Page 1 of The Riley Effect

Prologue

Ivy

14 Years Ago…

Bang. Bang. Bang.

I hear my sister’s wails before I can see her. My bedroom door flings open so suddenly it causes me to jump, and the candy I got trick-or-treating flies off my bed and covers my bedroom floor. Looking back toward the door, a hole now scars the wall below my One Direction poster. The handle must have punched through it.

My sister rushes through the threshold, quickly dialing three numbers into her phone before she settles onto my bed, pulling me to her side. I attempt to wiggle free to grab the peanut butter cup that had rolled under my nightstand. But my attempts fail as my sister pulls me back into her side.

“911, what’s your emergency?”I barely hear the muffled question over her crying.

1

Jalen

Well, I fucked up.

I’m unsure if I really grasped how bad until I reached the large door that houses the man controlling my fate. I take a deep breath and brace myself for whatever’s about to come next.

Some would say that as a soon-to-be four-year starter and team captain, I should have known better than to start a fight during the party I was throwing at my off-campus house. I didn’t want to break that asshole’s nose, but you can’t just walk around making women feel uncomfortable at my house and walk away scotch free.

The hockey house has always beentheparty house, and I take pride in knowing it’s a place where people can come to let loose and know they’re safe. So, I have no regrets about what happened on Saturday night.

I try to reassure myself that the punishment won’t be too bad. How can it be? The semester only started two weeks ago. There’s been no preseason lifts, not even a team meeting.

But I know nothing good comes from an impromptu meeting with the athletic director.

My knuckles graze the door leisurely in an effort to slow down my impending doom. I finally open the door in the Riley Center, Westvale University’s athletic complex, to a pair of dark brown eyes glaring back at me.

Mr. Holloway, Westvale’s Athletic Director, looks up from behind his oversized oak desk phone perched between his shoulder and ear. My feet take me backward. Maybe he forgot about our meeting. A guy can hope, right?

Wrong.

“Sorry, I have to go,” he murmurs. “I know, I know. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes. I have a meeting with a student,” he hangs up and places his phone atop a large stack of papers.

“Hey, Uncle Matt, you wanted to see me?” I ask, my voice sounds overly cheery even to myself.

Yes, my school’s athletic director is my uncle, my dad’s younger brother. But I accepted my scholarship before he was offered the job here. Westvale was one of the first schools to offer me a hockey scholarship, and as the recruitment process went on, I realized we were a good fit. The school has a top-tier hockey program, is close to home, and has good academics.

My uncle played football at Westvale, so I grew up hearing how much he loved the school and how insane the parties were. I guess in some roundabout way he did play a role in me becoming a Retriever.

Like most eighteen-year-olds, I craved the independence college was going to give me. I was going to be free. I could do what I wanted when I wanted, and my recruitment visit gave me a taste of that freedom. I’ll just say it took me a week to recover.

If I’m being honest, I could have it worse than having Uncle Matt around all the time. He’s only twelve years older than I am, and we grew up more like brothers than an uncle and nephew.

Coming into my first year at Westvale I was naive, thinking my uncle would let me party, play hockey, and coast through school until I was ready to enter the NHL Draft. I haven’t been so lucky. If anything, he’s been stricter on me than any of his other athletes. Something about not wanting to show bias or some shit.

There’s no attempt to hide my annoyance with the current situation when I flop down onto a chair in front of my uncle’s desk.

“I’ve been here for a week. There is no way I should be meeting with you already,” I tell my uncle.

I decided on my walk over that it was best to pretend I hadn’t skipped two classes, been late to three more, and gotten into my first fight of the year all in the span of a week. What my uncle doesn’t know won’t kill him. It really is the mature way to deal with the situation at hand.

“Do you live to make my job more difficult, Jalen?”

I try and fail to stifle a laugh. My uncle isn’t asking that question sarcastically. He is clearly annoyed by the actions I’m trying to downplay.

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