Page 58 of Wild Card 13

I looked down at our joined hands. "You."

He gasped dramatically. "I take offense to that."

"I mean the studying thing."

"Oh."

I shook my head. "You know, a few months ago I genuinely thought there was no hope for you."

Ty looked personally offended. "That's hurtful."

"You forgot your notebook three times in one week."

"That happened one time."

"It happened three times."

"Allegedly."

I rolled my eyes. Beside me, he smiled. The kind of happy that still caught me off guard sometimes. Because it happened so easily around me.

"You know what the weirdest part is?" I asked.

"What?"

"You actually care now."

For the first time since we'd left school, Ty went quiet. The city moved around us. Headlights. Streetlights. The low hum of tires against pavement.

"I guess."

I looked over. "You guess?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "I don't know."

I nudged his arm. "Very insightful."

"Thank you." Ty huffed out a long breath before looking back toward the road. "I think I just got tired of being the dumb guy."

I turned toward him fully. "Nobody thinks you're dumb."

Ty snorted. "Shortcake."

"I'm serious."

"You spend enough time around people and you figure out what they expect from you." His fingers tightened slightly around mine. "Hockey's easy."

That caught me off guard. Ty Burns had never described hockey as easy. Not once.

"You spend your whole life doing one thing," he continued. "Eventually people stop asking about anything else." The teasing had disappeared from his voice completely. "I walk into a room and people already know who they think I am."

Ty glanced over briefly. Then sighed. "The annoying part is you didn't."

My chest squeezed unexpectedly. "What does that mean?"

"It means everybody else sees the golden boy." His eyes flicked toward me again. "You never did."

The air between us somehow grew softer than it had been a minute earlier. I looked out the window before he could see how much that affected me. Because the truth was, I had always seen more.