Yuri

We entered the arena, which was already packed full with excited students. Half of the arena was reserved for our university, while the other half was reserved for the other university. Our school colors were burgundy and gold -- the other university was blue and black.

"Let's find a good seat," Jessica said.

I followed her up the stairs, then we shimmied between rows of seats toward a couple of empty spots. Once we had our seats, I could hear the conversation between other girls around me; their talking points mostly centered around Fern.

"Do you think he'll make us win again?"

"Of course! Fern always plays perfectly."

"I feel so lucky just to be attending the same university as him!"

I cringed a bit at the conversation and scrolled on my phone while I waited for the game to start. Beside me, Jessica pulled out a pair of binoculars and started scouring the ice rink. I could see the cheerleaders performing an energetic opening dance on ice skates before the game, with Lisa in the lead. She looked dazzling in her skimpy uniform, with her perfectly tanned legs and platinum blonde hair pulled up into a high ponytail with a bow. She waved her pom poms around to hype the crowd up. Looking at the girl who stole my boyfriend made me sick.

I had never been much of a sports fan, but the way the crowd was getting excited made me excited, too. As the hockey players skated out onto the rink, some of them skated up to certain cheerleaders who were their girlfriends and kissed them publicly. I could see Mason and Lisa exchange glances. Mason had never brought me to his games, even though we had been dating for a couple of months. When I did go to his games, he never paid any attention to me until after. I thought that he was just shy at the time, but now I knew that he just didn't want Lisa seeing us together.

"Don't pay any attention to Mason," Jessica said, handing me the binoculars so I could see better.

"He's not worth your time."

I took the binoculars and peered through them. For some reason, I searched for Fern. I didn't know why I wanted to see him so badly, but I did. And he saw me. Somehow, despite the thousands of students in this massive arena, Fern looked directly at me. It was as though he had a sixth sense, like he knew exactly where I was without even having to think. Even from here, I could see the hint of wildness in his eyes from the night before; like I was his prey.

I quickly gave the binoculars back to Jessica as my face turned red. Fern turned away and skated out to the middle of the rink, skating around in circles and pumping his hockey stick in the air while the crowd cheered. All around me, girls screamed and swooned while guys whooped and hollered.

The game started. I lost sight of the puck quickly, but was able to follow the game by watching Fern, who skated as fast as lightning and moved nimbly around the rink as though he was born with ice skates on his feet. He would perform quick moves with his hockey stick to fake out the opponents, hitting the puck between their legs to one of his teammates before zooming away. He moved so quickly that he was almost like a flash. For some reason, it seemed almost supernatural to me... but no one else seemed to notice, so I figured that it was just in my head.

Soon, the opponents became frustrated and aggressive. One player in particular -- I think he was the captain of the other team -- started following Fern closely and trying to trip him up.

"C'mon, Fern!" Jessica shouted.

"I hope he doesn't get hurt," another girl said from beside me, sitting up in her seat to see over someone in front of us.

Fern scored a goal, and suddenly, the other team's captain threw his stick and his helmet down on the ice and tackled Fern. The crowd gasped as they tussled on the ice. The other player threw punches at Fern while Fern only blocked and dodged, clearly not wanting to hurt the other player. It was now that I finally realized how much pressure was on Fern as the star hockey player. I held my breath as I watched the fight, images of us in bed flashing in my mind. For some reason, I cared enough about Fern to not want him to get hurt. I didn't care to look at Mason for even a second.

The referee blew his whistle and broke up the fight. The crowd cheered as Fern stood and put his helmet back on, covering his curly brown hair. The other player was put on the bench for his behavior and the game continued with a penalty for the other team.

During halftime, the cheerleaders returned to the rink and began their halftime show.

"You hungry?" I said to Jessica.

She looked at me and shrugged, too involved in her conversation with another girl about how hot Fern looked dodging the unsportsmanlike competitor during the fight. As long as I had known her, Jessica always had an easy time making friends. I didn't mind it, because I was more introverted and appreciated the fact that she usually took control of all of the socializing at things like this.

I stood and shimmied out of our row, then went down the bleachers toward the food stands. My stomach was growling and the smell of soft pretzels was making me even more hungry.

"One soft pretzel, please," I said to the vendor. "And a water, too."

I handed my money to the vendor and waited for my pretzel. Just then, I felt someone watching me and turned around to see none other than Fern. He was standing with his teammates by the side of the rink as they rested and drank water, but he was staring right at me. His brown eyes almost glowed. My heart started to race as I found myself unable to break away from his strong gaze. Something about him made me want to walk over to him as if I was in a trance...

"Miss? Hello?"

The vendor broke me out of my trance. He was holding out my pretzel and my water.

"Oh... Sorry," I said. "Thank you."

I took my pretzel. When I turned back, Fern was no longer looking at me and was instead entrenched in a conversation with a teammate as though he hadn't just been staring into my soul.

I considered going back to Jessica, but after the encounter with Fern finding me in the massive crowd and staring at me just now, I only wanted to leave. I decided to make up an excuse later and just go home; Jessica had made some friends already and probably wouldn't even notice my absence. She could fill me in on the results of the game later.

I left the arena, tossing my uneaten pretzel in the trash on the way out as my stomach suddenly felt too sick to eat. The cool autumn air was a bit of a relief as I walked back to the dorms, although I still felt stifled like I was being watched... or hunted. How was Fern able to spot me in the crowd like that? And why did he always look so animalistic and hungry when he looked at me? I had never heard any of his many other flings complain of such a thing, so maybe it was all in my head. It had to be. Why else would Fern seem like such a predator?

Chapter 5

Yuri

The dorm hallway was very quiet by the time I got back, the kind of quiet that made me walk on my tiptoes. I fumbled my key into the lock twice before it opened, and immediately I got inside I leaned against the door like I'd been running instead of walking.

I hadn't been. But my heart didn't seem to know the difference.

Jessica and Lori's side of the suite was dark. I took off my jacket and lay flat on my bed without bothering to change, staring up at the ceiling and replaying the way Fern had looked at me across that packed arena, like the thousands of people between us weren't even there. Like I was the only thing worth finding.

It didn't make sense. None of it did. I barely knew him. A few strange encounters, a smudged-mascara moment in a stranger's dorm room, and now apparently I was someone he could pick out of a crowd without trying.

I told myself it meant nothing. I told myself a lot of things that night.

I found it very difficult to fall asleep that night and I woke the next morning to Jessica bursting through my door already talking.

"You missed the best part," she said, sitting onto the foot of my bed still in yesterday's clothes. "Fern scored the game-winning goal with four seconds left. The whole arena lost it. Where did you even go?"

"I wasn't feeling well," I said, which wasn't a complete lie.

Jessica narrowed her eyes at me, the way she always did when she suspected that I wasn't giving her the whole story. "This doesn't have anything to do with a certain hockey captain, does it?"

"No," I answered immediately

"Uh-huh." She didn't push it, but she also didn't look like she believed me for a second. "Well, Lori heard there's a team thing tonight. Some bonfire out by the lake. Everyone's going to be there."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not? It'll be fun. And Mason's going to be there with Lisa, so go,show up looking amazing and remind him what he lost."

I groaned and put my pillow over my face. Somehow, being reminded of Mason didn't hurt the way it used to. What kept replaying no matter how many times I tried to push it away... was the memory of Fern's stare cutting through a crowd of thousands like I was the only person in the building.

"Fine," I said into the pillow. "I'll go."

Jessica screamed excitedly and was already going through my closet before I could take it back.

By the time we reached the lake that evening, the bonfire was already lit, throwing long shadows across the sand and the crowd of students gathered around it with drinks in their hand. Someone had brought a speaker; the vibration it made thudded low under the sound of laughter and the lake lapping quietly at the shore. Jessica dragged me towards a cluster of girls she knew, but my eyes were already scanning through the crowd without me wanting to.

I found him before I meant to.

Fern stood near the fire with a few of his teammates, a red cup loose in one hand, looking every bit like a king holding court, except unlike the others, he wasn't laughing at whatever joke had just been told. He was looking straight at me again, that same unsettling stillness in his gaze, like the fire and the noise and the entire party had gone soft and unimportant to him.

I forced myself to look away first this time.

"Yuri."

His voice found me anyway, low and close, only a few minutes later. I turned and he was there, closer than I'd expected, the light from the fire carving warm gold lines along his jaw.

"You left early last night," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I wasn't feeling well," I said again, the same half-truth.

Fern tilted his head, studying me the way you'd study something you were trying to decide whether to trust. "You looked fine to me. Right up until you saw me looking back."

My face went hot. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." The corner of his mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Walk with me."

It wasn't a request either, not really, but something in me wanted to go before he'd even finished his sentence which scared me even more than anything else about him so far. I looked back at Jessica, who was too carried away by her conversation to notice, then Fern lead me a little way down the shore, away from the noise and the fire, until the music behind us sounded distant.

"Why do you keep doing that?" I finally asked, wrapping my arms around myself against the cool air coming off the water.

"Doing what?"

"Looking at me like that. Like I'm... I stopped myself, not sure how to finish the sentence without sounding insane. Like prey. Like something he was hunting.

Fern was quiet for a while, watching the water instead of me for once, and then he finally spoke, "Because I've never met anyone who made it this hard to look away."

The honesty in it caught me off guard. I looked into his face while trying to search for the smirk, the joke, the easy charm he wore like an armor around everyone else but it wasn't there. Just something steadier. Something that looked almost like restraint.

"That's not an answer," I said quietly.

"It's the only one I've got right now."

Behind us, the fire cracked and someone shouted with laughter, and for a moment neither of us moved to go back toward it. The lake was dark and endless in front of us, and Fern was standing close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him despite the cold, and I still couldn't shake the feeling, impossible, ridiculous that whatever he was, he wasn't just a boy who played hockey.

"We should head back," I said, even though I didn't move at all.

"We should," he agreed, and didn't move either.

Chapter 6

Yuri

Neither of us said anything for a long moment. The wind off the lake picked up, carrying woodsmoke from the fire and the distant thump of the speaker, and I suddenly realized how close Fern was standing, close enough that if I moved even slightly, I'd be against him.

"You're shivering," he said.

"I'm fine."

"You're a terrible liar, Yuri." But he shrugged out of his jacket anyway and put it over my shoulders before I could say anything or disagree, the fabric was still warm from his body, smelling faintly of his cologne and smoke. My skin prickled everywhere it touched.

"Thanks," I said quietly, pulling it tighter around myself, that was I had something to do with my hands than leaving it in the cold.

"You don't have to keep your distance from me," he said quietly. "I know I probably come off as...."

"Terrifying? Out of control? Like you're one bad day away from actually eating someone?"

That surprised a laugh out of him a real one, low and rough, nothing like the practiced charm he used on everyone else. "Something like that."

"So which is it?"

He looked at me for a long moment, like he was deciding how much truth I could handle. "Careful," he finally said. "That's the word I'd use. I'm careful. Especially around you."

"Why especially around me?"

"Because you make it hard to be careful."

The words just hung in the air, feeling way more powerful than they should have, considering how casually he'd spoken them. My heart started beating fast, and I got that thrill of curiosity that always seemed to get me into trouble, the same kind that Jessica was always telling me to beware of, the kind that drew me to things I knew I should be avoiding. It was like I was being pulled toward something, even though my instincts were screaming at me to back away.

"I still don't get why you're staring at me," I said, trying to sound calm, but my voice came out quieter than I wanted it to.

"No," he agreed. He took a step closer, slow, like he was giving me every chance to step back. I didn't.

His hand came up, brushing a strand of hair back from my face, and his fingers were against my jaw for a moment longer than they needed to. Up close, his eyes weren't just brown, they had gold in them that caught the distant firelight, and something in them looked almost like hunger that had been held.

"Fern..."

"I know," he said softly. "I know what this looks like. I know what I look like. But I'm not going to do anything you don't want."

"That's not... I'm not scared of you." And as I said it, I realized it was true. Whatever strange thing I sensed underneath his skin, I wasn't afraid of it. I was afraid of how much I wanted to find out what it was.

He must have seen that on my face, because his jaw tightened and he traced his thumb along my cheekbone. "Yuri."

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to kiss you now. Tell me to stop if you don't want me to."

I didn't tell him to stop.

His lips touched mine, slow and gentle at first, like he was waiting for me to push him away. But I didn't, I pulled him closer, my fingers gripping the front of his shirt. Something inside him seemed to let go, and the kiss got deeper. For a moment, everything else faded away, the noise of the party, the cold night air, and all I could feel was his warmth and the sound he made against my mouth. It was like he was trying to hold back, but something wilder was trying to break free.

When we finally broke apart, both of us breathing harder than a kiss should have justified, he rested his forehead against mine.

"That," he said, in a rough voice, "is going to be a problem."

"Why?"

"Because now I know exactly what I'm going to be thinking about for the rest of this bonfire."

I felt so embarrassed. "Fern..."

"I'm behaving," he said, though the low rasp in his voice suggested it was costing him something to do it. "Believe me, behaving has never taken this much effort before."

Somewhere behind us, Jessica's laughter rang out over the crowd, and reality came trickling back.

The fire, the music, the fact that half the hockey team and half our sorority row were only a few hundred feet away. I stepped back first this time, pulling his jacket tighter around myself.

"We should get back before Jessica sends a search party," I said.

Fern's eyes followed the movement, a pleased smile flickering across his face at the sight of her in his jacket. "After you."

We walked back toward the fire in silence, but it wasn't an uncomfortable one, it was charged, like the night had taken a different turn and neither of us wanted to be the one to say it out loud. Just before we reached the crowd, I could feel his hand on my waist, brief and light, gone as soon as I felt it.

"This isn't over," he whispered, close to my ear.

I believed him completely. And worse, I wanted him to be right.