My Hockey Alpha

Enzo

I had only just woken up after a mostly sleepless night of wishing I could just explain everything to Nina without either scaring her or pushing her away, when I heard banging on my front door. Groaning, I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door to a surprise: Luke.

“She’s up to something,” he said, without so much as a greeting, and pushed his way past me into my living room.

“What? Nina?” I asked, still rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I watched the anxious skeleton pace back and forth across my apartment. It was times like this that I was glad to not have roommates.

“I don’t know exactly what she’s doing, but she’s definitely up to something that is very much notgood,” he said, a little too quickly for me to fully comprehend exactly what was going on in my tired mind.

“Wait… Luke, slow down. What’s happening?” I asked.

Luke stormed over to me and took me by both shoulders, shaking me back and forth.

“Nina is being lured into a trap!” he shouted.

There were a few moments of silence as we stared at each other, the reality of the situation slowly sinking in.

Finally, I understood what was going on; panic mode started to set in.

“Where is she? How do you know? Is she alone? Is she hurt? Tell me what’s happening, god dammit!” I shouted as I ran around my apartment like a madman, throwing on yesterday’s dirty clothes as images of Nina being brutally murdered or kidnapped by a crazy person flashed through my mind.

“If you would give me a chance, I would tell you!” Luke shouted, his usual monotone voice now bellowing so loudly it shook the glass of water on my nightstand.

I stopped and took a deep breath. Luke was right; running around like a chicken with its head cut off wouldn’t solve anything.

“I saw a strange guy in a beat up pickup truck pull up to the diner last night while she was at work,” Luke said. “He sat down in a window booth. When she went over to him, she looked terrified; he gave her a piece of paper, they talked, then he left. This morning, she drove to the gun shop outside of town — that’s right, a gun shop and walked out with a shotgun. The last I saw of her, she was driving out of town with her roommates with a car full of camping supplies.”

would she need a dangerous weapon like that? And who

because right now my sole purpose was to find Nina and protect her in any

you know where she went?” I asked, grabbing a duffel bag from my closet and starting to fill it with

found this. The newspaper that the guy in the diner gave her. My

snatched the newspaper away from Luke. My eyes widened as I read the

“This is…”

and they did him in. I’m not sure

you know?” I asked. “Why would he have given her this if he was the one who did the

and I saw how terrified Nina looked, I got suspicious,” Luke replied. “So I looked through the windows of his truck. There was a business card

newspaper article in my pocket and continuing to

be able

a plan as I did so. I couldn’t just randomly show up in the woods and drag Nina home; for starters, I didn’t want to get shot, and secondly, I couldn’t have her friends getting suspicious. I had to figure out a way to make it seem like it was all just

from the hockey team once I finished packing — he was the only one on the team who I knew would agree to a last-minute camping trip like this, plus he had a car — and told him to pack quickly and meet me at the quad. Just as I suspected, he agreed

out there in, like, ten minutes. Oh, and is it alright if I bring my roommate? He’s going through some stuff so he could

whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes,

when I saw

when I recognized his roommate immediately. It was the guy that Nina had been going

this is my roommate James,”

smiled and stuck out his hand. ” Nice to meet you,”

forced a smile and

the time right now to be dealing with this. It looked like I’d just have to

car — I insisted on driving — and started to head toward Newburgh. I knew exactly where Luke had kept the asshole who drugged

roads,