Chapter 11
Sam
Idon’t know why I agreed to meet him here.
Every step toward Reece Wilson’s house feels wrong, like I’m walking straight into a bad decision with my eyes wide open and my pride duct-taped to my mouth. The path crunches under my shoes, each step sounding louder than it should be, as if the universe is narrating my stupidity in real time.
I tell myself it’s about the assessment. The marks I need and not letting him derail my future just because he treats school like a joke and girls like a hobby.
If he pulls another smart-ass stunt or answers the door shirtless again, I swear I will lose it loudly and in a way the neighbors will remember for years.
I pause at the door and knock. One steady, confident knock.
The door opens.
And there he is.
Not shirtless. Not smirking as if he planned this moment in advance. He leans against the frame, shoulders relaxed, hair messy in a way that should be illegal, with that infuriating calm locked into place. His mouth curves into a half-smile that hits straight at places it has no right hitting.
“Hey, Red,” he says.
The nickname hits softer than it should. I square my shoulders anyway, because I might be standing on the doorstep of a terrible decision, but I won’t let him see that I’m affected.
My eyes flick to his face before I can stop myself.
There’s a fresh split along his cheekbone. A thin red line cuts across skin that shouldn’t look that good up close. It’s small. Nothing dramatic.
“What happened to your face?” I ask, the question slipping out before I remember I’m supposed to be annoyed. Or guarded. Or smart enough to turn around and leave.
His smile tilts. “Football.”
“You’re playing again?” I ask.
I heard the whispers back when he quit. The way people talked about it in the hallways was like it was gossip instead of something that clearly wrecked him. I saw it too. The way he stopped looking like someone who knew where he was going and started looking like someone killing time instead.
I never asked why he quit. It never felt like my place. Plus, we didn’t really talk, not that we do now.
He doesn’t answer my question, just steps back, opens the door wider, wordlessly inviting me in.
I hesitate for half a second before I walk past him.
The house is quieter than before. No blaring music or chaos spilling out of every room. No sense that I’ve just wandered into a frat house with worse impulse control. It seems almost... normal.
That alone makes me nervous.
I move down the hallway, shoulders tight, already bracing myself for the comments I got last time. The sly swagger that usually rolls off him with every breath. The jokes about me being a good girl that are loud enough to stick under my skin and stay there.
They never come.
I step into his room and halt suddenly.
It’s clean.
Not just shoved-under-the-bed clean. Actually clean. The bed is made, sheets pulled tight. The floor is clear. No trail of discarded clothes, crumpled papers, or empty bottles. No evidence of the chaos I fully expected to find.
Instead, there’s a bag in the corner with football gear spilling out, cleats peeking through the half-open zipper.
His books are already open on the bed, pages marked and bent, pens scattered as if he actually plans to use them.
One notebook sits open, a page filled with notes in messy but purposeful handwriting.
I stare a second too long.
He sees me noticing.
“Shocking, I know,” he says. “I can be house-trained. Who would’ve thought?”
I move further into the room, relaxing slightly. Some of the tension leaves my shoulders. I set my bag on the bed and reach for the open notebook, curiosity overriding caution.
He’s actually been working on it. There are references, notes in the margins, thoughts that connect instead of drift. He’s annoyingly smart—the kind of smart he keeps quiet because it doesn’t fit the version of him everyone expects.
“That’s a bit of research I did,” he says, casually, as if it doesn’t matter.
It does.
I sit down on the edge of the bed, still reading, still processing. “Who are you?” I ask, laughing now, “and what have you done with that annoying asshole Reece Wilson?”
I glance up.
And there it is.
The smile spreading across his face, dimples locked in—the kind girls whisper about. Paired with that infuriating smirk that says he knows exactly what effect he has and couldn’t care less.
My stomach flips. I quickly glance back down at the notebook before he can see it, because if I stare too long, I might forget why I came here in the first place.
He sits beside me, close enough that the mattress dips and heat seeps through the gap between us. It shouldn’t matter. But it does. My body reacts to him instantly, nerves flaring up in a way I hate. In a way that feels disloyal to every plan I’ve ever made for myself.
I hand him the notebook and turn slightly, digging through my backpack for my laptop—anything to keep my hands busy and my mind focused.
“So,” I say, mostly to fill the silence before it swallows me whole, “you’re back on the football team.”
“Yeah.” He nods.
“Why now?”
His jaw tightens for half a second. It’s subtle, almost nothing. Next, he shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter. “Seemed right.”
That answer is vague enough to be a wall. I clock it. File it away.
I open my laptop and spread everything out on the bed. Papers. Notes. His notebook. I slip into familiar focus, outlining points, assigning sections, mapping arguments. It feels good. Normal. This is the version of me who knows what she’s doing.
Apart from one thing.
Every time I shift, his eyes follow. They slowly roam over my skin.
When I speak, his attention locks on my mouth, lingering a moment too long before I see his jaw tighten.
As I reach for my pen, his gaze drops to my fingers, tracking the movement.
When I frown at a sentence that won’t cooperate, he doesn’t look away. Instead, he watches me think.
I pause mid-note and turn my head.
His eyes stay fixed on me, dark and focused.
Heat rises up my neck. My heart stutters, and speeds up, rapid and deceitful. I shift again, pretending I need a better angle on the page, and his knee follows mine without touching.
He’s not hiding it. He wants me to know he’s watching.
I snap the laptop shut enough to get his attention. “Are you going to contribute?” I say, sharply, “or just stare holes through me?”
His grin appears. “You get cute when you’re bossy.”
“Reece.”
The way I say his name shouldn’t sound like that. It does anyway, and he hears it. I know he does because his eyes lift, catch mine, and something unreadable settles there.
“Alright, alright,” he says, leaning back and raising his hands in surrender. “I’m working.”
He isn’t. His notebook remains open but untouched. The pen stays between his fingers, unmoving. His eyes drift back to me the moment I turn away, following the line of my arm as I reopen the laptop.
It’s happening again. That constant pull. The weight of his attention rests exactly where my skin is most aware.
I type a sentence and backspace it twice. My focus slips. My breathing goes shallow. I tuck my hair behind my ear and catch his reflection in the screen watching the movement, his mouth curving.
I clear my throat. “If you’re not going to help, I’m leaving.”
That gets him.
He leans in, close enough that the mattress dips again, close enough that the air between us warms. He points at the screen, finally. “That paragraph. Your argument’s good. You just buried it under too many words.”
I blink. “You read it.”
“Twice,” he says. “You always do that thing you know when you’re nervous.”
I don’t bother asking him what he’s talking about, and I shift my head to glare at him. “I’m not nervous.”
His eyes flick down to my hands, to how my fingers curl around the edge of the laptop. “Sure,” he mumbles.
That’s it. He’s starting to get to me.
I snap my laptop shut and stuff it into my bag along with my notebook and pens, sliding off the bed in one quick motion. Papers crinkle as I force them into places they don’t belong, my hands no longer steady enough to care.
“This is pointless,” I say, voice tight. “You don’t care. I can’t afford to tank this because you think it’s fun to fuck with me.”
He straightens immediately. The lazy posture disappears, shoulders squaring, attention snapping into place.
“That’s not what this is.”
“It always is with you,” I fire back, the words tumbling out now that the dam’s cracked. “Everything is a fucking game. A joke. A way to get a rise out of people so you can feel powerful for five minutes.”
I sling my bag over my shoulder and head for the door, chest burning with frustration.
“Red,” he says, behind me, but I keep moving.
His hand grips my wrist. Not rough, but firm enough to halt me.
The contact triggers something inside me.
A jolt runs up my arm and settles in my chest, stealing my breath and making my knees threaten to give way.
My skin tingles where he touched me, my pulse racing as if I’ve been caught doing something wrong.
I hate my body for betraying me when my mind screams to run and my feet refuse to move.
“Let go,” I say.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he steps closer, close enough that I feel his warmth against my back and catch his breath ghosting through my hair when he exhales.
The room suddenly feels smaller, as if the walls have leaned in to see what’s going on.
“You walk away every time it gets real,” he murmurs. “That pisses me off.”
I spin around to face him, anger blazing. “This isn’t real,” I snap. “This is you being a smug fuck boy who thinks he can get whatever he wants because you smile and girls forget their names.”
His thumb shifts, brushing the inside of my wrist where my pulse is racing wildly. My heart betrays me instantly, pounding harder, faster, making my blood roar in my ears. Every nerve sparks under that single point of contact, my body reacting before I can control it.