Julian POV
The 5:00 AM alarm didn't just wake me up; it summoned me back to my post.
I sat up in bed, my heart already hammering against my ribs. For a split second, I forgot where I was until the smell hit me. My bedroom usually smelled of cedarwood and the sterile, cold scent of my humidifier. Now, it was being invaded by the heavy, spicy, lingering ghost of Jax Miller's "supper" grease, hot sauce, and that underlying scent of the rink that seemed to radiate off his skin even after a shower.
I looked at the wall separating our rooms. I could hear him. He wasn't even awake, but his breathing was heavy, a rhythmic intrusion on my silence.
I got out of bed, my movements practiced and silent. I dressed in my training gear, everything color-coordinated, everything perfect. But as I walked into the common area to grab my pre-workout shake, I stopped dead.
The white rug the one I'd spent three hundred dollars on to make this place feel like a home and not a prison—was still rumpled from our scuffle yesterday. And there, sitting directly on my mahogany desk, was one of Jax's massive, mud-caked hiking boots. On my desk.
The "discipline" I had spent twenty years cultivating felt like it was fraying at the edges. I picked up the boot with two fingers, tempted to hurl it through the window, when the door to Jax's room creaked open.
He stood there, half-awake and half-naked. His dark hair was a bird's nest, and his grey boxers hung low on his hips, revealing the sharp V-line of his obliques. He looked like a riot that had just stopped for a nap.
"You're touching my stuff, Thorne," he mumbled, his voice gravelly and thick with sleep. "I thought you said 'stay on your side.'"
"Your 'stuff' is on my workspace, Jax," I hissed, holding the boot out like it was a biohazard. "And you're five minutes behind the morning schedule I posted on the fridge."
Jax leaned against the doorframe, a slow, annoying smirk spreading across his face. He didn't look embarrassed to be nearly naked in front of his Captain. If anything, he seemed to enjoy the way I was pointedly looking at his eyes and nowhere else. "I don't do schedules, Captain. And I don't do mornings. But if you keep looking at me like you're trying to solve a math equation, I might have to start."
"Get dressed," I snapped, turning back to the kitchen. "We have an image to uphold. If we're late to the ice, Coach will make us skate until we puke, and I have a meeting with the Athletic Board this afternoon."
"Always the Golden Boy," Jax sighed, though I heard him retreating into his room to grab his gear. "Must be exhausting, being that perfect all the time."
You have no idea.
The Northwood Olympic Center was already buzzing when we arrived. This was the heart of the school's public scrutiny. Every trainer, every janitor, and every scout in the stands was a potential witness to our failure.
In the locker room, the air changed the moment we walked in together. Liam Volkov, our goalie and my oldest friend, looked up from his pads. He had a way of reading me that was usually helpful, but today it felt like a spotlight I wanted to turn off.
"You two look like you had a great night," Liam said, his voice dry. He looked from my rigid posture to Jax's chaotic, unzipped bag. "No black eyes? I'm impressed."
"We're roommates, Liam. Not cellmates," I said, sitting at my designated stall.
"Speak for yourself," Jax chimed in, pulling his jersey over his head. "The Ice King here has a color-coded system for the milk. I feel like I'm living in a museum."
The rest of the team laughed, but I felt the weight of it. Beau Dupont slapped Jax on the shoulder. "Better you than me, Rookie. I heard Julian sleeps in a suit."
I ignored them, focusing on the tape on my stick. But then, the locker room door opened, and Riley Clain stepped in.
As the Coach's daughter and the social media manager, she was the only woman allowed in this space during pre-practice. She was beautiful in a sharp, polished way—the kind of girl my father expected me to marry. She walked straight to me, a proprietary smile on her lips.
"Julian," she said, her voice sweet enough to set my teeth on edge. "I was hoping we could film a 'Day in the Life' segment for the Northwood Instagram. The board wants to show off our Disciplined Captain. Maybe we could do dinner tonight to discuss the script?"
I felt Jax's eyes on me. I could almost hear his thoughts about The Golden Boy and the Coach's Daughter. How perfect.
"I'm busy tonight, Riley," I said, trying to be polite. "Jax and I have... roommate obligations."
Riley's eyes flickered to Jax for a split second. The smile didn't leave her face, but the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. She hated Jax. Not because he was a hotheaded Rookie, but because he was an unpredictable element in the "Julian Thorne" brand she was trying to build.
"Oh," Riley said, her voice turning airy. "Well, I'm sure Jax can handle an evening alone. He's used to being on his own, isn't he? From what I heard about his transfer records, he doesn't stay in one place long enough to make friends."
Jax stiffened. The "System Kid" in him was rising to the surface, his jaw tightening as he stared Riley down. "I stay long enough to finish what I start, Riley. Don't worry about me."
Practice was a blur of violence and grace. Coach Clain was in rare form, screaming until her face was the color of a beet. She put Jax and me on the same line a "consequence" for our behavior.
We were supposed to be practicing the power play, but every time I had the puck, Jax was there, pushing me, demanding it. We weren't playing with each other; we were playing against each other on the same team.
"Thorne! Miller! Get your heads out of your asses!" Coach screamed from the bench.
During a transition drill, the friction finally snapped. I went for the puck along the boards, and Jax came in too fast. He didn't check me, not exactly but he pinned me against the glass, his body weight crushing mine.
The cold of the glass was behind me; the heat of Jax was in front of me. For three seconds, the entire rink disappeared. It was just the sound of our skates cutting into the ice and the feeling of his chest heaving against mine.
"Get off," I gasped, my lungs burning from the cold air.
"Make me, Captain," he whispered, his eyes dark and wild under his helmet.
He didn't move. He held me there, his gloved hand resting on the glass right next to my head. In that moment, the top energy he was so obsessed with was undeniable. He wasn't just trying to win the puck; he was trying to win me.
The team had cleared out. The locker room was usually a place of rowdy energy towels snapping, Beau making jokes about his latest date, Liam giving tactical advice to the defensemen. But now, it was just the echo of dripping faucets and the hum of the industrial ventilation.
I walked into the communal shower area, the steam rising in thick, white curtains that made the world feel small. I picked the furthest showerhead, the one I always used. I needed the heat to scrub the feeling of Jax's body off mine. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt that collision against the boards the way his weight had pinned me, the way his breath had felt against my neck.
I was mid-lather, the hot water stinging my sore shoulders, when the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of bare feet on tile approached.
I didn't have to look. I knew the stride. It was erratic, heavy, and lacked the grace I tried to maintain. Jax didn't go to the other end of the long row of showers. He didn't even go two stalls down. He stepped into the stall directly adjacent to mine.
The steam between us was a living thing. Through the translucent partition, I could see the silhouette of him the broad slope of his shoulders, the lean taper of his waist.
He was humming something a low, buzzing melody that vibrated through the tile and into my bones.
"You're in my peripheral, Thorne," Jax called out, his voice echoing off the wet stone. "Is the Ice King actually human under that soap, or is it just more frost?"
"Shut up, Miller," I snapped, my voice sounding tighter than I wanted it to.
"Make me," he said, and this time, he stepped around the partition.
He didn't come into my stall, but he stood at the edge of it, leaning one hand against the tiled wall. He was drenched, water sluicing down his chest, highlighting every scar and every hard-won muscle from his life in the Detroit rinks. He looked like something carved out of granite and fire.
The energy" he carried was suffocating. He wasn't even touching me, but he was taking up all the oxygen. I stopped moving, the soap suds sliding down my chest, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
"You're staring," Jax whispered, a dark, jagged smirk playing on his lips. "What's the matter, Captain? Never seen a liability this close before?"
I should have walked away. I should have told him to get out. But the outside world didn't exist here. Riley didn't exist here. It was just the heat, the water, and the person I was supposed to hate.
"You're a distraction," I hissed, stepping closer until the water from my showerhead was hitting both of us. "You're a loud, messy, undisciplined distraction that is going to cost me everything I've worked for."
Jax's eyes dropped to my mouth, and for a second, the aggression vanished, replaced by a hunger so raw it made my knees weak. He reached out, his wet thumb brushing against my jawline.
"Maybe you need to be distracted," he murmured. "Maybe you're tired of being a legacy and you just want to be... this."
I grabbed his wrist, my grip bruisingly tight. I wanted to shove him away. I wanted to pull him closer. The friction between us was a physical ache, a "moment too big to survive." We stayed like that locked in a silent, steaming standoff until the sound of the janitor's keys jingling in the outer hall broke the spell.
I let go of him as if he were red-hot iron. "Get out," I said, my voice trembling. "Get dressed and get out."
Jax just laughed a low, knowing sound and stepped back into the steam. "See you at home, Roomie."
By the time I made it back to Suite 4B, I had regained my composure, I was Julian Thorne again. I was the Captain. I was in control.
I opened the door, and the mask shattered.
"Jax. Miller. What. Is. This?"
My pristine, neutral-toned common area had been transformed into a neon-colored nightmare. Jax was standing on a stool, pinning a massive, tattered Detroit Red Wings poster, the grittiest, ugliest one he could find directly over the space where my framed "Northwood Excellence" certificate had hung.
The rug, my white, three-hundred-dollar rug was covered in a layer of dirty laundry and empty energy drink cans.
He'd even moved my mahogany side table to make room for a "gaming chair" that looked like it had been salvaged from a dumpster.
"It's called 'character,' Thorne," Jax said, not even looking back at me as he hammered a thumb-tack into the wall. "This place looked like a hospital wing. I'm just making it livable."
"You're making it a slum!" I yelled, my discipline finally snapping. I grabbed the edge of the poster and yanked it down. "This is a shared space! There are rules! There are standards!"
Jax jumped off the stool, landing inches from me. "Standards? You mean your standards. Your dad's standards. You don't live here, Julian. You just exist here as a ghost of your father's career. Well, I'm a person, and I'm not living in a museum."
"You are a guest in this program!" I roared. "And you will respect the space!"
"Or what?" Jax challenged, stepping into my chest, mocking the way I had pinned him earlier. "You're going to tackle me again? You're going to bring me down to the floor and see who stays on top?"
The air in the room became electric. We were screaming, but our bodies were closer than they had any right to be. I could feel the heat of his anger, the way his pupils were blown wide with the adrenaline of the fight.
"I hate you," I breathed, the words tasting like ash.
"Liars go to hell, Captain," Jax countered, his hand flying up to grab the front of my shirt, yanking me forward until our foreheads were touching. "You don't hate me. You hate that I'm the only thing in this world you can't put in a neat little box."
We stood there, breathing each other's air, the dirty dorm forgotten as the physical tension reached a breaking point. The apartment felt like it was shrinking, the walls closing in until there was nowhere left to run.