Chapter 4
Jasmine
There are eleven things on my morning to-do list. I’ve done ten. The eleventh one was don’t think about Caleb Adams, so technically I’m batting zero before seven a.m.
It’s not my fault. Okay, it’s a little my fault. But mostly it’s his, because yesterday in that conference room he did the thing nobody does.
He paid attention.
We both reached for the same pen. His hand landed on mine, and I froze, the way I freeze, the way I’ve spent my whole life hoping nobody notices.
He noticed. I watched him notice. And then instead of making it weird, instead of the head tilt and the soft little are you okay you’d use on a scared puppy, he just pulled his hand back and gave me my space.
That’s the whole crime.
He gave me room.
He didn’t give me a side eye or look at me like I was a head case, which is…unusual.
Now I can’t stop thinking about him, which is humiliating, and which I plan to fix by going to the one place in this building where my brain finally shuts up.
The rink at six in the morning is mine. Empty seats. Cold air. Nobody talking. The machines hum one note instead of forty. I come here before the building wakes up because it’s the only hour when it isn’t too loud to just sit.
Except this morning, somebody’s already on my ice.
One guy, no jersey, just a practice shirt soaked down the back, running the same move at the net over and over like it owes him money.
I don’t have to check who it is. I already know how he moves, which is annoying, because how do I know the moves of a guy who’s literally been at this school for two damn seconds?
I turn to leave.
“Dixon.”
Dammit, it’s too late.
He skates over to the boards. He isn’t even out of breath, which is rude.
“You stalking me?” he says.
I try not to look at him directly because, damn, he’s the kind of sexy that girls on this campus would probably do all kinds of dirty tricks to bag.
I wonder if he knows it?
What am I saying? He definitely knows it.
“I do a facility walk-through on Wednesdays,” I tell him.
“At six in the morning?”
“Some of us have jobs.”
“I’ve got a job, too.” He grins. “Mine’s more fun than yours.”
Smart ass.
“Your job is currently to attend a conduct review and two anger management sessions a week.”
“Like I said. Fun.” He props his forearms on the boards. “You’re not on the early ice list, Dixon.”
I raise an eyebrow at that. “Neither are you.”
“I’m not on a lot of lists.”
“You ran that same move at the net a dozen times just now. You missed two.”
“You were counting?”
“I count everything.”
“Huh. Me too.” He looks way too happy about it, as if he’s enjoying that we have weird shit in common. “Drives people nuts.”
“I can see why.”
“Bet it doesn’t drive you nuts, though.”
It doesn’t, but I don’t tell him that.
I should keep walking, but I don’t. I’m a glutton for punishment.
“How long have you been out here?” I ask him.
“Since five.”
“Why?”
“It’s quiet.” He shrugs. “Nobody to perform for. Nobody deciding who you are while you do it.” He tips his head at the empty seats. “Kinda figured you’d get that. Seeing as you do your rounds before anybody’s awake to watch you do them.”
I open my mouth to say something professional, and nothing comes out, which never happens. He just watches me not have a comeback, and he doesn’t gloat about it, which is somehow worse.
“That’s not in the agreement,” I finally say.
“What isn’t?”
“You reading me.”
“Wasn’t reading you.” He pushes a puck back and forth with the toe of his blade. “Just noticing. There’s a difference.”
“There’s really not.”
“Actually, there’s a big one.” He looks up. “Reading you is me trying to get something. Noticing you is just seeing that you’re there, so I see you. I can’t help it. I notice everything.” He says it plain, like he’s telling me his shoe size. “Most people are really boring once you do. You’re not.”
His words make something in my stomach twirl, but my brain calls bullshit.
“That’s a line.”
“It’s six in the morning. I don’t run game before seven, ask anybody.”
I almost laugh, but I catch myself. You can’t give these damn players even an inch, or they’ll walk all over you.
“You should ice your knees if you’re skating this much. It’s in your own best interest. A healthy player is a playing player.”
“You worried about me, Dixon?”
He bites the corner of her lip, and why the hell does he do that? It only makes him look even hotter.
“I’m worried about your paperwork. It’s the only part of you that’s my problem.”
“Damn, that’s cold.”
“Not cold, just accurate.”
He grins like I’ve passed some test I didn’t know I was taking. Then he goes quiet for a second.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You’re going to anyway.”
“Three years.” He says it like it’s been bugging him for a while. “You’ve been in this building three years, and nobody on the team knew the coach had a kid. How do you pull that off?”
“Practice.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you get at this time of the morning.”
“How old are you?” he asks.
“That's a rude question.”
“I'm a rude guy. Humor me.”
I shouldn’t answer. It’s none of his business, and it’s not in the agreement.
“Twenty-three,” I say. “How old are you?” I ask as if I already don’t know, but it seems like the appropriate response.
“Twenty-one.”
Interesting. He’s two years younger than I am, and somehow he moves through the world like he's been in it longer. “You carry yourself older,” I say. “I guess it’s the three schools you’ve been to.”
“I was sure you were a student.” He slides a puck back and forth with the toe of his blade. “Girl in the bleachers with a book and a mug of something. Honestly, I figured you for a freshman or at best a TA.”
“I graduated two years ago. I've had this job since I was twenty-one.” I make myself say the rest, because he should have it straight. “I'm not a student, Caleb. I'm staff. And in your case, I’m a very important staff member.”
Something rearranges itself behind his eyes. I'd give a week of quiet mornings to read it.
“So…you're a grown professional who runs the office that decides whether I get to keep playing.”
“Now you're catching up,” I quip.
I pick up the clipboard I'm not actually using, because I need my hands to have a task. “I'm older than you. I outrank you. And I’m the single person in this building you cannot afford to be charming to. Three reasons this conversation is already over.”
“You said three reasons like you've got them numbered.”
I go still. He's right, and we both know he's right, and the genuinely alarming part is that I do have them numbered.
“It's a facility walk-through,” I remind him. “Not a conversation.”
He nods slowly, taking it in, not pushing, and somehow the not pushing makes me want to tell him more, which is exactly why I don’t.
He reaches down behind the bench instead, comes up with a beat-up thermos, and sets it on the boards near the rail.
“Coffee?”
“You drink coffee?”
“Why is that a question? I know you do. Where’s your mug?”
I suck my teeth. He really does notice everything, and it’s incredibly annoying.
“I don’t drink after people.”
“It’s a clean cup. I poured it before I knew you were coming.” He nudges it an inch toward me. “Dark roast, black. Figured you for somebody who likes things plain…and strong.”
“I take it with sugar. A lot of sugar.”
“Huh.” He looks at me like I’ve surprised him, like that’s a fun new fact. “Wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“People rarely guess anything right about me.”
“The fun is in the guessing.” He’s smiling now.
“Well, there won’t be much more of this guessing game thing you like to do. This is a one-time coincidence.”
“Sure it is, Dixon.”
That’s when I see his hand.
He’s got something pinched between two fingers, bending it back and forth against the top of the boards while he talks. Easy. Like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.
A paper clip. Bent out of shape and back. The exact thing I do under tables where nobody can see.
“What’s that?” I ask.
He looks down like he forgot it was there. “This?”
“That.”
“Found it.”
“You found it?”
“On the table. After you left yesterday.” He keeps bending it. Out and back. Slow. “Figured somebody might want it back.”
“It’s a paper clip. It’s worth half a cent.”
“Then you won’t mind that I keep it.”
And he doesn’t stop. He just keeps doing it, the bend, out and back, watching me watch him, and I get it all at once.
He’s not fidgeting with a random paper clip.
He’s doing my thing. The thing I thought was invisible.
He saw me do it under the table yesterday, the one move I have left that’s just mine, and now he’s standing here at six in the morning doing it right back at me like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
What is this?
Is he fucking with me?
“Stop,” I say.
It comes out smaller than I want, but he stops right away, and sets the paper clip flat on the top of the boards between us, careful, not pushing it at me, just leaving it there.
“Yours if you want it,” he says. “No big deal either way.”
He doesn’t watch me look at it. That’s the part that gets me. He turns his eyes back out to the ice on purpose, so I can decide without somebody staring at me while I do.
“Why would you keep a paper clip?” I say.
“Why’d you bend it in the first place?”
I don’t have an answer for that one.
I don’t take it. I can’t take it. Taking it would mean admitting I know exactly which paper clip it is, and that he knows, and that the two of us are now people who share a paper clip thing between us.
“I have to go,” I say.
“Walk-through?”
“Walk-through.”
He pushes off the boards and skates backward toward center ice, easy, grinning at me the whole way like he’s got all the time in the world.
“See you Tuesday, Dixon,” he calls. “Bring a pen. I’ll be the one being very compliant.”
“Just be the one being on time.”
“I’m always on time. It’s the rest of it I’m bad at.” He spins a lazy circle. “I’ll bring the coffee. Sugar. A lot of sugar. I got it.”
“That’s not information you need to remember.”
“Too late. Already got it.” He taps the side of his head. “I notice everything, remember.”
I make myself walk out at a normal pace. Not fast. Normal. I get all the way to the parking lot before I realize I left the paper clip sitting on the boards, and that I am, for some insane reason, a little bit sad about it.
I drive home with the air off and the window cracked, trying to cool down whatever is going on in my chest.
It doesn’t work.
A boy noticed me. Picked up my junk off a table and kept it. Quit doing a thing the second I ask, no questions, and no judgey face about it.
That’s all it takes, apparently.
Now I can’t stop thinking about him.
I wonder if my father would take me off this assignment, because for the first time in my life, I really feel like I’m in trouble of crossing every line I’ve put in place for myself.