Follow the River

I awake with a jolt to the sound of shouting.

Confused and disorientated, I snap up to a sitting position and try to rub the sleep out of my eyes. It takes me a moment to realize I’m not in my apartment, but in the cabin Coach brought me and Grady up to yesterday afternoon.

Grady.

He’s probably watching some horror or action movie in the living room at full volume just to piss me off.

Glancing over at the alarm clock on the nightstand, it tells me it's barely past two in the morning. Jesus, we haven’t even been here twenty-four full hours and he is already trying to do his best to make me fucking miserable.

With a groan, I roll off the bed and pad my way across the room, my feet hitting the freezing wood floors.

Shit, he’s awake and can’t even throw logs on the fire or in the wood stove?

Asshole.

Throwing on grey sweats, my Colorado Football hoodie, and a pair of socks, I slip out my door and head down the hall to the living room, ready to rip him a new asshole. Except, when I pass through the opening into the living area, I’m surprised to find it dark and empty.

Huh. Weird.

I know there aren’t any televisions in the bedrooms, since Taylor and I have come up here in high school for long weekends when we wanted to go snowboarding.

So what the hell was that sound?

I brush it off, heading over to the fireplace to grab some logs and throw into the wood stove in the corner of the room. Maybe it was my subconscious shouting about how fucking freezing it is in here, even by the standards of a Colorado native.

Once the stove is burning nice and hot, I grab a blanket off the back of the couch and settle in to watch a movie. The cabin isn’t freezing per se, but between that and whatever startled me awake, I’m not tired anymore.

Flipping through Netflix, I settle on the new movie about Ted Bundy because why the hell not? I love horror, suspense, and thrillers, but my guilty pleasure is anything true crime. It’s not like I decided to watch The Wrong Turn or Cabin In The Woods when I’m stranded at a cabin in the mountains with no way to leave.

I’m not a fucking masochist.

And if I’m going to be stuck here, at least it is with a sexy as sin asshole who hates my guts in an attempt to “work out our shit.”

Yeah, that was sarcasm.

Except, Rain is fucking sexy. Dark hair, amber eyes, and some truly phenomenal ink covering the ta

Okay, maybe I am a masochist.

I sigh in frustration.

I don’t know how the hell Coach thinks this will work.

Sure, I know he had success with this tactic in the past, before I came to CU. Hell, he’s even threatened to send the twins out here because they are constantly at each other’s throats for no fucking reason. For sharing the exact same DNA, they are completely different, and I think that is most of the issue in itself. But at the end of the day, they’re brothers. Twins, for fuck’s sake. They have an undeniable bond with each other, and I tend to agree that them spending time out here to work their shit out would be helpful.

Ciaráin Grady and I are a completely different story.

We don’t have a bond so strong it can withstand anything. We barely know each other, and what we do know, we don’t fucking like.

I hate his arrogance, like he is above me because I’m bisexual. I hate how he has to antagonize and torment me about anything and everything. I hate how he refuses to grow up and just accept that, yes, not everyone in the entire world is straight.

But I also hate how stupidly turned on he makes me when we face off against each other. How his muscles flex when he lifts weights in the gym. How we somehow have this unspeakable co

Most of all, I hate how, if things were different, I wouldn’t hate him at all.

Even now, I don’t know if I actually do.

I shake the thoughts I don’t want to hear from my mind, focusing back onto the movie in front of me, or maybe on being able to fall back asleep now that I’m not as frozen as a popsicle.

I’m around an hour into the movie, at the part where Zac Efron, who plays Bundy, starts his trial in the state of Florida when an ear splitting scream comes from down the hall, causing me to jump.

Scrambling to my feet, I rush down the hall to Rain’s room, where I hear him shouting on the other side of the door.

“No, stop!” he yells, despair evident in his voice.

Fuck, is someone in there with him?

I grip the doorknob and twist, but it’s locked.

“Rain!” I call, pounding on the door as loud as I can, as if he could come unlock it if someone is in there with him.

Panic rises as I continue to listen helplessly to his shouts, which quickly turns to pleading.

“Please. Please don’t do this,” Rain sobs, and the sound fucking rips my heart to shreds. “I’ll be good.”

Wait. What?

That doesn’t make sense to say to someone who is coming in to, what, kidnap him? Kill him?

Is he… dreaming?

My brows furrow, but I continue smashing my fists into the door, willing it to open. Of course, it fucking doesn’t.

“Rain, it’s River. Are you okay? Fucking talk to me!” I keep slamming my fists and yell his name, desperate for a coherent response from him.

Suddenly, the shouting stops and I hear the tell tale sign of feet moving across the floor just as the door flies open to reveal Rain.

He’s drenched in sweat, covering his exposed chest and abs, even coating his dark hair to his forehead. My gaze slides down to find him wearing only boxer briefs, and my eyebrows shoot to my forehead when I notice his impressive erection tenting them.

What the…?

“What, River?” he snaps in irritation, forcing my eyes up to meet his. They’re dark and angry, but I also see something new and unfamiliar behind them.

Fear, maybe?

“Did you really wake me up just to fucking gawk at me half naked? Because I swear to God, if you keep fucking looking at my cock like that, I’m going to make good use of it and shove it down your throat. Again.”

I clench my jaw, doing my best to keep my temper under control.

But for fuck’s sake, he was shouting and screaming and sobbing in his sleep moments ago. Sue me for giving a shit.

“I heard yelling,” I state calmly. “I was checking to see if you were okay. When you didn’t respond…” I trail off when I see his dark brow quirk up in amusement.

Fuck him, he doesn’t deserve my worry.

“What, you were concerned for my well-being?” he scoffs. “Tell me something I’ll actually believe. Because the idea of either one of us actually giving a flying fuck about the other is more farfetched than flying pigs on Mars.”

I do my best not to wince at his words. We might be enemies, but I’m not so demented that I wouldn’t care if something bad happened to him. Still, he must catch my flinch, because he lets out a low, unamused laugh and shakes his head.

“I’m fine, River. Go back to fucking sleep,” he says with a growl before slamming the door in my face for the second time today.