DRAKE
Two seconds. Three seconds at most. That’s the socially acceptable time limit for a guy to find himself pinned on top of his roommate before things get... weird.
We’d crossed that line about ten seconds ago.
Rose’s heart was hammering like a trapped bird beneath my palm, which was still firmly clasped around her waist. Damn, she was tiny.
Her exposed skin beneath that oversized, slipping T-shirt felt impossibly warm, and the sweet scent of vanilla mixed with the raw smell of charcoal paper was slowly, systematically scrambling my brain.
“Morvane,” Rose whispered, her voice hoarse and trembling slightly against my collarbone. “Could you please… get your hundred-kilo, human-ice-block body off of me? I can’t breathe.”
Sarcasm. Of course. The girl's defense mechanism always flared up at the most inopportune moments.
I cleared my throat, instantly releasing my grip and pulling myself up in one swift, athletic motion. I turned my back to her, pretending to be intensely focused on straightening my team jacket, which wasn’t even wrinkled, just to hide the fact that my chest was heaving as if I’d just survived a brutal three-period sprint.
“I don’t weigh a hundred kilos,” I grumbled, my voice dropping into a rougher, lower register than usual. “It’s pure muscle. And you should be thanking my captain’s reflexes for saving your skull from cracking open against the coffee table.”
Rose pushed herself up on the rug, hurriedly yanking her shirt back up to cover her collarbone. Her face was still flushed a violent, beautiful shade of crimson, but her hazel eyes glared at me with that familiar spark of pure defiance.
“Oh, thank you so much, Your Majesty,” Rose sneered, quickly snatching her sketchbook and clutching it to her chest like a bulletproof shield. “Your reflexes are elite. But next time, give a girl a warning before you slide over here like a damn penguin on ice.”
A penguin? Did this girl really just compare the top NHL draft prospect to a fat, flightless bird?
I spun around, narrowing my eyes as I stepped back into her space. “You were drawing me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a cold, hard fact.
Rose immediately stiffened. Her gaze darted to the industrial ceiling, then toward the kitchen island—anywhere but my face. “I wasn’t drawing you. I was working on an anatomy assignment for my illustration class. It just so happens the model is a hockey player. And it just so happens his jersey number is seventeen. That’s… my lucky number. Yeah. That’s it.”
“Your lucky number?” I took another step forward, deliberately looming over her until she was completely engulfed by my shadow. “In Toronto, number seventeen belongs to me, Rose. You drew me. In exact, agonizing detail. Right down to the curve of my shoulder when I grip the stick.”
Rose swallowed hard, but she refused to back down. She stood up, forcing me to tilt my head down to maintain eye contact, making the stark height difference between us painfully obvious again.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Morvane. Your ego already takes up half the square footage in this loft,” she snapped, her voice shaking just enough to betray her nerves. “If I were actually trying to draw you, I’d make sure to add horns to your head.”
She lifted her hand, her index finger, stained black with charcoal soot—pressing firmly into the center of my chest to push me back. It barely budged me, but it left a distinct dark mark right over my heart. Without another word, she swept past me, her shoulder brushing mine as she retreated toward her bedroom.
The moment her door clicked shut, I finally exhaled the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
I looked down at the black smudge on my black T-shirt. My fingers traced the spot where her finger had just been, before wandering up to brush against my own lower lip.
Damn it. This was wrong. This was so incredibly wrong.
I wasn’t interested in her. No way. She was messy, loud, ruined the clean aesthetics of my apartment with her chaotic art supplies, and she didn’t even know what an offside trap was.
She was just a girl who accidentally got caught up in a housing glitch with me. The electric jolt in my veins just now? Pure adrenaline because I’d almost witnessed a bad accident. Yeah. Just a routine athlete’s reaction.
I was a professional. I was the captain. I wasn't going to let a girl who barely reached my chin mess up my championship season.
I walked over to the kitchen island to grab my phone, intending to text Marcus about tomorrow's practice. But as my eyes swept across the counter, I froze.
In her rush to escape, Rose had left her phone face-up on the granite surface.
And right there on the screen, a new text message preview from a contact named 'Leo 🕊️' popped up, shattering the quiet apartment.
Leo: Hey Rosie, I know you just moved, but my flight to Toronto just landed. Can I sleep in your bed tonight?
My eyes locked onto the screen, the glowing letters burning straight into my retinas.
Leo. With a dove emoji. And he wanted to sleep in her bed. Tonight.
A sudden, violent wave of heat rushed up my neck, completely overriding the cold logic I’d been trying so hard to force into my brain. My jaw clenched until it ached, my fingers tightening around the edge of the granite counter so hard my knuckles turned white.
Who the hell was Leo? A boyfriend? An ex? Some guy from her hometown who thought he could just roll into Toronto and claim a stake in my apartment?
The sheer absurdity of my anger should have alarmed me. I had known Rose Murphy for less than twenty-four hours. I didn't want a roommate, I didn't want a distraction, and yet, the mere thought of another man walking through my front door, putting his boots on my floor, and crawling into a bed under my roof made me want to put someone through a glass partition.
It's about security, I lied to myself, my heart hammering a chaotic, furious rhythm against my ribs. Yeah, that's it. I'm the captain of this space. I can't have random, unverified guys crashing on my turf during the season. It’s a liability.
But as I stared at her closed bedroom door, the image of Rose smiling at her phone, texting this Leo guy, and letting him get close enough to share a bed filled me with a toxic, unfamiliar bitterness.
I picked up her phone, my thumb hovering over the screen, every protective—no, possessive, instinct in my body screaming at me to read the rest of the thread.
Just as I was about to put it down, the doorknob to her room rattled.
I barely had time to slide the phone back onto the counter before the door swung open, and Rose stepped out, her hazel eyes scanning the floor.
"Hey, did I leave my—" She stopped, her eyes dropping to the phone right in front of me, and then snapping up to my face.
She froze, noticing the rigid line of my shoulders and the absolute ice in my stare. The air in the loft instantly turned volatile again, but this time, it wasn't just tension.
It was war.
