CHAPTER 7 - TO KISS OR TO KILL
1162 Words
Caleb stood at the end of the row with his coffee and his entitlement and waited for Rhys to move.
Rhys kept not writing in his notebook.
"I said you're in my seat."
"Didn't realize they assigned seats in college." Rhys still didn't look up. "Thought that stopped around the same time people stopped making scrapbooks for guys who don't want them."
The class inhaled. Thirty people sucking in air at the same time. Someone in the back row whispered oh my God. Caleb's face went from dark to white – not from fear, from the precise, surgical humiliation of being publicly connected to the Valentine's night story in a room full of people who already knew it.
He stepped forward. Fist curling around his coffee cup hard enough to dent it.
"Say that again."
"Mr. Park." Professor Whitfield's voice was sharp from the front. "Sit down or leave. You're eight minutes late and you're disrupting my lecture."
"He's in my–"
"There are fifteen empty seats in this room. Pick one."
The silence was excruciating. Caleb stood there for three full seconds – long enough for the humiliation to calcify, long enough for every person in the room to register that the new guy had just won a territory war without raising his voice. Then he walked to the back row. Sat down hard. Didn't look at me.
Rhys turned a page in his empty notebook.
I stared at the side of his face and tried to figure out if I wanted to kill him or kiss him. Both felt equally likely and equally dangerous.
Twenty minutes into the lecture, my phone buzzed.
Thornfield Athletic Academic Services:
Ms. Ellis – You have been assigned as the academic tutor for student-athlete Rhys Maddox (Hockey, #17) effective immediately. Please coordinate a meeting schedule at your earliest convenience. Tutoring will take place in the library study rooms, minimum 3 sessions per week.
I read it twice. Three times. Then I turned to look at him.
He was already looking at me. That smirk – the one that wasn't quite a smile, the one that made his scar shift and his grey eyes go sharp with amusement. He'd known. He'd known before he walked into this classroom.
I mouthed: You did this.
He mouthed back: See you at the library.
The bell rang. I shoved my notebook into my bag and stood – ready to corner him, demand answers, ask him what kind of psychopath gets himself assigned to the girl he fingered in a restaurant hallway two days ago –
"Naomi."
Caleb was standing at the end of my row. Blocking my path. Coffee cup crushed in his hand, jaw tight, eyes searching my face for the girl who used to drop everything when he said her name.
"Are you still angry about that night?" He softened his voice. The version of Caleb that made you forget the other versions existed – warm, focused, sickly sweet. "Fine. You have my attention. I'm sorry."
You have my attention. Not I'm sorry for what I said. Not I was wrong. Just – you've been upset long enough to inconvenience me, so here: attention. The currency he'd always known I'd accept.
Two weeks ago, I would have melted. Would have said it's fine and meant thank you for seeing me and gone back to orbiting him like nothing happened.
"Okay," I said. Flat. Neutral. Giving him nothing.
He blinked. That wasn't the response he'd prepared for.
"Okay? That's it?"
"I heard you. I appreciate it. I have to go."
"Go where?"
"Library. Tutoring assignment."
"Since when do you–"
"Ellis." Rhys's voice from the doorway. Casual. Commanding. "You coming?"
Caleb looked at Rhys. Looked at me. Back at Rhys. His expression shifted – disbelief curdling into something darker.
"You're really ditching me for that punk?"
"It's a school order, Caleb. I'm his assigned tutor."
"Since when?"
"Since the email I got twenty minutes ago." I stepped past him. My shoulder brushed his arm and I kept walking. "I'll talk to you later."
I didn't look back. Four years of always looking back, always checking if he was watching, always making sure he knew I was still there. I walked toward the door where Rhys was waiting and I didn't turn around once.
It felt like breathing for the first time.
***
The library study room was small. Glass walls, a table, four chairs, a whiteboard. Rhys closed the door behind us and dropped into a chair like he owned the building.
"No," I said.
"I haven't said anything yet."
"No to all of it. The tutoring. The – whatever this is." I stayed standing. Needed the height advantage, even if it was negligible. "I'm not doing this."
"It's a school assignment."
"I'll get it reassigned."
"On what grounds? You don't have a reason."
"I have several reasons. Reason one: you had your hand in my underwear at my mother's dinner table forty-eight hours ago. Reason two: you are about to become my stepbrother. Reason three: I don't trust myself in a room alone with you and I'm not stupid enough to pretend otherwise."
Something shifted in his expression. The smirk faded. Underneath it was something realer – not vulnerable exactly, but honest. Like I'd said the one thing he hadn't expected.
"Reason four," I continued, because stopping felt dangerous. "I just spent four years organizing my entire life around a boy who didn't want me. I'm not doing it again. Not for Caleb. Not for you. Not for anyone."
"I'm not Caleb."
"You're a hockey player who showed up in my life uninvited and is currently rearranging my schedule without asking. You're close enough."
He leaned back. Studied me. Those grey eyes moving across my face like he was reading something written there – not judging, not calculating. Just seeing.
"I need the tutoring," he said. Quieter now. "I'm on academic probation. If I don't get my grades up, I lose eligibility. I lose the team. I lose–" He stopped. Jaw tightened. Started over. "I don't want random tutors who don't know me assigned every few weeks. I want one person. Someone I can actually talk to without performing. You're the only person on this campus who's seen me without the act."
"You mean because I've seen you naked?"
"I mean because you're the only person who talked to me like a human being before you knew I played hockey." No smirk. No deflection. "And yeah. The naked thing doesn't hurt."
I stood there. Wanting to leave. Wanting to stay. Wanting to be the kind of person who could walk away from grey eyes and bruised knuckles and the memory of his voice saying good girl against my ear.
I picked up my bag. Turned toward the door.
His hand caught the edge of it. Not my arm – my bag. Gentle. A request, not a demand.
"What if we make a deal?"
- Writer
