I Confessed To The Wrong Twin

Ch.13

Rhys

My phone buzzes on the bedside, the sound dragging me out of my sleep. Damn it! Who the hell is it? It's still f*****g morning.

I grope blindly across the wood, knocking a half-empty water bottle over before my fingers wrap around the screen. The bright glare burns right through my retinas.

Jami: Hey! Are you awake? I was thinking maybe we could cross-reference our winter term syllabus notes today? You can come over to my dorm.

Fuck.

I bolt upright, the sheets twisting around my legs. Syllabus notes? I don't even know what the hell a syllabus looks like, let alone how to cross-reference one. Reid is the one with the pristine color-coded binders and the flawless GPA. I'm the guy who takes pucks to the face and gets by on athletic waivers and dynamic curves.

If I show up over there blank-faced, the entire illusion goes up in smoke. She thinks she's dating a genius class head.

My thumb flies across the glass, scrolling past unread team chats until I find the one name that can bail me out of this grave. Sabrina.

I press dial, shoving the phone against my ear as I pace across the cold floor of my room. Come on. Pick up.

"Rhys? Do you know what time it is?" Her voice comes through the speaker, thick with sleep and laced with attitude. "Why the hell are you calling me?"

"I need a massive favor," I bite out, ignoring the hostility. "The winter term curriculum for advanced economics. Give me a brain dump. Right now. Give me the vocabulary, the main concepts, whatever the f**k Reid would say if he was talking about it."

A sharp, mocking laugh echoes from the receiver. "Are you serious right now? You leave me on read for three days, I spot you at the club swallowing some random girl's face, and now you want me to do your homework? Lose my number, Rhys."

"Sabrina, wait. Don't hang up." I run a hand through my messy hair, forcing my tone to drop into that low, smooth register I know she hates to love. "The club thing? That was nothing. Just some noise. Come on, you know nobody actually handles my schedule the way you do."

"You're a prick," she spits, but her breathing changes. She's listening now. "You think you can just smile and get whatever you want from me because you have a f*****g handsome face?"

"I'm a desperate prick," I correct, leaning my weight against the doorframe. "Help me out with this jargon so I don't look like an i***t, and that leather jacket you wanted from the boutique downtown? The one you sent me a screenshot of? It's yours. I'll send it over."

Silence stretches over the line for three agonizing seconds. I can hear her shifting in her bed sheets, weighing the bribe against her pride.

"Fine," Sabrina grumbles, her voice sharp with residual anger but defeated by the prize. "Grab a pen, hockey boy. I'm only saying this once. The winter term focuses heavily on macroeconomic modeling and fiscal policy integration."

She rambles on as I grab a discarded receipt from my desk, pressing it against the wall as I scrawl down the words macroeconomic modeling, fiscal integration, regression analysis. The letters are jagged, completely unreadable to anyone else, but I memorize the rhythm of the syllables. I repeat them under my breath, molding my rough voice into the precise, clipped cadence my brother uses when he's lecturing someone.

"Got it," I say, my chest loosening slightly. "What else?"

She says a lot of things and the line goes dead.

I drop the phone onto the mattress, racing toward the closet. I yank a plain grey hoodie over my head, shrugging into a pair of dark jeans. I check my reflection in the mirror, adjusting the small silver stud in my ear, I should be clean enough to pass that jerk's academic standard.

I drive to the campus dorms cursing at red lights and reciting economics terms like a mantra. Variable metrics. Fiscal policy. It feels like trying to speak a foreign language with a mouth full of rocks.

I head straight up to her building, find her room number, and knock firmly on the wood.

The door swings open, and Jami stands there.

She's wearing an oversized sweater that hangs off one shoulder, her dark hair pulled up into a loose, messy bun with a few strands framing her face. She looks soft, small, and clean compared to the chaotic thoughts bouncing around in my skull.

"Hey," she smiles, stepping back to let me into the room. "You actually came. I thought you might be too busy with your... schedule."

The way her eyes light up when she looks at me makes my stomach do a dangerous flip. She’s referring to the secret hockey captain persona she thinks I’m hiding.

"Never too busy for you, Babe," I drawl, stepping into the small space and letting the door click shut behind me.

The dorm room is small, packed with neat stacks of textbooks and a desk covered in loose papers. Two laptops are already set up on the small bed, screens glowing with dense blocks of text.

I slide onto the edge of the mattress, pulling my legs up and trying to look comfortable. Jami sits down right next to me, her thighs brushing against mine, sending a sudden spike of heat straight up my spine.

"Okay, so I was looking at the syllabus for the advanced module," she says, turning her laptop toward me and pointing at a graph. "I'm having a hard time structuring the core outline. How do you usually approach the initial data set?"

I stare at the screen, the lines and numbers swimming before my eyes. My brain goes completely blank for a split second. f**k. What did Sabrina say?

I force a calm expression onto my face, leaning in closer to her so my shoulder presses into hers, using my physical presence to ground myself.

"For this specific dataset, you have to look at the macroeconomic modeling first," I state, the words rolling off my tongue with fluid confidence. I tap the screen right next to her finger. "Don't rely too much on the regression analysis. It's better to track the variable metrics manually so you avoid the software bias."

Jami blinks, her lips parting slightly as she looks from the screen back to my face.

Ha! It actually worked.

"Wow," she murmurs, a soft look of genuine admiration crossing her features. "You really do see right through the material, don't you? I spent an hour trying to figure out why the program numbers weren't aligning, and you just solved it in ten seconds."

"It's just about prioritizing the core modules over the elective readings during the break," I add, stretching my arm out along the wall behind her head, letting my fingers lightly brush against the edge of her hair. "Keeps the workload manageable."

She smiles, leaning back against my arm, her tension completely evaporating as she looks at her notes. "You're amazing, Reid. I don't know how you manage to keep all of this straight while doing everything else you do."

The praise hits my chest with a heavy, confusing mix of pride and guilt. She's looking at me like I'm a god, but the name she just used makes my chest rattle.

"Oh, by the way," Jami says suddenly, her hand moving to grab a printed sheet of paper from her desk. She turns back to me, her eyes wide with innocent curiosity. "Since we're focusing on the core modules, I wanted to ask... how do you handle Professor Vance's specific testing style? You had him for the honors seminar last semester, right? What's his favorite curveball on the mid-terms?"

The words instantly make my lungs seize up.

Professor Vance. Honors seminar. Last semester.

My hand freezes against the wall behind her. Who the hell is professor Vance? s**t! This whole thing is gonna be a lot harder than I thought.

Who even talks about books on holiday? Is this the kinda date she'd go with Reid? Sure as hell, my brother will enjoy it. But I'm f*****g stuck.

Jami is staring at me, waiting, her eyes bright with complete, unwavering trust, entirely expecting her genius boyfriend to drop the perfect answer.