Puck, Pain & Promises

CHAPTER 13: The First Kiss

“Something is wrong with you tonight.”

I said quietly as Eden sat across from me in the locker room. The session had started twenty minutes ago and she was off. Her answers were sharp but her mind was somewhere else. She had been staring at the same page for too long.

She looked up. Her eyes were tired. “It is nothing.”

I closed my book. “It is not nothing. Tell me.”

She hesitated. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the textbook. I waited. I had learned that with Eden silence worked better than pushing.

“My father emailed,” she said finally. “He is coming for parent weekend in three weeks.”

I waited for the rest. She did not give it right away. She stared at the table like it held answers.

“He never comes,” she continued. “To anything. In four years he has never been here. Now he is bringing Dr. Caldwell from the biology department. An old colleague. I think he wants to check if I am as good as he tells people I am.”

Her voice stayed flat. Academic. But her hands were completely still on the table. I had learned that meant the opposite of calm.

“He does not know you,” I said.

“He knows my grades.”

“That is not the same thing.”

She looked at me then. Really looked. “I know. It took me twenty one years to know that.”

The silence after her words felt heavy. I moved from my side of the bench to hers. Not touching. Just closer. She watched me do it. Her expression was halfway between her usual careful look and something rawer.

“We should finish the chapter,” she said.

“We will.”

I reached over and closed the textbook. She looked at me. I could see the edge she was standing on. She was deciding something.

“You do not have to perform for me,” I said quietly.

Something in her face changed. Not dramatically. Just a small fracture in the controlled surface she kept so tight. She looked at her hands. Then she looked at me. The real look. The one that was not managed.

And then she leaned forward and kissed me.

It was her move. I was barely breathing. I kissed her back with the control of someone who knew exactly how important this moment was. It was careful. Deep. But I did not push. I let her lead. Her lips were soft. Warm. The kiss lasted long enough for me to feel the quiet need behind it. Long enough for me to understand she had been holding this in for a while.

When she pulled back she was very still. I was very still too.

“That was not in the contract,” she said.

“No,” I agreed.

“Are you adding a clause?” she asked.

I felt my jaw tighten. “I think we should finish the chapter.”

She looked at me. “That was my line.”

“I know,” I said. “But you already used it.”

We went back to the textbook. Both of us studied with the kind of focus people use when they are trying very hard not to look at each other. The air between us felt different now. Charged. But we kept working. We finished the chapter and packed up our things.

At the door she stopped. I said her name. She turned.

“You are doing well,” I said.

She blinked. “The tutoring?”

“Yeah. The tutoring.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

She left.

I sat in the empty locker room for a long time after she was gone. I had kissed plenty of women before. Women who wanted my name or my status or the story they could tell later. Eden had kissed me because she had nowhere else to put what she was feeling and I had been there. I had said the one thing she needed someone to say.

I was going to have to be careful with that. Very careful.

I was already almost certain I would not be.

The transaction was supposed to be simple. Clean. Controlled. I was failing at keeping it that way. And the worst part was that I did not want to fix it.

I picked up her pen from the bench. She had left it behind again. I put it in my jacket pocket. I told myself I would return it next time.

I told myself a lot of things that night.

I sat there and realized the deal had stopped feeling like a deal a long time ago. I did not know what it was now. But I knew I did not want it to end.