Locker Crisis, I Took the Debate Champ

Chapter 3

POV: Chloe Lopez

The oat milk latte appeared in front of me at 7:52 AM.

Liam was already there when I reached my locker, one shoulder against the adjacent door, a coffee cup in each hand and that calm, composed expression he wore like armor. He held mine out the moment he saw me.

"Morning."

I took it on reflex.

How does he know what I drink?

I didn't get to ask, because his arm came around my shoulders—easy, unhurried, like he'd done it a thousand times—and suddenly I was anchored to his side, breathing in cedar and something clean and soapy, and the entire hallway was watching.

I heard it in waves. Whispers. Sharp intakes of breath.

Is Liam Carter actually—

—with Chloe?

—Zack is going to lose his mind—

I forced myself not to go rigid. Liam's hold was firm, warmer than I expected, and his voice dropped low against my ear—low enough to look intimate to anyone watching.

"Breathe," he murmured. "You're doing that thing where you look like you're about to face a firing squad."

"I feel like I am," I said through a fixed smile.

Twenty feet down the hall, Zack stood with his usual crowd. His jaw was set. His eyes moved between me and Liam with an expression like something had been taken from him—not because he wanted it, but because he wasn't used to anyone else having it.

He didn't move toward us.

Good.

The next four days restructured my life without asking permission.

Liam was at the school gate every morning—same spot, same coffee, that same quiet half-smile that I was starting to recognize as his version of hello. At lunch he'd appear with his tray and sit across from me like it was assigned seating. After school he materialized at my classroom door and walked me to the library, and we'd sit across from each other at the study table by the window and he'd work through his own problem sets while I worked through mine, and somehow it was the most productive studying I'd done all semester.

He was terrifyingly good at this.

He remembered things. Small things. Things I'd said once, in passing, and promptly forgotten I'd said.

He never put cilantro on my lunch order. He always picked the window seat before I had to ask. On Thursday, when cramps had me folded over my desk trying to breathe through it, he set a hand warmer on the edge of my notebook without a word, without looking up from his textbook, without making it weird.

Who are you?

Mia cornered me after sixth period on Friday with the energy of someone who had been storing up a speech.

"Okay." She grabbed my elbow and steered me into the bathroom. "Explain. That man has never voluntarily sat with another human being at lunch in three years, and now he's bringing you heat patches? How? How did you melt the ice sculpture?"

"It's complicated," I said.

"Chloe."

"It's really complicated."

She stared at me in the mirror for a long moment. "You like him."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't not say it."

Don't trust your own feelings right now. This is a performance. He's playing a role and so are you and it's temporary and—

"It's not real, Mia," I said, and even I could hear how much I didn't believe it.

Later that afternoon, in the quiet back corner of the library, I was stuck on a physics problem and chewing the end of my pen when Liam leaned over.

"Kinetic energy theorem," he said quietly. "It's faster."

He shifted closer to point at my notebook. His shoulder pressed against mine—a line of warmth through two layers of uniform—and I turned to say thank you.

He wasn't looking at my notebook.

His gaze was lower. Focused. Fixed on my mouth.

"Liam—" My voice came out wrong. Thin.

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, he reached over and pulled the pen from between my teeth.

"Zack's absent today." His voice was quieter than usual, the low register of it settling somewhere behind my ribs. "So this—" his knee touched mine under the table, "—isn't for the show."

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