The Not-Outcast(5)

With a clearer head, it turned out that I was smart, and I might even be a little super-duper smart. I would need to work hard and work a lot, but I could probably graduate like one of those normal people.

The agreement was that I stayed away and Deek would pay for my college.

He was choosing Silvard.

My uncle thought I’d be pissed about that, but I was down.

I wasn’t like one of those girls. I didn’t have plans, dreams, or Pinterest boards about anything. I was just happy to be able to go to college, and Silvard is no slouch school. They’re D1 and pretty fancy-pants. I knew it’d be hard, but as long as I kept current with therapy and meds, I was down for the pound.

I could get a degree, and whadda ya know? I could get a decent job at the end of all this.

I saw my uncle approaching, and I knew what that meant. It was time to get this shindig going.

My dad hugged me. He was still so tense. I didn’t know why.

Natalie hugged me. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Cheyenne.” She smoothed my hair, her hands fell to my shoulders, and then Little Dude hugged my knees.

I didn’t tell anyone, but my shoulders tingled after that touch from her.

My mom used to be nice like that, but that was a long time ago.

Like, ages ago.

Like, I couldn’t remember now, but she must’ve been at some point.

She had to be.

All moms hugged their kids, right…?

But I didn’t want to deal with that. I got my Little Dude here.

I crouched down and held up my pinkie again. “We’re gonna hang, right?”

He stepped forward, all serious. He wrapped his pinkie around mine and nodded. “Hell yeah, we’re gonna hang.”

“Hunter!” his mom said.

But he just laughed. I laughed back, and it was all good.





1





Cheyenne





The present





I was lit, weak, and horny.

That was not a good combination for me. Usually my willpower was strong, like industrial-strength super-latexed condom strong, but not tonight. Tonight, the combination of the booze and cocktails had melded together and taken down my last holdouts of willpower. I was gonzo and then I got this text.

Dean: Mustang party! Now! Where r u???

Dean was my colleague, but let’s forget about why he would be texting me because we are not ‘texting’ colleagues. Kansas City Mustangs. That was the important part of that text, and it was getting all of my attention.

Dear God. I could hear the whistle of the impending bomb right before it hit.

That was the professional hockey team that he played on.

Party.

Did I mention the he that was him? He, as in the only rookie drafted for Kansas City’s newer team? He signed his contract after he had one year at Silvard.

The he that the team’s owners were hoping could be grown into one of the NHL’s newest stars, but that’d been a three-year plan. Nope. He had different ideas because once he hit the ice in their first debut game, he scored a hat trick in the first period. First. Period. Playing against five to ten-year veterans, and that had not gone unnoticed. By everyone. After that he exploded into the NHL scene and in a big fucking way.

They started calling him Reaper Ryder after that.

It was the same he that I perved on during a brief stint in high school, and then again during that one year in college before he got whisked away to superstardom. Though, he didn’t know any of that 411 about my perving habits.

The second text from Dean gave us the address where to go, and the whistle got louder, target hit…direct implosion.

It was two blocks away.

He was two blocks away, and there went my restraint because I’d kept away from him for the last four years when I moved to the same city he was living in—of course he didn’t know that—but this city was totally amazeballs by the way.

I was doomed. I might as well start digging my own bunker at this rate because I was already downtown partaking in some celebratory boozetails, so here we were. Here I was, well we because I wasn’t alone. My main girl since Silvard days, Sasha, was on my right, and Melanie on my left. Melanie came after Silvard, but that didn’t matter. She was one of my girls. The three of us. We were awesomesauce, and we were walking into this building that looked like a downtown loft, one that was probably the humble abode to someone not so humble, but someone with old-money wealth who enjoyed partaking in their own boozetails as well.

I already felt a whole kemosabe camaraderie with whoever owned this joint.

“This place is fucking awesome.”

That was Melanie. She enjoyed coffee, girls, and she was an amazing barista at Dino’s Beans.

“Girl.”

That was Sasha. She owned a strip club, told everyone she was an angry Russian, even though there wasn’t one Russian strand of DNA in her body, and she enjoyed using one word for everything. That’s not to say she didn’t speak more than one-word answers, but those were her go-to for speaking.

“Whoa.” That was me.

Melanie had jet-black hair. Sasha had ice-queen white hair, and me—I was the in between. My hair was usually a dusty blonde color, but today it looked a bit more lighter than dusty blonde. I still enjoyed it, and I also had super chill electric-blue eyes. The other two both had dark eyes so I figured I was still the ‘in between’ for the eyes, too.