Dean (Face-Off 6)

Dean looks away from me. “Four.”

I let out a disgusted snort. “All of my brothers are such pigs.”

He smirks. “They’re men. What do you expect from them?”

“You’re not like them.”

He laughs. “That’s debatable.”

I ignore his comment and change the subject. “My dad booked me a suite at The Peninsula for next weekend. You can stay with me if you want.”

The men’s ice hockey team is playing in Chicago this year. If they win, the Strickland Senators will be the NCAA Division I champions for the third year in a row. None of these idiots should be drinking while they’re in the middle of chasing down another win, but no one said hockey players were smart.

“I’m supposed to stay with my team.” Dean places his hand on my lower back and leads me into the house. “I don’t think your brothers will be happy if I bail on them to sleep at some ritzy hotel with you.”

“We can order room service and rent movies and eat until we can’t stuff our faces anymore.”

He snorts. “How am I supposed to play if I eat a bunch of shit?”

“Good point. Maybe no junk food. But you’re coming over and watching movies with me. My dad is taking all of us to dinner on Saturday night, so you can come back to the hotel with me after we eat.”

Dean grins like an idiot. “Nick will be there.”

I laugh and smack his arm as we enter the crowded house. He doesn’t even try to hide how much he loves my dad.

Inside, the living room is jammed with at least a hundred sweaty, drunk students, who are grinding on each other. The couches are pushed up against the walls to create a makeshift dance floor. A rap song cranks through the speakers suspended at the corners of the ceilings, the bass thumping beneath my feet.

As we move toward the kitchen, I choke on a thick cloud of cigarette smoke floating through the air. This place is a nightmare. I’m not a fan of fraternity parties. I usually avoid them whenever possible. But with graduation around the corner, I want to spend as much time with Dean as possible, even if it means hanging out with stupid frat bros.

Dean knows most of the people in the kitchen, the bartender included. He chats with a few people, yelling to them over the loud music, and then hands me one of the beers the bartender passes to him.

“Can we go somewhere more… quiet?”

He tilts his head back and laughs. “We’re at a party. It’s supposed to be loud in here.”

I roll my eyes at him and stick out my tongue.

“We can go downstairs,” he offers. “It’s usually not as loud. You have to know the guys in the frat to hang out down there.”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Dean always has a VIP pass at Delta Sig. When I actually come to a party, I’m usually the girl in the corner, nursing her beer and trying to blend into the background. For most of my life, I’ve been the center of attention. And not because I wanted to be. I grew up with photographers snapping my picture, reporters chasing after us to get interviews with my dad. It was awful.

So, as an adult, I like when people don’t notice me. It’s nice to be normal. But it’s hard to do that around Dean. Girls throw themselves at him, and guys want to chill with him. He’s that guy. Like my dad. Like my brothers. And then, there’s me.

In the basement, I sit next to Dean on one of the old, ratty couches and cringe. I’m pretty sure someone puked on the fabric earlier, which causes me to scoot closer to Dean. I’m ready to jump on his lap but that would be weird. It would only give the people on campus more to talk about. Everyone assumes we’re dating when we’ve never even kissed.

The room is filled with smoke, the stench of beer, weed, and cigarettes thick in the air. I can barely see through the fog. Dean coughs a few times. He hates smoking as much as I do. We’ve both trained for most of our lives to be athletes. Neither of us was ever into smoking or drugs. Sitting with the fraternity brothers and their latest victims in this dank basement reminds me why I never bothered with this shit.

“Are you playing?” A guy asks Dean and me, pointing his finger at us.

Dean leans in to whisper, “We can get out of here if you want. We can go back to my house and drink there instead.”

“What are we playing?”

He sips his beer and shrugs. “This game is stupid. Think of it as a more advanced version of Seven Minutes in Heaven.”

I roll my eyes. “We’re not in grade school anymore, but it sounds simple enough.”