Paul or Eddie.

But in the dim moonlight streaming in, I caught sight of a familiar face. It was my brother.

“Geez!” I put a hand to my chest, my heart racing like I was watching a game in overtime. “Derek, what are you doing here?”

“Shh,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Keep it down.”

“You’re in my hallway in the middle of the night, and you’re shushing me?” I whisper-yelled. “I want an explanation.”

Derek bent closer, his voice low. “Can we go downstairs at least?”

“Fine,” I hissed.

He turned and headed down the steps. I followed behind and flipped on the light over the stove. I poured a glass of water while he sank onto a stool at the island, slumping over the laminate counter. I could pee later; right now, I needed to know what the hell was going on.

“Explain.” I rested both elbows on the counter, pinning him with my stare.

He lifted his head, regarding me with his brows knit together. His dark blond hair stood up everywhere, he had dark circles beneath his brown eyes, and his sweatshirt was rumpled. He looked like he’d just woken up after a night of terrible sleep.

His throat bobbed. “I was with Jill.”

“What?” The glass I was holding nearly slid out of my hand. I knew something suspicious was afoot, but hearing him say it out loud was a different story entirely.

“Would you keep your voice down?” He glanced at the stairs nervously. “No one is supposed to know.”

But I bet Amelia did.

I stared at him, my breath growing faster. A whirlwind of hurt, betrayal, disappointment, and anger swirled in my gut. Our parents hadn’t raised us to be the kinds of people who did things like this; Derek knew better.

“How could you—how could she—” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Eddie is your friend.”

“I know.” Derek ducked his head, his jaw clenched. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it is. How long has this been going on?”

He looked back up at me and shrugged, guilt all over his face. “Since August?”

“You mean this has been happening for months? What the hell, Derek?”

Then it hit me. Oh my god. I bet it happened at Paul’s parents’ cottage. After a huge blowout fight with Jill on Friday afternoon, Eddie stormed off and went back to the city instead of staying at the lake house for the weekend with the rest of us.

Jill had been really upset, crying and taking it hard, but then she’d gone to bed early. Then my brother had done the same not long after.

And they had always, always flirted.

“I know.”

“She’s using you,” I said, anger overtaking my other emotions. “I don’t know what for, but something. It’s not like her motivations can possibly be innocent here. You’re a side piece.”

Now I had to look at her every day and pretend I didn’t know this? How twisted was that? How many people were covering it up? Had Luke known too and not told me?

He blew out a heavy sigh. “I have feelings for her, okay? It’s not that simple.”

“You’re an accomplice to a crime,” I snapped, placing my glass in the dishwasher.

I had always suspected he had a crush on Jill. But this ran deep. So deep that he was compromising his morals and ethics, and potentially hurting one of his friends—and teammates—for her.

As for Jill, she’d always been self-centered. But this was low, even for her.

“What about you?” Derek’s expression turned harsh. “Carter?”

“I didn’t know he had a girlfriend.” I cocked my head. “What’s her name?”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

My skin prickled at his tone. Of course I knew. I just didn’t care.

He added, “Carter is one of our worst enemies, B. Me, the whole team.”

“Oh, grow up,” I said. “It’s just hockey.”

“Hockey is one of the most important things in my life. You don’t even respect that anymore.”

“You’re literally screwing your friend’s girlfriend, and you’re giving me grief about a consensual relationship between two single people?” I asserted, throwing a hand in the air. “And for what it’s worth, Chase has been ten times nicer to me than your best buddy Luke ever was. Or you lately, for that matter.”

“I know I’ve been a shit.” He sighed again, shaking his head. “I’ve been so preoccupied with this Jill stuff that my head has been up my ass.”

I crossed my arms over my pink pajama top, leveling him with an icy glare. “I’m glad we can agree on something.”

“I’ve been avoiding everyone because I’m scared it’ll come out.” His tone was forlorn, like he wanted me to feel sorry for him, but he was the creator of his own problems. It wasn’t like him to play the victim like this.

“As you should be,” I said. “Why doesn’t Jill break up with Eddie? Are you scared it’ll mess up his game?”

As ridiculous as it was, hockey came before everything else for the team, even personal relationships. It was totally within the realm of possibility that they’d cover this up to preserve their goalie.

“It’s more complicated than that.”

I arched an eyebrow.

Derek glanced over at the stairs again, leaning in closer and lowering his voice. “Last time she tried to end things with him, he threatened to kill himself.”

My stomach lurched. I blinked, trying to process the details. “That’s messed up.”

“I know,” he muttered.

Though as terrible as it was of me to think, part of me wondered if it was true. If this intel came from Jill, it likely couldn’t be trusted. She was playing puppeteer with my brother like a pro.

“If that’s true, he needs help.” I wiped at the countertop in front of me. “Her staying with him is only fueling the problem.”

“I know,” he said again, defeated.

I studied his face in the shadowy light. Our mother’s eyes, our father’s nose, hair the same color as mine. Never once did I think he would be capable of this.

“I don’t even know what to say to you right now,” I told him. “I’m beyond disappointed. This is wrong and you know it.”

“You aren’t going to tell anyone, are you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “But I hope you wise up and do the right thing. I’m going to bed. Lock the door behind you, please.”

After we texted Monday evening, Chase sent me a copy of his essay and scammed me into coming over to help him with it the following day. And by scammed, I mean he was both incredibly charming and insufferably persistent until I relented. In other words, impeccably on-brand for him.

That’s not to say I minded. But that was a whole other ball of hockey stick wax.

Plus, it was a nice distraction from my rapidly disintegrating social life and the new Derek-Jill revelation.

That’s how I found myself in Chase’s bedroom for the second time, albeit under dramatically different circumstances. A bedroom that smelled of the delicious lingering leather-vanilla scent of his cologne. Had he applied said cologne before leaving to pick me up?

Combined with my three outfit changes while waiting for him and the sparkly pink lip gloss I swiped over my lips on my way out the door, there were some major questions as to what, exactly, we were doing.

But I wasn’t ready to unpack that yet.

I perched on the end of the bed across from the computer desk, rifling through my backpack for the printout I’d marked up with my suggestions. Chase faced me, straddling the computer chair, and turned his red Falcons baseball cap backward, then rested his arms on the seatback.

“I made a few edits.” I handed him a copy of his paper with my corrections and suggestions marked in red ink. Using track changes within Word would have been less work for both of us, but this way he had to do more heavy lifting by inputting the changes manually, rather than accepting them all with one click of a mouse button. While I didn’t mind helping him, I wouldn’t enable him, either.

Chase scanned the front page, then glanced back up at me with his dark eyes wide, like a deer in headlights. “Holy shit. I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“It’s not. You’ve got some good insights, and the conclusions are well-supported. It’s just a little…jumbled.”

“That sounds like a candy-coated way of saying it sucks.”

I shrugged. “My rough drafts are messy too. You have to revise and rewrite to polish a piece.”

“Ugh.” He folded his arms over the back of his chair again and hung his head, sighing dramatically. His forearms flexed, veins tracing their length. I watched, mesmerized, for a split second. Since when had I developed a thing for forearms? And had his hands always been that big?

“That sounds like so much work.”

“That’s sort of the point of schoolwork, Carter.”

Chase was a top-notch grinder—one of the grittiest players on the Falcons, known for his physical gameplay. He made life hell for our defense, cleared bodies out of the way for snipers to score, and won puck battles more often than not. For someone who was a powerhouse on the ice, he was awfully lazy when it came to school. He was intelligent, that was obvious; he just needed to apply himself.

“Not gonna lie; it’s incredibly hard to give a fuck about any of this knowing it won’t matter down the road.”

“It matters now,” I said. “I thought you were on probation.”

“I am. Dicks.” Chase rolled his eyes.

“What if you need to finish your degree later? You never know. You could get injured or something.”

“If that happens, I’ll have bigger problems than the lack of a degree. I’m basically unemployable in any other capacity.” Chase raised his dark eyebrows. “Can you picture me wearing khakis and working in a cubicle, James?”

“No,” I admitted. It was so ill-suited to him that it was almost comical.

“And let’s face it,” he said. “I’m way too corruptible to be a cop. So, for the greater good of society, help me polish this turd of a paper and keep my grades up enough to stay on the team. I have to get signed. It’s that or homelessness for me. There is no in-between.”

I shifted, criss-crossing my legs. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a tad dramatic?”

“I prefer to think of it as having a zest for life.” His mouth tugged at the corners.

“You have something, that’s for sure.”

Chase got a gleam in his eyes that said he was definitely up to no good.

“You’re going to stay while I work on this, right?” He lowered his voice, a tactic he used, I realized, to get into my head…or maybe my pants. Yet, even knowing that, the voice totally worked. At least on the first part. Possibly a little of the second.

Maybe being in his bedroom wasn’t a good idea after all.

I raised an eyebrow, hiding all my inappropriate thoughts behind sarcasm. “You picked me up, so I’m not sure I have a choice.”

“That’s true.” He nodded. “Do any of us really have a choice? Or is free will merely an illusion?”

“I actually do have an exam to study for, so if you want company, there’s no need to get all philosophical on me. All you have to do is ask.”

I grabbed my textbook and binder and scooted back on the bed until I was sitting against the headboard. I wasn’t all that eager to spend time at my place, anyway. Lately, I felt like a stranger in my own home. Things were tense with Amelia and Jillian, and they were downright hostile when Paul was there, which was more often than not.

“You’re the best.” He spun around to face the computer, cracking his knuckles and stretching his neck. “I’m going to bang this out in no time.”

I suppressed a laugh as I bit back a dirty joke. Maybe I’d been spending too much time with Chase after all.