Page 28 of Wild Card 13

There it was. The real thing underneath all the jokes. Hockey players learned young how to act like nothing rattled them. Didn’t mean it worked.

“I know,” I muttered.

Peterson studied me for a second longer than usual. Then his expression shifted slightly. “You actually studied this time,” he said.

I shrugged one shoulder casually even though we both knew the answer already. Lucy making color-coded flash cards while threatening violence every time I got distracted. Lucy glaring at me acrosslibrary tables. Lucy refusing to let me quit halfway through chapter reviews even after I complained dramatically for two straight hours.

I looked away toward the empty hallway. “You gonna tell me or keep psychologically torturing me for fun?”

Before he could answer, soft footsteps echoed around the corner farther down the hallway.

Lucy turned the corner carrying a stack of textbooks against her chest, and every coherent thought immediately left my body. The hallway lights caught against auburn curls where they spilled loose over one shoulder, and my hoodie hung from her arm beneath her winter coat like she’d been carrying it around with her all day without realizing it.

She slowed slightly when she spotted me outside Peterson’s classroom, surprise flickering briefly across her face before softening into something smaller and warmer that settled directly beneath my ribs. “You’re still here?” she asked as she reached us, her voice light with amusement.

I pushed myself up from the floor immediately, trying to look like I had not just spent the last twenty minutes psychologically unraveling over both biology and the existence of girlfriends.

“Academic dedication,” I replied smoothly.

Peterson made a low sound under his breath that was dangerously close to a laugh.

Lucy’s eyes drifted toward the obvious bulge of the tennis ball still shoved inside my hoodie pocket before lifting back to my face knowingly. “Right,” she said. “Very scholarly behavior.”

“He spent half an hour throwing a tennis ball at the wall,” Peterson informed her.

Lucy nodded seriously. “That tracks.” The smile she tried to suppress widened anyway.

God.

That smile.

The hallway around us had gone mostly quiet this late in the afternoon. The noise from the gym drifted faintly through the building somewhere in the distance while winter light stretched pale and gold through the narrow windows lining the far end of the corridor.

Lucy shifted the books slightly in her arms, and my attentionsnagged immediately on the silver ring she always wore on her right hand. I had noticed it during sophomore English and somehow never stopped noticing it after that.

Now I wanted to hold that hand so badly my fingers physically twitched.

Get a grip, Burns.

I had played varsity hockey in front of packed student sections without blinking.

One pretty girl looked at me too softly and suddenly I forgot how to function like a normal human being.

“So,” I said, forcing my brain back online before I embarrassed myself catastrophically, “what are you doing here?”

“I left my sketchbook in art.”

“Wow.” I nodded slowly. “Responsible student behavior.”

Lucy’s mouth twitched. “You’re sitting outside a biology classroom waiting for a grade like a Victorian orphan.”

Peterson outright laughed this time before catching himself immediately.

I looked back at Lucy. “You’re supposed to be on my side now.”

The words came out naturally. The second they landed between us, the entire atmosphere shifted.

Lucy’s cheeks flushed pink almost instantly. Enough that my heartbeat stumbled directly into a wall.