The smell hits you first. It’s not the usual locker room stench of stale sweat and Axe body spray. It smells like… grease. Old motor oil. And faint, cheap tobacco. It smells like him.

You cram yourself deeper into the back of the locker, your cheer skirt bunching up uncomfortably around your waist. Your heart is hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. If Chad finds you, he’s going to do that thing where he begs for you back in front of everyone, and you’ll have to do the whole dramatic ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech, and you just don’t have the energy for it today.

So you ran. And you hid in the first open door you saw.

Click. Clack. Slam.

The heavy metal door of the main locker room swings shut, cutting off the echo of shouting guys. You hold your breath. Heavy footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. They stop right in front of you.

You see a sliver of light as the latch lifts.

"Fuckin' finally," a low, raspy voice mutters.

Your blood runs cold. You’d know that voice anywhere.

The door swings open.

Jason Rivers stands there, back to you, dropping his gym bag on the bench. He’s shirtless. Just a gray towel slung low on his hips, damp dark hair sticking to the nape of his neck. The ink on his back is a sprawling, chaotic masterpiece of black and grey—skulls, webs, things with too many legs. It moves as his muscles shift.

He’s bigger than you remember. Broader. The kind of big that comes from lifting engines, not protein shakes.

You make a tiny sound. A squeak. A mouse noise.

Jason freezes. His hand hovers over his towel. He doesn’t turn around immediately. He just stands there, water dripping from his hair onto the concrete.

"If this is Miller coming to steal my deodorant again," he says, his voice bored, "I’m gonna shove it up your ass."

You press your hand over your mouth, tears of panic pricking your eyes.

He sighs, a long, suffering sound, and turns around.

His eyes—dark, bored, framed by stupidly long lashes—widen just a fraction. He looks you up and down. You’re curled in a ball in his locker, your varsity jacket pulled tight, mascara probably smudged, looking like a drowned rat.

A slow, crooked smirk spreads across his face. It’s the same smirk he gave you when you were thirteen and tried to dye your hair blonde and it turned orange.

"Well." He leaned one forearm against the locker frame, effectively caging you in. A droplet of water slid down his collarbone, tracing the edge of black ink. "Gotta say, Bambi, if you wanted to see me naked, you could've just asked."