Page 53 of Wild Card 13

I stopped. I looked back at her one last time. At the woman I'd loved. At the woman sitting behind a desk pretending we were strangers.

Not because she said my nickname. Because for one second I thought she might finally say something that mattered.

Instead, she exhaled slowly. “Don't be late.”

CHAPTER 6

LUCY

THEN

Minnesota never surrendered winter without a fight. But spring finally had started winning. Slowly. Steadily. One drip-drop of melting ice at a time.

The snowbanks lining the student parking lot looked smaller than they had a week ago, their white edges stained gray from months of road salt and slush. Water dripped steadily from the gutters outside the science wing. Tiny patches of green had begun pushing through the dirt near the sidewalks, stubborn and hopeful beneath the last remnants of winter.

The air filled with damp earth. Rain. And something alive breaking out of hibernation.

Normally, I would have noticed all of it.Instead, I looked at the clock.Then I looked at it again three minutes later.

Which was ridiculous.

I was not one of those girls. I had never been one of those girls.

The girls who spent entire classes doodling hearts in notebook margins. The girls who counted down minutes until they saw their boyfriend again. The girls who rearranged their schedules just to accidentally run into someone in the hallway.

At least, I hadn't been.

Yet somehow, despite seeing Ty at lunch, having him walking me to fourth period, the kiss he'd pressed to my forehead, I stillfound myself watching the second hand crawl around the classroom clock like it was personally offending me.

The final bell couldn't come fast enough.

The first few weeks after we'd started dating had been full of nerves. Every text message felt significant. Every conversation got replayed afterward. Every time he looked at me, I found myself wondering if he was about to realize he'd made a terrible mistake.

But somewhere along the way, things had transformed.Similar to the way seasons changed.

One day you realized the snowbanks were smaller than they used to be. One day you realized you weren't nervous anymore.

Now I knew him.

Not hockey Ty.Not the version teachers rolled their eyes at.Not the version that spent half his life surrounded by teammates and noise and attention.

I knew the boy underneath all of that.

The boy who passed me terrible jokes on torn notebook paper during class. The boy who sang along to songs on the radio despite knowing maybe half the words. The boy who kissed me like he still couldn't quite believe I was his girlfriend.

I gathered my books when the bell rang and joined the familiar flow of students spilling into the hallway. Lockers slammed. Conversations bounced off the cinderblock walls. Somewhere behind me, someone shouted a goodbye loud enough to be heard three counties away.

The closer I got to the academic wing, the faster my feet seemed to move.I rounded the corner and immediately felt something warm unfurl in my chest.

The tutoring room door was already open.

A smile tugged at my mouth before I could stop it.

Ty had never successfully arrived early for anything before we started dating.Not class.Not practice.Not lunch.Not life in general.

I was fairly certain he viewed clocks as vague suggestions.And yet somehow, every Tuesday and Thursday, he managed to beat me here.Every single time.Like clockwork.

The room sat at the end of the nearly empty hallway, washed in the golden light of late afternoon. The overhead lights were still off,leaving most of the space illuminated by the tall windows overlooking the parking lot.