“What class do you have again?” I ask as I pull out of the driveway.
He steals a sip of my coffee. I throw him an outraged glance, but he just shrugs and says, “Hey, you didn’t give me time to make a cup.”
“Which brings me back to my question. Are you late to class every day?”
“Don’t tell the folks. And the class is Russian lit.”
I whistle. “That sounds hard.”
He looks glum. “Tell me about it. I kick myself every day for choosing this stupid major.”
When Dad talked Cooper out of entering the NHL draft at eighteen so he could have a guaranteed four seasons in the NCAA, Cooper tried to get back at him by picking the least practical major he could think of—English. He likes to read, so it makes sense, but he seriously underestimated all the work that would go into it, a fact that never fails to make Seb burst out laughing like a hyena.
“Maybe you’ll have something in common with Nikolai, finally.”
Nikolai is Coop’s nemesis. A Russian defenseman attending college in the States, he’s the star of McKee hockey’s biggest rival, Cornell University. Coop hates him, mostly for his dirty style of play, which is hilarious considering Coop spends time in the sin bin every game. I don’t know the ins and outs of hockey the way he does, but I’m pretty sure avoiding penalties is a priority like it is in football.
“Ha ha. I don’t think so.”
Our off-campus house is in Moorbridge, the town that entwines around McKee’s sprawling campus, so fortunately we get where we need to be quickly. I drop Cooper off at his building and make the short drive over to mine. I have five minutes before my butt needs to be in a chair, surrounded by freshmen.
Ugh.
I park in the nearest student lot and run over to the building. If I’m going to manage to wrangle a Pass out of this class, I need to make a good first impression.
I find the right room and ease the door open. Crap, this class is way smaller than I was expecting. McKee really does take the whole professor-to-student ratio seriously, I guess.
I sneak to the back, where a girl sits alone, head bent over what must be the syllabus.
When I’m about a foot from her, I freeze. That’s her. Little Miss Angel. Fucking kissed me better than anyone in my life and then left like we hadn’t just sparked like lightning.
Not to mention she’s Darryl’s ex. The very one I told him to treat with respect, oh, an hour before she kissed me. After she fled the party, Darryl got in my face about the kiss, but fortunately he believed me when I said I didn’t know who the hell she was. I still don’t, really, just that her name is Beckett, she’s drop-dead gorgeous, and she kisses like the world is burning down around her.
Oh, and she’s off-limits.
She can’t possibly be a freshman, so what is she doing here?
I sit down next to her. She smells nice, like vanilla and maybe something floral. And she’s very studiously highlighting parts of the syllabus. Since I don’t have one, I say, “Got an extra copy of that?”
The professor, an older looking man with gold-rimmed glasses, stops his droning. He clears his throat as he glances down at a stack of papers. “Mr. Callahan?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
The professor keeps his gaze on me as he talks. “Students, please make note of the start time for this class once more. 8:30, not 9. It will benefit your academic career not to be late to class. Other professors may not be so… accommodating.”
He punctuates that by passing a copy of the syllabus my way.
Fuck. I can feel my blush like a five-alarm fire. “Sir, I’m sorry. I was up early for practice and went home to get changed before coming here, and I must have mixed up the times with my other morning class.”
A girl looking back at me shrugs, as if to say, tough. I resist the urge to make a face at her. Beside me, Beckett heaves a sigh.
“What?” I say.
“I just lost a bet with myself. I thought you were late because of an alarm malfunction.”
“I’m an athlete. I don’t have alarm malfunctions.”
“Ah,” she says. “Right, I forgot that you guys are gods who never need alarm clocks, whereas we mere mortals—”
Mr. Professor clears his throat again. He’s still looking my way, although I’m gratified to see him raise his eyebrow at Beckett too. “As I was saying, the tenets of academic writing at the college level include…”
“What are you even doing here?” I whisper.
She taps her foot against mine under the table. “I’m wondering that about you.”
“I failed this class when I first took it.” I don’t know what compels me to be totally honest with her. Maybe it’s her big brown eyes or the way she’s twirling a little sparkly gel pen or how I can’t stop remembering how her lips felt on mine.
I shove that thought away. She’s my teammate’s ex. Even if she was interested, I couldn’t.
“I transferred here last year,” she murmurs. “Even though I took classes like this at my community college, they didn’t accept all my credits.”
“That sucks.”
She shrugs slightly. “It’s not like it’ll be hard, right? We’ve been in college for three years already.”
I look at the syllabus. Twice-a-week seminar-style meetings. Weekly writing assignments. Peer feedback. My skin begins to crawl. Give me partial differential equations and I’m fine, but this? This is impossible.
And of course, a third of the grade is a final research paper on a topic of our choosing. Fuck. Me.
This class might not be difficult for her, but it’s going to be hell for me.
I give her what I hope is a semi-normal smile and settle in for the rest of class. But despite my best efforts, I can’t stop stealing glances at her. She looks just as pretty now as she did fancied up in that little white dress. My type, too; those full tits are distracting even in a T-shirt.
Did she choose me to kiss because I’m her type as well? I’m not dumb, I know she kissed me to get back at Darryl. But she could’ve approached any guy at that party, and I’m the one she landed on.
She bites her lip as she thinks. That’s cute.
The professor wraps up his spiel with an in-class assignment. We’re supposed to read an article about research into academic writing and distill it down to a paragraph explaining the thesis and main points.
I stare at my copy of the article for so long the words start to blur. All around me, the other students are highlighting keywords and scribbling notes in the margins; Bex seems to have a whole color-coded situation going on. I tug at the collar of my shirt, glancing at the clock. We have twenty minutes for this assignment, and five have already passed.
I force myself to read the first paragraph again. I pick up my pen, tapping it against the table before underlining a sentence with a bolded word in it. I remember that tip from one of the tutors I’ve had over the years, be it the one my parents hired in high school or the many I tried to work with at the writing center at LSU.
“If you’re stuck, try reading the topic sentences first,” Bex says.
I glance over at her. She taps my paper with her pen.
“Look,” she says. “There are a couple of sections in the article, and each of them covers a different topic.”