Ice Cold - Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Landon Reilly
I needed to change my running route or else I was going to end up on my ass every day.
Wren looked down at me with a smug expression, his mouth quirking up ever so slightly in amusement. I glared up at him and pushed myself up from the ground.
"You're doing this on purpose now?" I spat.
"Perhaps," he said. Who fucking says that?
"I know who you are, you know," I told him.
"I don't think we've met," he replied, feigning ignorance. I could practically feel my eye twitching in annoyance. This guy was infuriating.
"Cut the shit," I snapped, pointing a finger at him. "I know you know who I am. And I know who you are now."
"I figured you would," he replied with a shrug, showing off his nonchalance. "How long did it take for you to figure it out?"
Longer than I would ever admit to him. He looked enough like Fox that I should have known instantly.
Wren smirked when I didn't say anything. "You don't have to tell me. Your non-answer is an answer in itself."
"What the hell are you even talking about?"
"You not answering is telling me that you're too embarrassed to tell me how long it took you," Wren said, the smirk staying on his face. "And now I know that for sure, since I'm having to spell this out for you."
I wanted to run at him and punch him in the face, my anger coming at me in waves. That was what the Landon of a few months ago would have done, but not this one. Not the one that was a shell of who he once was, or the one who knew his old anger was always misplaced.
That didn't stop me from clenching my fists at my sides, my fingernails digging into my skin. Wren seemed determined to push my buttons and showing him that it was working was only going to make him do it even more.
"You knew who I was the whole time." I said it as a statement because I knew it was true. He wouldn't have been so smug if it wasn't.
"The whole time?" he asked. "I didn't think about you at all since we first saw each other. But, yes, I knew when I saw you. I thought that much was obvious."
He continued, "Is that what you were doing? Thinking about me all weekend, trying to place where you knew me from? I'm flattered, Lance."
I grimaced. "Lance?"
"That's what you're hung up on? And not the thinking about me all weekend thing? So it must be true."
I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest. "No, it's not. You look a lot like Fox."
"Right. And you've punched his face a few times so it's a hard face to forget," Wren replied, the smirk dropping, though he still looked entirely at ease like this conversation bored him.
I didn't want him to see the remorse I felt. I already felt dumber than him with the way he spoke and the way he looked at me, I didn't want him to see how truly weak and broken I was. God knows what he would do with that.
"I can't talk anymore, Lance, I have things to do," Wren said after stunning me into silence. "I think you should maybe stop getting in my way so you stop ending up on your ass and we don't have to have these conversations anymore."
He jogged away before I could formulate a response and I took off running the other way to blow off some steam.
He had simultaneously infuriated me and made me feel like shit. If I kept running into him, I would be faced with that again and again, thinking about the harm I had caused and the damage I had done. I was still so far from even being able to confront all that without feeling like throwing up.
That was why I wished I could have gone to school somewhere further away, where there was absolutely no chance of seeing anyone I knew. But after what had happened at The Masters Tournament, where I started a bench-clearing brawl and ruined my team's season, barely any schools wanted me. Providence College only offered me a spot because Micah's dad had pull there and he put in a word for me. It was my only option and it was too close to home for me. I'd have to play against guys from my old team, and against Fox and Elijah, all of which probably had it out for me.
I would have to face them all once the season started in a little over a month. And Wren was just a giant wake up call that it was coming.
I jogged back around to where I was going before bumping into Wren and entered a coffee shop near by. As I was waiting in line, the bell on the door sounded, and when I turned to look, there stood Wren.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Are you following me?"
"Are you following me?" he asked. "I come here every day and I've never seen you here." He walked up to stand behind me in line.
I pressed my lips together in a line, holding back from snapping at him.
"Trust me, Lance, if I wanted to follow you, I'd be way more discrete about it," Wren added, motioning for me to move up in the line.
"Can you stop calling me that?" I snapped as I turned to face away from him.
"I would if it didn't get you so riled up."
His face was set into a wicked, teasing smile when I turned back to glare at him. It was a smile that looked like it was used to lure you in and turn on you when you least expected it. It was evil and conniving, horrible but alluring. His face was one you would see in a dream turned nightmare, something you thought was friendly and turned out it was not.
"Better turn around," Wren said in quiet, smooth voice. "It's your turn, Lance."
I immediately turned around and walked up to the counter with the waiting cashier. I ordered my drink and heard a snort from Wren as I did. All I could do was ignore him. He only acted like that because he wanted a reaction out of me, and he was starting to see how easy it was to get one. People like him thrived off of that. You let them see even the smallest piece of you and they'll take advantage of it.
After I paid for my drink, I moved off to the side while I waited for it. While I had been in this coffee place before, it wasn't a frequent spot for me. Now that I knew Wren was a regular here, it definitely wouldn't become one.
"You know, if you're going to infiltrate my coffee place, you could at least order something good off their menu," Wren said after placing his order and coming to stand with me. "They have a lot of good drinks and you ordered a hot coffee with oat milk and no sugar, like, what the fuck?"
I didn't say anything. I didn't even look at him as he stood next to me. All those specialty coffees and drinks confused me, not that I'd ever admit that to him. And I wasn't really used to coffee ordering anyway. When I lived with my parents, my dad only ever let me have black coffee. I only started getting oat milk because that was how Micah ordered his so I tried it one day. That was the extent of my coffee drinking. For my dad, coffee in the morning was a means for energy, to wake me up in the early morning. It wasn't to be enjoyed or had at any other time of day.
"Coffee for Landon?" the barista called out, placing my coffee on the counter. I quickly grabbed it and left the small coffee shop, hoping to leave Wren far behind me.
"It's funny seeing you squirm," Wren said from behind me, startling me and causing the coffee in my cup to splash out and burn my hand.
"What the fuck?" I asked, shaking the burning liquid off my hand. "How did you get here so fast? Where the hell did you come from?"
I remembered another time he seemed to appear out of thin air. It was last year when I had gone to Elijah's school in an angry rampage and had been ready to start throwing punches at Fox, Wren's brother, when Wren appeared out of nowhere and hold me back. He had held onto me tightly, seemingly ready to stay there and restrain me all day if it meant I wouldn't lay a hand on his brother.
"I walked, one foot in front of the other," Wren replied, pulling me from my memory, He took a sip of his drink. It was iced and looked more like a coffee milk than actual coffee.
"So you followed me."
"You're letting yourself think I followed you," he said, taking another long sip as we walked. "Reality is, we're just going the same way."
Wren had this way about him that was hard to describe. It was in the way he carried himself and in the way he spoke. His walk was more like a glide, his head was held high with his lips always curled upward like he was constantly smirking, and his voice was silky smooth, melodic, and low. He spoke like he knew more about what was going on in your head than even you did. It was like he lived in a different world than everyone else, like he simultaneously lived in the present and the future, knowing things that nobody else knew.
Our paths diverted eventually, but neither of us said any parting words.
When I arrived back at my dorm, my phone buzzed. I sighed, thinking it was going to be Micah, but I let a small smile perch itself on my face when I saw the text.
From: Unknown
landon it's livi. going to call you from this number.
It was only a few seconds later that my phone rang with the unknown number.
"Hello?" I answered.
"Hey," my sister, Olivia, replied. "Do you have time to talk right now? I sort of only have right now because I'm borrowing a phone and I'm hiding in the bathroom at school."
"Yeah, I can talk now," I said, placing my coffee down on my desk and sitting on the bed. "What's up?"
"I'm sorry I haven't been able to call lately," she started. "Mom and Dad have been really on me about my phone. They don't want me on it too much. I don't think they know I've been calling you though."
"It's fine, Liv," I assured her. "I get it."
"It's so unfair," she said in almost a whisper.
"They haven't been too horrible to you, have they?"
That was my one fear about leaving home last year, that they would take out their frustrations about me on Olivia. When I moved in with the Hanson's, I hadn't heard from Olivia for months. I later found out that it was not because she was angry at me, but because our parents were monitoring her phone to make sure she wasn't contacting me. She eventually started texting me through a texting app on an old iPod rather than on her phone, and she would call me using her friend's phones whenever she had the chance. We would only see each other when she could get away from our parents long enough to meet.
"No, they've been normal," Olivia answered. "Just thinking I'm going to be corrupted if I'm on my phone too much. Goes to show how well they actually know me."
I chuckled. "Clearly not very well."
"I'm going to have to go back to class soon," she said. "I just wanted to ask if you were coming home this weekend?"
A puzzled expression formed on my face. "What's this weekend?"
"You said one weekend a month until hockey season started," Olivia explained. "It's been a month since I've seen you and hockey season is starting soon."
My face dropped at that. I didn't know Olivia kept track of how long it had been since we last saw each other. And I felt like a horrible brother for not even realizing that on my own. I missed my sister all the time, but I never thought about her missing me.
"Then, yes, I'll come home this weekend," I replied. I had no idea how, but I'd walk there if I had to.
"Yay!" she whispered in excitement. "Got to go. I'll text you."
"Bye Livi."
"Bye Landon."
With that, she hung up, and I was left staring at my phone screen for longer than I realized. When my eyes focused on the time, I shot up from the bed and rushed to change out of my running clothes. I was going to be late to class, and I stopped to think if I should just skip it all together. I didn't want to be noticed by anyone walking in late, only because I didn't want people looking at me at all. But I had also told myself I was going to be a good student this year.
It felt like I didn't have much of a choice. I changed into new clothes, grabbing my backpack and my coffee, before hauling myself out of the room and across campus to my morning class.
The lecture hall was packed when I walked in, and the only seats left were in the front. Luckily, the professor hadn't started lecturing yet and the students in the room were too busy talking to each other to notice me slip into the room and into the front row.
As I sat down, the girl next to me leaned over and tapped my shoulder.
"Do you have the notes from last class?" she asked.
I nodded, opening my notebook and sliding it over to her so she could take pictures of it. She smiled at me when she was done, sliding the notebook back to me.
"I'm Jess, by the way," she introduced herself. "You're Landon, right? On the hockey team?"
I nodded. "Yeah."
"I'm friends with some of the other guys on the team," she said, leaning closer to me as she spoke. "You should come hang out some time."
While her words were friendly, her eyes were anything but. She was flirting with me, giving me the stare to show she was interested and hoping I would take the hints she was dropping.
But that was another promise I made to myself this year; I wasn't going to use girls to try to trick myself into being straight. I was done denying my sexuality, done being with women when I wasn't attracted to them and didn't enjoy it. That didn't mean I would let myself start being with men, but I was officially done trying with women because I knew it was no use.
Thankfully, I didn't have to reply because the professor started class right after that.
And as I took notes, Jess kept her eyes on me the whole class.