Chapter 27
Clara
It’s the fear of being right.
On the table in front of me are my notes, but they’re not the color-coded fortresses I usually build.
They’re a gamble. A hypothesis. I’ve rewritten the densest history paragraphs into simple sentences.
I’ve broken down complex stats problems into visual, step-by-step instructions.
It’s a completely new approach, based on a suspicion I’m terrified to even name in my own head.
What if I’m wrong? The thought is a cold knot in my stomach. What if he’s not struggling? What if he’s just an arrogant asshole who has been playing me this whole time, and my attempt to ‘help’ is just a profound, humiliating miscalculation?
I’m so lost in my own spiral of doubt that I don’t hear him arrive.
No loud footsteps, no aggressive slam of the door.
I only know he’s there when his shadow falls over my desk.
The scent of ice and sweat clings to him, sharp as steel, tightening something in my chest. I look up, my breath catching.
He’s standing in the doorway, but he’s different.
The aggressive, coiled energy is gone, replaced by a quiet, watchful stillness like a predator that’s stopped chasing and has started waiting.
It’s somehow even more intimidating. He’s on time.
And when he moves to the chair across from me, he doesn’t yank it out. He just… sits.
The absence of his usual antagonism is a vacuum, sucking all the air from the room.
The lack of his bite presses harder than his bark ever did, a silence thick enough to choke on.
He doesn’t speak. He just watches me, his blue eyes intense and unreadable.
The silence stretches, heavy and awkward.
I’m the one who breaks it, my voice thin and reedy.
“Hi.”
“Harrington,” he says, a simple acknowledgment. He gestures to the papers on the table. “What’s this?”
I take a steadying breath, my pulse hammering in my ears. This is it. “I want to try something different tonight,” I say, my voice more stable than I feel. “A new approach. Humor me.”
He looks from the notes to my face, his expression suspicious. “What kind of approach?”
“A strategic one,” I say, pushing a simplified history sheet toward him. “We’re not going to read the chapter. We’re going to break it down. I’ll read the key concepts aloud. You listen. Then you tell me the main takeaway, in your own words. No bullshit. Just the play-by-play.”
He stares at me for a long, tense moment, his gaze scraping over me like glass.
I can see the war in his eyes—ingrained pride fighting a new, uncertain resolve.
I expect him to tell me to fuck off, to call it a stupid game.
Instead, his jaw works for a moment, a silent battle, before he gives a single, clipped nod.
“Fine. Go.”
The surprise is a physical jolt. I start reading, my voice even, breaking down a dense paragraph on post-war economic policy.
My voice trembles once; his pen stills, lethal in its quiet.
He listens, his focus absolute, his eyes fixed on a point on the wall behind me as if he’s watching a play develop.
When I finish, he distills a page and a half of text into two, brutally efficient sentences.
They are perfect. And they are entirely his own, cutting clean like a blade sharpened against my voice.
A surge of pure, shocking validation rushes through me. Holy shit. I was right. I have to quickly mask my reaction, keeping my expression neutral. “Good,” I say, my voice betraying none of the turmoil in my chest. “Next one.”
We build a rhythm. I read. He summarizes. A clean, efficient exchange. But when we get to a section heavy with dates, he falters, his brow furrowing. He gets the year of a key piece of legislation wrong.
This is the real test. I take a breath. “This might sound weird,” I start, my heart pounding, “but let’s try anchoring the dates to something you already have memorized. Like… jersey numbers.”
His head snaps up, eyes flashing with suspicion. “What is this? Some kind of pop-psychology bullshit?”
“If you’re scared of being wrong, just say so.” My voice cuts sharper than I expected. “It’s a memory trick,” I add, my voice steady again. “The Civil Rights Act of 1866. Who on the team wears 66?”
“No one,” he says instantly. “But Rylan’s 6. Calder’s 16.”
“Close enough. Picture them on the ice. Anchor the numbers to something you can already see.”
He stares at me, his jaw tight with resistance. But then, with a low, frustrated sigh, he tries it. I can see his eyes unfocus slightly as he visualizes the rink. The muscle in his jaw jumps—equal parts fury and triumph. He recites the date back to me. Correctly.
The look on his face is a complex mixture of shock, frustration, and a profound, grudging surprise.
He looks down at the number on the page as if it’s performed a magic trick.
The quiet victory I feel is so intense it almost hurts, a dangerous, thrilling surge of having cracked a code no one else could.
“You read like that for anyone else, Harrington, and I’ll make sure they regret it.” His voice is low, possessive, and it thrums under my skin.
The rest of the hour passes in this new, strange truce. It’s not a fight. It’s quiet, focused, and more intense than any of our previous battles, an illicit feeling of baring my throat and watching him notice.
When our time is up, the silence that settles over the room is different. Not hostile. Vulnerable. He breaks it, his voice quieter than I’ve ever heard it, stripped of its usual arrogance.
“No one’s ever… explained it like that before,” he says, not looking at me, but at the notes on the table. “How did you know to do that?”
The question is so genuine, so raw, that it undoes me, dragging heat up my neck like exposure.
I find myself offering a piece of my own story.
“My dad,” I say softly. “He used to explain everything with hockey metaphors. It’s just…
a way of translating one system into another.
Finding a language your brain already speaks. ”
“You start talking to me like that, I can’t hear anyone else.” His words are jagged, almost a confession, hanging in the charged air between us.
He finally looks up, and the expression in his eyes is one of such raw, unguarded awe that I have to look away, my own chest aching with a feeling I don’t dare name.
The bell signaling the library’s closing rings, the sound jarring and loud, shattering the fragile bubble we’ve built.
The clang splits the air, shattering our truce like brittle glass.
Adrian stands without a word and walks out, but not before pausing in the doorway, forcing me to pass close enough that his heat brands me.
As I gather my papers, another student glances in, eyes narrowing at how close we’d sat. A flicker of judgment, or suspicion. My pulse spikes. Rumors spread fast here.
The battle is over. The anxiety is still there, but now it’s layered with a fragile sense of hope. I look down at the papers on the desk, at the evidence of our work. For the first time, we weren’t just a tutor and a student. We were a team.
We weren’t a team. We were locked in conspiracy.
And conspiracies burn.