Chapter 18: How Bad Is It?
1165 Words
Tyson's POV
Werewolf History was the last place I expected to spend forty minutes not hearing a single word the professor said.
I slid into the seat next to Ryder two minutes before Professor Caldwell started and found Roxanne without trying, she was sitting in the front row, left side, notebook already open, curls pulled back from her face. She hadn't looked back once.
Ryder watched me look, I looked away.
"So," he said, quiet enough for just me. "How bad?"
"She agreed to everything this morning," I said. "Game, outfit, all of it. She didn't push back once."
"That's bad." He said.
"Yeah." I agreed.
He picked up his pen and said nothing else for a bit. Caldwell started the lecture, something about the Great Pack Wars, boundary disputes, the politics of Alpha territory claims, none of which I could hear because Roxanne had just underlined something twice in her notebook and I noticed.
She answered two of Caldwell's questions without being called on. Both times the room shifted slightly to look at her. Both times she didn't seem to notice or care.
"You need apologise." Ryder said quietly.
I looked at him. "You know I can't do that."
"You mean you won't." He said.
"I mean I can't." I corrected.
"Same thing." He picked up his pen. "So what's your plan?"
"That's what I came to you for." I kept my voice low. "I need to show her without saying it."
"Show her what, specifically?" He asked.
"That I..." I stopped. Looked at the front of the room. At the back of Wren's head. At the specific set of her shoulders that said she was paying complete attention to the professor and absolutely not aware that I existed. "That I shouldn't have said it."
"You mean you're sorry." He said.
"Yeah that." I said.
"The word is sorry, Tyson." His voice was flat. "Two syllables."
"Are you going to help me or not?"
Ryder looked at me for a moment with the expression he used when he thought I was being an i***t but had made peace with it. "Let me think about it." He nodded toward the front. "Pay attention. At least pretend."
My eyes kept going to Roxanne. The tilt of her head when she was listening to something that interested her. The way she underlined things twice when they mattered.
Ryder elbowed me in the ribs.
I looked back at my notebook.
After class the room cleared and I watched Wren stop at the end of our row with her bag over one shoulder, looking at Ryder with something warm and open in her face.
"Ryder, I wanted to say thank you." She said. "Charlotte told me what you did at the party, staying with her, walking her out." She shifted her bag strap. "She really needed someone that night and you were there. So, thank you."
"She needed someone," Ryder said simply. "Liam's a real piece of work, by the way."
"He really is." Something moved in her expression. "She's not doing great but she's handling it."
"Anytime," Ryder said.
She nodded once, then looked at me, with that careful, neutral look.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey." A beat. "Friday's still on?"
"Yeah." I said. "I'll text you the details."
"Okay." She nodded once, and then she was gone, moving through the remaining cluster of students toward the exit.
I watched her go.
Ryder watched me watch her go.
"You know," he said slowly, "she thanked me, a guy she barely knows, more warmly than she said two words to you. The guy she's fake dating."
"I told you it was bad." I said.
He shouldered his bag. "Yeah it is."
"So how are you going to help me show her I'm sorry," I said as we walked out into the corridor.
"I never said I was going to help you." He said.
"Ryder." I said. "Come on."
"I'm just saying, you made this mess..."
"I know I made it." I cut him off. "Help me fix it."
He sighed, slowed down. "Fine." He nodded toward the benches near the east wall and we cut across the corridor and sat.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "The game's Friday."
"Yeah." I said.
"She'll be there. Front row, supporting girlfriend, the whole performance." He looked at me. "So the game itself isn't the move. During the game she's acting."
"Right." I said.
"It needs to be after. Something that's just for her. Not for the plan, not for Skylar, not for any audience." He tapped his finger against his knee. "Something that says, I see you."
I looked at him. "Like what?"
"What does she care about?" He asked.
"Her herbalism assignment." I said it automatically. "Her suppressants. Charlotte. Her book system..."
Ryder blinked. "Her book system?"
"She organises them by how much she hates them. Most hated on the bottom. She told me..." I stopped when ealised he was looking at me with an expression I didn't want to examine. "What?"
"Nothing." He looked away. "So she hates hockey."
"She told me multiple times." I said.
"Okay." Ryder nodded slowly. "So it can't be grand. Anything big, anything that looks like a move, she's going to think you're managing her again."
"Okay, what do you have in mind?" I asked.
"Here's what you do." He looked at me. "You know her prescription details from when you researched her for the blackmail..."
"I'd rather not frame it like..."
"You used information about her life to corner her," he said plainly. "Now you use the same information to actually take care of something she's been stressing about alone." He paused. "You call the campus health pharmacy. You get her prescription filled and paid for before she even makes it back from the game Friday night. You have it delivered to her dorm. No note. No card. No explanation." He held my gaze. "Just, it's there when she gets back. It's sorted. Because you were paying attention to her life when you didn't have to be."
I looked at him. "She'll know it was me."
"Yeah." He agreed.
"She'll also know I used information I got from surveilling her..."
"She already knows that. That's not the issue." He shook his head. "The issue is she thinks she's nothing to you except convenient. This says otherwise. This says you were listening when she talked about her actual life. Not the performance, not the plan, her." He sat back. "It doesn't undo what you said. But it proves something different from what your words proved."
The bench was quiet for a second.
"What if she's still pissed?" I asked.
"She probably will be." He stood up. "But there's a difference between being pissed at someone who wasn't listening and being pissed at someone who clearly was." He pulled his bag up. "She'll feel the difference even if she doesn't say it."
My wolf, quiet since this morning, shifted once.
He liked the plan too.
- Writer
