Chapter Three Ren
Ren took one step outside of Bigelow Hall and rain seemingly poured from an immense overturned bucket in the sky. On this final day of January, the wind was nothing compared to what it could be out in the middle of the fields, but here it was rain that flew sideways, the buildings pressing it all together and then shoving it forward like a colossal mouth blowing a million icy darts. She wrapped her scarf up around her face, leaving only her eyes visible beneath her beanie, zipped up her coat, and covered the whole of her head and neck with her giant hood.
One step, and then two. In the hazy light of midday, the world seemed at once too big and too small; wet sidewalk stretched out in every direction, and yet even a block in the distance was obscured from her view. Ren felt like a blind mouse at the center of a maze. Her heartbeat was a deafening gallop in her ears.
“You can do this, Rennie,” she whispered, pulling out the folded campus map she’d printed at the Deary library last week when her new student orientation packet arrived, shielding it from the rain with her body. She’d circled all of the important places she had to be: Bigelow Hall, the Registrar’s Office, dining services, and each of the buildings where her six courses were held. The Registrar’s Office, where she was meeting this Alaskan-egoed Fitz, was located inside Carson Hall, which looked on the map to only be a couple buildings over. Even so, it was hard to get her bearings. There weren’t her usual landmarks here—the hills to the east or the tall stretch of aspen to the west. The sun wasn’t visible at all, and the river was obscured by buildings. Here, it was only structures and sidewalks and asphalt in a seemingly uniform stretch of wet concrete no matter which way she looked.
But her direction, the map indicated, was to the right. Past Willow Lawn, past the Stills Center, to the building just bordering the main quad. Ren hauled the door to Carson Hall open with all her weight and stepped inside, where she was immediately sealed up in the dark, quiet atrium.
Shaking the raindrops from her coat and stomping the water off her boots, she looked up into the shadows of the interior of the building. For the day before the start of spring term, it was surprisingly quiet, echoing in its emptiness. Just as the outer door sealed shut, another opened somewhere on the floor above her, and the sound was followed by the jogging squeak of sneakers on stone. From the second story of the building and down the wide set of central steps, a figure descended—a man—with soft dark hair and shoulders so broad Ren immediately had the impression he’d be able to carry a newborn calf with ease.
Diffuse light from the tall window behind her caught his face as he approached, and if this person walking toward her was Fitz, she should have listened more closely to Miriam, should have asked questions: what he studied, where he came from, what exactly his tricks might be. The key to surviving, Steve always told her, was to know everything she could about every possible threat she might encounter. And the way her heartbeat reacted to this man, with that face and those shoulders, screamed THREAT PROXIMITY ALERT.
He came to a jogging stop a couple feet away and pulled a white headphone from one ear. “Ryan?”
“Ren,” she corrected, trembling inside her bulky coat. It wasn’t so much that he was good-looking—though he was, with shaggy hair he’d tucked behind one ear and strong arms extending from his T-shirt that made Ren think she could put him to great use in the fields. It was the way his warm brown eyes regarded her so steadily from beneath thick, dark brows, like he sensed a secret about her that she didn’t even know yet.
She lifted her chin. “My name is Ren Gylden.”
“Gesundheit,” he quipped.
“It’s Swedish.”
He smiled an indulgent half smile. “Congratulations.”
She held out her gloved hand for him to shake, and, after regarding it in confusion for a bit, he smiled again and shook it gamely. “How do you do?” he said with joking formality. “I’m Fitz.”
“Fitz what?”
“Just Fitz.”
“Well, Just Fitz.” Ren released a laugh at her own joke. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Fitz blinked, looking past her to the door. “So, uh, Sweden. You transferring from somewhere?”
She straightened, having prepared for this. “I’m not a transfer, no.” Her voice came out muffled behind all her layers. “This will be my first experience at a school.”
Fitz’s gaze jerked back to her. “No shit?”
“Uh, yeah. Correct.” Ren’s face flushed at the profanity. She’d read every word in the English language—she’d probably read this specific one in multiple languages, but very rarely heard it said aloud. Even the curse words in her movies at home had been edited out. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to pull it off: “No…shhi—poop.”
Fitz laughed, dropping his gaze to her outfit, drawing attention to the fact that she was still bundled up in her coat, hidden by her hood, wrapped up in a scarf. “You just come in from the Iditarod or something?”
“Idaho, actually.” Ren shoved the hood off, unwound the scarf, and then unzipped the heavy parka, shrugging out of it and the beanie to shake her long braid free. A few loose tendrils remained plastered to her face, and she drew them away with a wet, clammy hand, looking up at him.
When their eyes met, Ren felt suddenly naked at the way his expression had gone blank, at the way he stared directly at her face, finally exposed.
He exhaled a quiet “Oh.”
“What?” She tried to stand as still as she could under his inspection. Fitz dropped his eyes to take in what she was wearing; she’d chosen her favorites from a recent visit to the consignment store—a red-and-green-striped T-shirt and light blue jeans with beautiful pink and yellow hand-embroidered flowers all down the sides. She’d felt good this morning when she’d put it on, but her confidence was ebbing the longer he stared. “What?” she asked again, finally.
He blinked, clearing the surprised blankness, and his face transformed as she watched. One brow raised, his eyes melted, and lips hitched up in a sideways smile. “What are you doing after this?”
Ren blinked, confused. “After—what? The tour?”
“Yeah. Later. I could answer any questions you have down at the Night Owl.” He licked his lips distractingly. Had she ever really noticed a man’s mouth before? Were they all so full and soft? “I happen to know a bartender there: me. He makes great cocktails. We could hang for a bit.”
Confused, Ren narrowed her eyes at him. “Aren’t you already here to answer my questions now?”
“Sure.” He took a step closer, and Ren straightened, suddenly feeling flushed and jittery. “But there’s probably a lot of stuff you’ll think of later, away from campus,” he said, shrugging. “Doesn’t have to be about classes. We could just get to know each other.”
“That’s very nice, but—” She glanced wildly around the atrium, wondering what it was about this moment that made her feel like she was already breaking her parents’ rules. “I’m not actually supposed to go to bars.”
“Don’t worry, Sweden. I could get you in.”
“It’s not that. It’s my parents. They forbid it.”
He reached forward, drawing a long strand of her wet hair through his fingers. “I wouldn’t tell.”
Fitz had a very expressive face, and right now, he was looking at her like a wolf sizing up a lamb. The only other time she’d felt this way before—fevered, heart thrumming, goose bumps down her arms—was when she’d read romance novels, hidden away in a dark corner of the barn or under her favorite tree, far out in the eastern pasture. She’d never felt it in someone else’s presence before. “Yeah, but I would know.”
At these words, his gaze slowly cleared, and he dropped her hair. “Seriously?”
“Seriously what?”
“I’m asking you out for drinks, and it’s—” He waved a hand in front of his own face. “Nothing? Not even a flutter?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Flutter—what?”
Fitz stared at her for a prolonged beat. “This must be an off day for me.” There it was again, the half smile that reminded Ren of a vampire, teasing a glimpse of a single fang. Lifting his chin to the stairs, he said, “Let’s get your schedule printed.”
“Actually, no need. I have it printed already.” Ren shifted the big coat in her arms, digging into the side pocket to pull a manila envelope free.
He slowly took it from her, staring down at her coat. “You had this whole folder in there?”
“You bet. I can collect the vegetables I need for dinner, shoot a sage grouse, and tuck it all in here to carry it home.”
Fitz’s lip curled, and he loosened his grip on the folder so it was pinched only between the tip of his thumb and index finger. “You carried a dead bird around in that pocket?”
“Oh, loads of them,” she corrected proudly. “We regularly hunt our dinner. I’d say I’m the best shot in the county.” With a laugh, she translated his expression. “I’ve washed the coat since, silly.” Ren took the folder, pulled out the sheet with her course list, and handed it back. “Those are my classes. Don’t worry. That paper is dead-bird-free.”
He scanned the page once, brow furrowing, and then again. “Homeschooled for every grade? For real?”
Ren thought for a moment how to answer without telling him anything too personal. “I’m sure it’s uncommon for you to give a freshman tour to someone older like me who’s never been on a college campus before.” She swallowed. “I’m twenty-two, and I realize most freshmen here begin at eighteen and have been in school with their peers since kindergarten. But I assure you I have spent a lot of time researching the campus maps and schedules, and I mostly understand what’s required of me. What I’m interested in is any advice you might have picked up along the way for how to juggle the demands of different courses, or if there are any small things I should know. Which professors I might need to handle carefully, and the best studying places. Only on campus, of course.”
Slowly, he turned his attention back to her. A hundred questions passed through his eyes before he settled on “You’ve never even been on a college campus?” Ren shook her head. Fitz’s jaw cut a sharp angle as he looked back at the course list. “How do you know these are right? This is a pretty intense course load.”
Ren leaned over to look, too. “I chose classes from a list the registrar recommended.”
“Because you’re older,” he said. “They probably assumed you’re a transfer.”
“I don’t think so…” she hedged. “I took a lot of placement tests.”
“Placement tests? Like what?”
She looked up, thinking. “I think they were the fall semester finals for Calculus, French, Mandarin, Microeconomics, Organic Chemistry II, Molecular—”
“And you passed?”
“Yes, of course.”
He dragged the tip of his index finger down the list. “Why are you taking Intro Mandarin, then?”
“I can only read and write it,” she admitted. “I’ve never had a conversation with anyone. I don’t know if my pronunciation is right because we don’t have a CD player, and the textbooks only write phonetic pronunciation.”
Silence stretched between them, and he chewed his lip, working through something.
“Is…is my schedule okay?” she asked, finally.
Fitz nodded, eyes pinned to the page in his hand. “You’re in my immunology seminar.”
“That’s great!”
He jolted slightly to awareness, his frown replaced with a smile, and there was that shift again, him stepping out of one body and into another. “Yeah, it’s great.” He winked at her, leaning in. “Let’s get to that tour.”