Hating The Captain Who Broke Me

I didn't so much walk into Fensworth Hall as get carried there by the crowd, my backpack cutting a groove into my shoulder, the hallway packed like the entire junior and senior class had decided at once that Sports Psychology 340 was the place to be on the first day. My phone buzzed against my hip. Harlow. It could wait. I was too busy running the math I have been running all summer. Four classes left. One degree and zero reasons to let anything from three years ago follow me into senior year. My head down but grades up. Nothing that so much as smelled like an ice rink. My hand found the collar of my shirt without asking permission, two fingers pressing against the thin raised line underneath the fabric. I made myself stop due to old habits. The lecture hall was already half full when I slid into a seat near the middle,never the front,it was too visible, never the back either,it was too obvious. I laid out my notebook, my three color-coded pens, and my resting scowl. Professor Wallace hadn't even started talking yet, and I already knew this semester was going to be exactly what I needed. Then the doors opened again, and the whole room's oxygen supply seemed to redirect itself toward the back. "Bringing the whole entourage today, Calder?" someone called out, laughing. I didn't turn around. I knew that name better than anyone in this building would ever find out. I turned around anyway. Rhys Calder walked in like the room owed him something, Micah Doyle half a step behind him grinning at whatever joke had just landed. Three years hadn't touched him the way they'd touched me. Same ice-blue eyes scanning the room like he was already bored of it. The same easy, arrogant tilt to his shoulders, like gravity, worked differently for him than for everyone else. He dropped into a seat in the back row without looking at a single syllabus, and two girls near me actually reorganized their bags to be closer to the aisle he'd walked down. My stomach did something ugly and complicated that I refused to name. "Settle down, people," Professor Wallace said, tapping his laptop to life at the front of the room. He was younger than I expected for someone teaching a 300-level class, sharp-eyed, the kind of professor who clearly enjoyed watching students squirm. "Syllabus is up on the portal. I'm not reading it to you. What I am going to tell you is how this semester actually works, because half of you are about to be very unhappy." A ripple of nervous laughter went through the room. I didn't laugh. I had a bad feeling, and I trusted my bad feelings more than I trusted most people. "This class runs on one major project," Wallace continued. "A semester-long case study, worth fifty percent of your grade, presented at finals. You will not be doing it alone. I'm assigning partners, and no, you cannot switch." Groans erupted across the room. I sat very still, pen frozen over my notebook, and told myself it didn't matter who I got paired with. A project partner was a project partner. I could work with anyone for fourteen weeks. "Second thing," Wallace said, raising his voice over the noise. "Any student-athlete currently below department GPA requirements is mandated into weekly peer study sessions as a condition of eligibility. That's not me being cute. That's the athletic department's rule, and I'm the guy who has to enforce it." He scanned a printed list in his hand, and something about the way his mouth curved told me exactly who that rule was about to apply to. "Which brings me to partner assignments." He started reading names off in pairs. I half listened, watching the clock, doing the math on how fast I could get out of this building once my name got called. "Calloway, Josephine," Wallace read. "Paired with Calder, Rhys." The room actually went quiet for a second. Then it didn't. "No way," someone muttered behind me, delighted, the way people get delighted when something entertaining is about to happen to someone else. I turned around again, slower this time, and found Rhys Calder already looking at me like I was a problem he hadn't budgeted time for. Up close, for one full second, I wasn't in a lecture hall at all. I was flat on cold ice with the wind knocked out of my whole life, staring up at a ceiling of stadium lights while a whistle screamed somewhere very far away. I blinked, and I was back. "Seriously?" Rhys said, not quietly, not to me, to the professor, like I wasn't even sitting there. "I don't need a babysitter, Professor. I need somebody who's actually going to be around." Something in my chest went hot and sharp all at once. "I'm sitting right here," I said. He looked at me properly for the first time, and there was nothing behind his eyes. No recognition,not even a flicker. Three years, and I was just some girl with a notebook to him. "Cool," he said. "Then you heard me." "I did," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, steady enough that a couple of heads turned. "And for the record, I didn't ask to babysit the guy who needs a tutor to stay eligible." A few people actually laughed at that, and something flickered across his jaw closer to a challenge. "Careful," he said, low that it landed like it was just for me. "I don't lose." "Good," I said, gathering my things as Wallace called the room back to order, my pulse going harder than it had any right to. "Neither do I." He held my eyes for one more second, like he was recalculating something, like some part of him had just noticed me for real and I hated, more than anything, that I felt it too. "Study sessions start Thursday," Wallace called out over the noise. "Library, room 214, six sharp. Don't be late, either of you." Rhys Calder smiled, slow and sure of himself, like Thursday was already his. I had exactly two days to figure out how I was supposed to sit across a table from the boy who ended my career and not fall apart.