The Graham Effect (Campus Diaries, #1)

I smother a snort. Of course he did. I was crazy to think he hadn’t already made moves on the chicks across the street.

As it turns out, the three girls who ring our doorbell later that night are all nursing students, which leads to plenty of very unfunny doctor and nurse jokes from Beckett. And yet the chicks eat it up, because Beck has that effect on women.

One of them has her sights set on me, though. Her name is Carma—with a C, she makes sure to tell us—and she’s a tall pretty girl with shoulder-length black curls and unabashed hunger in her dark eyes. She’s on me from the moment she enters the house, flirting hard, turning up the charm. At first, I’m sort of indifferent, just nodding along, but two beers later, I find myself receptive to her advances.

When she leans in close and whispers, “Wanna go upstairs?” in my ear, I can’t deny the offer is tempting.

Last time I hooked up was a month ago, when I went to visit Beckett in Indianapolis for a weekend. We hit up a few bars, and I ended up going home with a hot bartender in her late twenties. Fun night.

In the month since, however, I was tasked with finding us a house in Hastings, working twelve-hour days on a construction site, and now, this disastrous training camp.

Meaning my dick could definitely use some TLC.

So I leave my beer on the kitchen counter and shrug. “Let’s go.”





CHAPTER SIX


RYDER



No kiss goodbye?


I SLEPT THROUGH MY ALARM.

Fucking hell.

I hurl myself out of bed like a rocket, taking half the comforter with me. Carma whimpers in her sleep from the heat loss. Her bare legs and pink panties now exposed, she curls over and tucks her knees up.

I don’t typically do sleepovers, especially during the season, but we were both pretty exhausted last night, and I felt bad telling her she couldn’t crash. I did make it clear I had to be up at six, but Carma shrugged it off. Said if she was still asleep when I got up, don’t wake her. Just lock up, and she’d leave through the back door.

I fly into the bathroom, wondering how the fuck I managed to sleep through my alarm. Since I got to Briar, I’ve been setting the alarm for six to be at the rink for seven. I always go early to train, even though practice doesn’t technically start till nine. Carma and I didn’t even stay up that late. We crashed around midnight.

I’m so pissed at myself right now. It takes fifteen minutes to drive to campus. I won’t even have time to eat breakfast. Goddamn it.

Why didn’t the others wake me? They usually leave around eight. They would’ve seen my Jeep in the driveway.

Furiously brushing my teeth, I scroll one-handed on my phone to call Shane.

“Yo,” he answers. “Where are you?”

“At home. Why didn’t you guys wake me?”

“I don’t know. We figured you were taking a day off from your overachiever routine and showing up to practice at a normal time like a normal person.”

Ha. He calls it overachieving. I call it being a hockey player.

“I slept through my alarm. I’m on my way now, though. Can you have a coffee waiting for me in the locker room so I can chug it while I gear up?”

“Anything for you, darling.”

I return to my room, where I dress quietly while Carma continues to sleep. She’s wormed her way back under the comforter and cocooned herself in it.

Since she asked me not to wake her, I leave her in my bedroom and take the stairs two at a time. I lock the front door and throw myself into the driver’s seat a moment later.

When I turn the key in the ignition, the Jeep doesn’t start.

Mother.

Fucker.

Not now.

I cannot fucking deal with this right now.

I waste about five minutes of precious time trying to start the engine, but the vehicle is dead as a doornail. I then release a series of expletives that would horrify even the filthiest of mouths.

Back in my bedroom, I’m done catering to Carma’s beauty sleep.

“Hey.” I shake her awake. “Do you have a car?”

She blinks drowsily. “Yeah…why?”

Relief pours into me. Oh, thank fuck. “I need you to drive me to practice. Please.”

“But it’s so early.”

“No, it’s late. I should have been there at seven, but I slept through my alarm.”

“I changed it,” she says groggily.

I freeze in place. “What?”

“I changed the alarm on your phone. You said your practice was at nine, so I don’t know why you had to set the alarm for six—”

“Because I go for seven,” I snap, practically vibrating from the anger that surges through me. “I can’t believe you changed my fucking alarm.”

And then, right on cue, to add insult to injury, my phone alarm starts blaring.

She reset the damn thing to eight thirty.

“Eight thirty?” I growl. “Are you kidding me right now? It takes fifteen minutes just to drive there. How am I supposed to suit up and be on the ice at nine—” I stop talking.

Jesus fucking Christ. There’s no point even arguing right now.

I exhale a long, calming breath.

“My car won’t start,” I say flatly. “I need a ride. I would’ve gone with my roommates, but they left already.”

“Please don’t be mad at me.” She’s wide awake now and jumping out of bed. “I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”

It’s difficult not to snap at her. Who randomly sleeps over at a hookup’s house and then changes his alarm? I’m close to exploding again. So I ignore her while she gets dressed and call Shane back.

“Hey,” I say urgently. “I’m going to be late. Try to cover for me with Jensen if you can. Tell him my car broke down.”

“I told you that Jeep was going to fuck you over one day.”

Sure, it was the Jeep that fucked me over.

I’ve never been late for practice a day in my life. And while I hate being reliant on anyone other than myself, there are zero drivers available on any of the ride apps, so I have no choice but to catch a ride with Carma. Luckily, the fire I light under her ass does its job. She and I are jogging out the door and across the street to her driveway less than five minutes later.

Carma unlocks her little red hatchback. “All right, big boy. Get in.”

She gives me a teasing little grin, and it does nothing to abate my internal rage.

I dive into the car and direct her to the two-lane road toward the Briar campus. Within minutes I’m twitching with impatience. She’s driving five miles over the speed limit, so the rational part of my brain knows I can’t ask her to go any faster than that. She’s already speeding. But goddamn it, if it were me, I’d be risking a hundred tickets to make it on time.

I drum my fingers against the center console, hitting the imaginary gas with my foot and dying inside the entire drive to campus. Carma tries making conversation and I diligently ignore her. I’m scared of what I might say.

It’s five minutes to nine when we pull into the parking lot of the Graham Center. There’s zero chance I’ll be dressed and on the ice before Coach blows his whistle. That’s just a fact. Hopefully the car-broke-down excuse will suffice, but Jensen’s been giving us serious grief since camp started. He’s on the verge of cutting any of us at any time. I wouldn’t put it past him to dump even me, the cocaptain, for the crime of tardiness.

Carma puts the car in park. I unbuckle my seat belt and reach for the door handle.

“What, no kiss goodbye?”

I’m too pissed to even look at her. “I have to go.”

“Seriously? We spent the night together and you can’t spare two more seconds to kiss me goodbye?”

If only to avoid any more delay, I dutifully lean in for a kiss. To my sheer annoyance, she doesn’t leave it as a peck. Next thing I know, she’s climbing into the passenger side and onto my lap, arms around my neck, tongue prodding through my surprised lips.

“Carma,” I caution against her mouth, curling a firm hand over her waist to try to move her off me.