Icing the Ex

Tessa’s POV

The first thing I smell is her.

Vanilla body spray and cheap cherry lip gloss, seeping under my boyfriend’s door like smoke.

I’m standing on the third floor of Cole’s townhouse at 9:30 on a Monday morning with my hand already on the knob, because I left my Statistics textbook in his room last night and Mrs. Tompson would rather swallow a jean jacket than let me into her class without it.

I texted him ten minutes ago.

ME: Heading over now. Can you bring out the books I left?

No reply. Not even a typing bubble.

I told myself he was asleep. Cole never leaves his room before eleven. Baseball players don’t have to treat academics like life or death. People like me do.

Then I hear his voice through the door.

“Hurry up. My girlfriend will be here soon.”

I freeze.

“You need to leave. Now.”

The door flies open and a girl rushes out, nearly colliding with me. Platinum hair, mascara smudged under one eye, shirt buttoned wrong. Stella Hudson. She sat behind me in Macroeconomics last spring and borrowed my notes twice.

For one second her eyes go wide with something like shame.

Then she sees who I am, and the shame turns into something worse. Pity.

She tears past me and down the stairs, leaving a trail of vanilla and my boyfriend’s scent tangled together in the air.

Any wolf on this campus would have smelled it from the street. I’m not a wolf. And even I can smell it.

Cole stands in the middle of his room in nothing but his boxers, hair wrecked, one hand still on the door.

“Baby, wait.”

I turn and walk away. I don’t run. Running is what he’d expect.

He catches me at the top of the stairs anyway, his hand clamping around my wrist and spinning me back toward him. Wolves are faster than people. Cole has never once let me forget it.

“Let go of me.”

“Everyone can hear us out here,” he hisses, and drags me back into his room.

The evidence is everywhere: the rumpled sheets, a cherry-pink smear on his pillowcase, two glasses on the desk. My textbook is on the floor under a hoodie that isn’t mine.

Cole runs a hand through his hair and starts pacing. “I messed up, okay? It was a mistake. Some of the guys came over, we drank too much, and I got so wasted I… I thought she was you. I don’t even remember half of it.”

And there it is.

Under the vanilla and the sweat, something sour cuts through the room. Sharp and spoiled, like milk left in a hot car. It’s faint, so faint I’d swear I imagined it, except I’ve smelled it before. Every time Cole told me he was at practice. Every time he told me I was being paranoid.

I always thought it was his gym bag.

“You thought she was me,” I repeat. My voice comes out very calm. It’s the voice I use in debate rounds, two minutes before I take the other team apart. “Cole. She’s five-nine and platinum blonde. I’m five-three and a brunette. Even drunk, a wolf with your nose has about a zero percent chance of confusing us. I’d show you the math, but you’ve never once let me finish explaining anything.”

“It was dark, baby.” The sour smell gets stronger. “And honestly, she came on to me first. How was I supposed to say no when I was drunk? Come on. You know I love you.”

Baby.

He’s called me that for fourteen months. In the dining hall. In texts at 2 a.m. In his car, the first time he kissed me.

I listen to the word now, coming out of his mouth with cherry lip gloss still on his jaw, and I realize I never want to hear it again. Not from him. Not from anyone.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Tessa, you’re overreacting.” His voice goes cold. “Kevin and Hazel went through the same thing and they worked it out. Why can’t you be more like her?”

“Fourteen months,” I say. “Fourteen months, Cole.”

“Promises? You want to talk about promises?” His mask finally drops. He jabs a finger at my face. “You promised your schedule would never affect us. Debate. The magazine. That stupid label maker you carry around like it’s a personality. Every single day you’re busy. You put everything before me.”

“That’s not—”

“I play ball and I still make time for you!” He jabs my shoulder. “This is your fault. Not mine. Yours.”

I bend down, pick up my textbook, and pull it out from under the hoodie.

Something rips.

I look down. I’ve torn a page clean out of chapter six. Confidence Intervals. I’m holding half of it in my fist and I don’t remember closing my hand.

“You think there’s someone better out there?” Cole sneers behind me. “There isn’t. Look at you, Tessa. Twenty years old and you’ve never even shifted.”

My hand stops.

He knows exactly where to cut. He always has.

“You were nobody before me,” he says, stepping closer. “A wolfless girl with a wolf’s last name. People only know who you are because you’re with a Cooper. No wolf on this campus will ever want you. Not one. You should be thanking me for putting up with you.”

For fourteen months, some small, quiet part of me believed he was doing exactly that. Putting up with me.

I fold the torn page in half. Then in half again. Then I put it in my pocket, because I’m the kind of person who doesn’t leave pieces of herself on a cheater’s floor.

I close the distance between us until I’m breathing against his face.

“You will never speak to me again,” I say. “And mark my words, Cole Cooper. You’re going to be replaced by someone hotter, smarter, and better than you could ever be.”

I yank the couple necklace off my neck, the tiny silver moon he bought me when we made it official, and drop it at his feet. I don’t throw it. Throwing it would mean it still weighs something.

Then I walk out.

I make it down three flights of stairs and around the corner of the building. I get as far as the bike rack. Then I stand there with my textbook pressed to my chest, staring at a blue bicycle with a flat tire, and I genuinely can’t remember where I was going.

Statistics. Right. Mrs. Tompson. Nine forty-five.

I don’t move.

My phone buzzes. I fumble for it with hands that won’t hold still.

“Tessa?” My brother.

“Yeah?”

“You sound weird. You sick?”

“Allergies.” Knox would be on Cole’s porch in four minutes if I told him the truth, and in a holding cell in five. “What’s up?”

“Don’t forget you promised to tutor my guy today. Four o’clock, his place.” He sounds annoyed. “He’s already bugging me. Don’t flake, Kates. If he fails Marketing again, Coach benches him, and if Coach benches him, we lose the season.”

I close my eyes.

Three weeks ago Knox offered me a thousand dollars of his summer paycheck to tutor his best friend, and three weeks ago a laptop that didn’t crash every time I opened four tabs seemed worth two hours a week of listening to a hockey player complain.

“Knox, I really can’t today—”

“You promised.”

I did. I promise things. It’s what I do.

“Okay,” I manage.

He hangs up before I can change my mind.

I stare at the address he texted me last week, and that’s when it lands.

Wyatt Cooper.

Captain of the Cadston Wolves. Heir to the Pendant Alpha line. The wolf half this campus would crawl over broken glass for, and the other half crosses the street to avoid. Freshman year, he put a Ridgeway defenseman through the boards so hard the guy left the rink on a stretcher. Nobody ever found out what the guy said to him. Wyatt never told.

He’s also Cole’s older brother.

In six and a half hours, I’d be alone in a room with him.

Of all the wolves at Cadston, Knox picked the most dangerous one.

And the only one with Cole’s blood.