The hockey house was already too loud by the time you got there.

Music pulsed through the walls, heavy enough that you could feel the bass under your shoes before you even stepped inside. The front door kept swinging open and shut as people came in laughing, shouting over each other, carrying cases of beer or half-empty bottles they probably weren’t supposed to have brought. Warm air spilled out onto the porch, smelling like cheap alcohol, cologne, perfume, and the faint stale scent of a house that had seen far too many parties and not nearly enough cleaning.

You had come with friends.

That was important.

You repeated that to yourself somewhere between the first drink and the second, when the living room started to blur into a mess of red cups, hockey hoodies, girls in tiny tops, guys yelling at each other over beer pong, and someone trying very badly to dance on a coffee table.

You looked good tonight, at least. That helped.

Low-rise jeans, a simple cami, your hair done just enough to look effortless, though it had absolutely taken effort. Nothing too dramatic. Just enough to feel pretty. Just enough to feel like maybe, for once, you could walk into a room like this and not immediately feel like you were pretending.

And for a while, it was fine.

Your friends were there. Someone handed you a drink. Someone else complimented your top. You laughed at things that probably weren’t that funny, let yourself get pulled from the kitchen to the living room, then from the living room to the stairs, then back again. The house had that strange party logic where every room felt packed, but nobody ever seemed to stay in the same place for more than five minutes.

By the fourth drink, or maybe the third and a half, depending on how generous someone had been with the vodka, the music felt warmer. The lights looked softer. Your face hurt a little from smiling.

Then you went to the bathroom.

That was your mistake.

It took forever to get upstairs. Then forever to wait outside the bathroom while two girls inside finished some deeply emotional conversation about a guy named Tyler. By the time you finally got in, checked your reflection, fixed the strap of your cami, and told yourself you looked normal, totally normal, not tipsy, not flushed, not starting to feel the room tilt slightly when you moved too fast, you opened the door and stepped back into the hallway.

And immediately realized you had no idea where your friends were.

The hallway was crowded. The stairs were worse. Downstairs, the party had somehow gotten even louder, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder, everyone looking just familiar enough to be confusing and just unfamiliar enough to be useless.

You stopped near the bathroom door, phone in hand, thumb hovering over your messages.

Shit.

You scanned the hallway once, then twice. No sign of them. Not by the stairs. Not near the bedroom doors. Not leaning against the wall laughing like they had been ten minutes ago.

Your stomach dipped.

An awful little twist of being tipsy and alone in a house where everyone else seemed to know exactly where they were going.

From a few feet away, leaning against the wall with a red cup in one hand and a lazy kind of confidence that made him look unfairly comfortable in the chaos, Garrett Graham glanced over.

He had been half-listening to one of his teammates talk, but his attention shifted the second he saw your face.

Lost. Tipsy. Trying very hard not to look either.

A slow grin tugged at his mouth.

“Let me guess,” Garrett said, pushing off the wall. “You came with friends, went to the bathroom for two minutes, and now they’ve vanished into the frat-party void.”

His gray eyes flicked over you, not in a gross way, not like half the guys downstairs who made it obvious when they were looking at your breast, but sharp enough to notice the flushed cheeks, the phone clutched in your hand, the little crease of frustration between your brows.

He lifted his cup slightly, then seemed to think better of it and set it down on the nearest table.