THE LAST SEMESTER

Overdue

Beckett never answered her last text.

Wren checked her phone more times than she wanted to admit over the next two days — in the hallway between classes, at dinner while Ivy talked at length about a chemistry lab gone wrong, right before she fell asleep each night, like checking enough times might make the three dots reappear. They didn't. Just fine, family stuff and then nothing, a silence that felt heavier than it should have for someone she'd known less than a week.

Ivy noticed on day two. Of course she did.

"You keep looking at your phone like it's going to bite you," she said at lunch, not unkindly. "Is this about Alvarez's project or...?"

"Project," Wren said too fast.

Ivy gave her a look that said she didn't believe that for a second, bracelets clinking as she stole one of Wren's fries. "Right. Project. With Beckett Hale who definitely doesn't have your number from the class list."

Wren didn't answer. She was learning when to let Ivy fill the silence herself.

By Thursday, she'd almost convinced herself the library meeting wasn't happening. Maybe he'd forgotten. Maybe whatever his dad had said had scared him into keeping his distance from anything that looked like it could become a problem — and she was, by every measure that mattered to a school with a strict conduct code, exactly that kind of problem. New girl, wrong building, after hours.

He was already at a corner table when she got there. Books open, one knee bouncing under the table in a rhythm that looked more nervous than bored. He hadn't seen her yet. For a second she just watched him — the tightness in his shoulders that hadn't been there in the courtyard, the way his hand kept going to his phone and then away again.

"You came," she said, sliding into the seat across from him.

"Said I would."

"You also said 'fine, family stuff' and then went radio silent for two days."

Something flickered across his face — guilt, maybe, or something close to it. "Yeah. Sorry. It got complicated."

"Complicated how?"

He hesitated, glancing around the library like he was checking who might be close enough to hear. It was mostly empty — a few underclassmen scattered near the windows, a librarian half-asleep at the front desk, the smell of old books and coffee that had been sitting too long. Still, he lowered his voice when he answered.

"The incident report. Pruitt's note." His jaw tightened. "Reyes told me it's got your name in it after all. Apparently one of the janitorial staff saw you in the hallway that night and mentioned it when Pruitt was writing everything up. Said 'female student, dark hair, Kirkwood' or something. Pruitt added an addendum this morning. It's not public — nobody's posted it anywhere — but it's in a file somewhere with both our names on it, and my dad has access to anything with mine on it."

Wren's stomach dropped, the same slow, sick feeling from that first night returning all at once. "So he knows it was me."

"Not yet. Not by name — Reyes hasn't told him, and I don't think Pruitt would volunteer it unless someone asked directly. But if anyone ever pulls that file for real —" He stopped himself, dragging a hand through his hair. He looked tired. Actually tired, not just intense. "I didn't want to tell you over text. Felt like the kind of thing that deserved an actual conversation."

"So this is the conversation."

"This is the conversation."

They sat with that a moment, the weight of it settling between them, and Wren found herself doing the math she'd been avoiding since the first night — how fast this could all go wrong, how little control either of them actually had over a report sitting in a folder neither of them had access to.

"I should probably be less okay with this than I am," she admitted.

"Same."

"Why aren't you? Being less okay with it, I mean."

He considered the question longer than she expected, like he was actually trying to answer it honestly instead of deflecting the way he had with Marcus, with his dad, with — she suspected — pretty much everyone.

"Because it's the first thing that's happened to me all year that had nothing to do with basketball," he said finally. "Everyone else who talks to me wants something. A donation, a highlight reel, a favor from my dad, a ride to a scrimmage. You didn't even know who I was. You still looked at me like I was just a guy who was in the wrong gym."

"I still don't really know who you are."

"Fair." The almost-smile again, quieter this time. "Guess that's what the project's for."

They actually worked, after that — or tried to, books open, Alvarez's assignment sheet between them, both of them making a genuine effort to focus on something that wasn't the growing list of reasons this was a bad idea. It didn't entirely work. Somewhere between an argument about theme and a much less academic argument about whether Beckett had actually read chapter twelve, Wren caught herself laughing loud enough that the librarian glanced over, and didn't care. It felt good to laugh. It had been a while.

"You're better at this than you let on," she said, nodding at the notes he'd scrawled in the margins of his book — sharp, specific, nothing like someone faking his way through.

"Don't tell anyone. Ruins the whole mystique."

"What mystique?"

"The one where nobody expects anything from me except free throws." He said it lightly, but there was something underneath it, the same thing she'd heard in the courtyard two days ago. "It's easier that way."

"Sounds lonely."

He looked at her for a second too long. "Yeah," he said. "Sometimes."

The moment stretched, warm and unfamiliar, the kind of quiet that didn't feel like it needed filling. Wren was aware, suddenly, of exactly how close their hands were on the table, how little space was actually left between them, how she hadn't looked away from him in longer than felt safe.

A voice cut through it before either of them could decide what to do about that.

"Beckett? Didn't know you did homework."

Wren looked up. A girl stood at the end of their table — pretty in the effortless, curated way that suggested she'd never had to try very hard at it, arms crossed, smile aimed entirely at Beckett like Wren wasn't sitting three feet away.

"Sav," Beckett said, and something in his voice had gone carefully neutral. The knee that had been bouncing stopped.

"We've got a project together. Alvarez's class."

"Right. The new girl." Sav's eyes flicked to Wren then, quick and assessing, the kind of look that catalogued everything in under two seconds — the closed textbooks, the leftover laugh still on Wren's face, the exact distance between their chairs. Something shifted behind her expression, subtle but unmistakable. "Wren, right? Ivy's been talking about you nonstop. Says you're in 214."

"That sounds like Ivy," Wren said, careful.

Sav smiled, thin and pleasant and not entirely warm. "Well. Don't let me interrupt homework." Her gaze lingered on Beckett a beat longer than necessary. "Coach mentioned you might need a ride to the scrimmage this weekend, since your dad's flying back out. I can drive. Dad said it's fine, since our dads have that thing in the city anyway."

"I'll figure it out," Beckett said.

"Offer stands." Sav's smile widened slightly, aimed at Wren this time, sharp underneath the polish. "Nice meeting you."

She walked away, and Wren watched Beckett's shoulders stay tense long after she'd disappeared between the stacks.

"Who was that?" Wren asked, already suspecting she wouldn't like the answer.

Beckett exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face. "That," he said, "is someone who's going to be a problem."