The Streaking Tradition
The Friday night was no different from any other.
“You idiot! Pass it there! Damn it!”
“Fuck, our grandmother’s reflexes are probably faster than that bastard’s.”
The sports pub The Judge Club thrummed with raw, unfiltered profanity and triumphant shouts. This was the mecca for sports fans just a stone’s throw from Chatsworth University, the prestigious Ivy League school nestled in Upstate New York where ice hockey was practically a religion.
As a Korean-American student named Cora Suhyun Han, who had been slinging drinks here for the past few months, she had long since realized that to these fanatics, hockey wasn’t just a game—it was a faith. And the god they worshipped, the one who embodied every ounce of that passion, was the man on the TV screen: Tristan Lockwood.
Captain of the Chatsworth Reapers, the top team in the college ice hockey league, the hockey genius who would one day be drafted first overall in the NHL. The heir of the wealthy Lockwood family, the kind who never should have been seen inside a place like this.
Why the hell do these muscle-bound idiots get so worked up over slapping a rubber disc around with a stick?
Cora kept her eyes glued to the screen a second longer, then reached for a wet rag to wipe down the tables. She was just sweeping the crumbs from an overflowing basket of lukewarm potato chips when a low, rhythmic thumping sound drifted in from somewhere beyond the window.
At first it was faint, muffled, like a distant engine. But as it grew clearer, it settled into a steady, pulsing beat.
“Who owns the Ice?”
“We own the Ice!”
Cora’s rag froze mid-swipe. She stepped to the window and stared out. In the parking lot, bathed in the glow of the neon sign, a cluster of about thirty guys had gathered. Despite the chilly autumn night, they were all in nothing but their trunks—bare chests, bare legs, bare feet. Their cheeks and ears were already flushed from the cold, but their postures screamed defiance.
“Whose Ice?”
“Our Ice!”
They threw their heads back and roared, the sound echoing off the pavement like Spartan war cries. Then, as one, they charged straight toward the pub, a herd of African buffalo bearing down on a watering hole.
The glass vibrated. The door burst open with a thunderous bang.
CRASH!
“Listen up, everyone! The Reapers have arrived!”
“Yeah, baby! What’s up, what’s up!”
Cora’s ears rang. A hockey stick hanging on the wall clattered to the floor from the force of the door slam. The sudden heat rolling off the team made the air inside feel like a sauna.
One guy had already climbed onto a table, flexing, pounding his chest, and shouting “Woof! Woof!” while the others wolf-whistled and slapped their thighs.
Cora tsked under her breath and bent to pick up the fallen stick, hanging it back on the wall.
Great. Today’s definitely not going home early.
The guys were definitely Reapers—her coworkers on the hockey team. But why the trunks tonight?
At first glance, maybe she could chalk it up to “just short shorts.” But the designs were anything but standard. One pair had a cartoon elephant trunk dangling from the waistband. Another featured a tiny hockey stick right where the groin would be. And one—well, that one featured a peeled banana. The kind of banana that screamed streak.
A few of them even wore hockey helmets or held up sponge hands in the air. Stripped-down and half-naked, they looked ridiculous. She had a feeling they’d planned this on purpose.
“Reapers!”
Most of the customers were cheering wildly. Cora, however, felt more like she was watching an episode of When Cavemen Were as Dumb as They Look.
“Newbie streaking tradition,” she muttered.
She turned to the voice and there was Angela, the blonde server who worked the same shift. Mature, warm, and impossibly competent.
“Oh… streaking,” Angela replied with a small smile.
It was an old college tradition—running naked or in underwear through public campus spaces when stress exploded. Back in the day, it started as a way for kids to blow off steam after finals. The Reapers had been doing it for years, but lately they’d switched to trunks because going full naked was technically illegal now.
Cora wiped four beer glasses in one fluid motion and smirked.
“So you guys are just gonna walk around in those trunks? Isn’t that still technically public indecency?”
Angela shrugged. “Who’s gonna tell the Reapers what to do?”
“Hah… can you believe it? That these idiots get to play with a puck for a living and later pull in millions a year?”
“Millions? Please. Top guys make tens of millions.”
Cora let out a sharp laugh. “I sometimes wonder if life is one big joke. If I wanted to make tens of millions, I probably would’ve been serving beer since before the U.S. even existed.”
“They’ll be out of here in ten minutes. Just hold on.”
“I wish they’d just hurry up and leave already.”
She turned toward the bar, cups balanced on her arm, when the entire pub suddenly went dead silent.
The noise level dropped like the tide. Cora followed the sudden attention to the door and felt her stomach tighten.
There he was.
Tristan Lockwood stepped inside, towering over the crowd, his presence so heavy it seemed to push the air out of the room. Six-five, two-hundred-plus pounds of carved muscle wrapped in a simple white tee and jeans. Steel-blue eyes scanned the space like he owned it. The kind of eyes that made you feel stripped bare just by looking at you.
The Reapers instinctively lowered their voices. A couple of the drunk ones actually moved aside to give him a clear path. The whole place shifted from chaos to hushed respect in a single heartbeat.
Cora’s breath caught. She had seen him around campus a few times—always in that effortless, arrogant way—but never like this. Never surrounded by a dozen guys in nothing but trunks, never with that quiet, predatory intensity radiating off him.
Tristan Lockwood?
Here?
The whispers around her said he’d already been drafted first overall in the NHL. That he was just playing college hockey for fun. That his family literally owned half the campus and his dad owned the pro team in New York. That girls had done anything to get close to him—some even called him “the walking power ball.”
She’d heard all the rumors.
But standing here, watching him walk through the pub like he owned every single person inside, she realized none of them had come close to the truth.