3. Kirin
Kirin
Tuesday afternoons were going to be the bane of his existence.
He could already tell. From what he’d been told, Professor Nadae was a brilliant teacher, and that wasn’t an exaggeration.
The syllabus outlined a couple of papers and one semester-long project.
Passing this class was required for every student athlete to prepare them for the scrutiny of a life in the professional arena.
He’d put it off until his senior year purely because of the horror stories he’d heard, but he needed to pass to graduate, and at least if he took it this semester and failed, he could retake it in the spring.
Knowing he had a cushion didn’t make it any easier—five minutes, then ten, then twenty minutes in.
He wanted to be anywhere but in this class.
Professor Nadae was a new-age thinker who was determined to make this class about social experience and surviving the world around them instead of just studying textbooks and answering test questions.
It had Kirin worried about their project.
She was a wild card, and he wasn’t a huge fan of surprises.
Professor Nadae paced along the front in her heels, her ponytail tight enough to give him a headache.
Her hair swung as she talked through various theories about human behavior while she used her laser pointer to circle different areas of the PowerPoint.
As she spoke, the old lecture hall filled with the muted tones of typing and the scratching of pens across paper.
He didn’t bother with notes. He’d read the whole damn textbook from cover to cover twice now along with every article she listed as suggestions.
Everything else he needed to know was in the syllabus, and his grade would center on that dreaded project.
Kirin ran his highlighter over the parts he knew he’d need to focus on later, if only to make it look like he was paying attention.
He’d learned in his freshman year that showing up and looking busy during class made up half of college work; he did the other half in the wee hours to complete his assignments.
When Professor Nadae opened it up to questions, Madi Fowler’s hand went up before the professor finished speaking, then asked the billions of questions nobody wanted her to.
He’d been in a few classes with her over the years, so he knew they always helped, answering the questions he hadn’t thought of yet.
Professor Nadae was only a few questions in on Madi’s list when the door swung open, a body tripped into the room, and a few notebooks hit the floor, but his attention was on the mass of auburn hair, narrow hips, muscular and shapely legs, and set of burgundy high-tops tied with black ribbon laces.
She hissed, “Shit!”
It earned a muffled chuckle from the lecture hall.
He was out of his seat and down the stairs before he realized he’d moved, his hand closing around the notebooks as he stacked them and handed them back to her. The curtain of auburn hair swept up and away to reveal the golden-amber eyes he’d spent the last two nights dreaming about.
Her eyes were wide with surprise as she stepped back. He’d looked everywhere for this girl the last two days and was on the verge of feeling like he was insane last night. Except he could remember the tiniest of details. He was positive she existed somewhere.
“Mr. Callaghan, and…” Professor Nadae drifted off like she was trying to place her. “Ms. Aldrich-St. James, is it?”
Rose pulled the backpack off her shoulder and shoved the notebooks she snatched out of his hand back into her bag. “I’m sorry I’m late. Practice ran over.”
She zipped up her backpack, and he took the breath he needed, but standing face-to-face in the awful lighting of the Bryce Hall lecture hall had his heart skipping a beat.
Rose Aldrich-St. James—he finally had a full name and a clue: she had practice.
Could be a theatre major, but his gut told him she was an athlete.
It could be volleyball since they practiced in the middle of the day a lot.
She was still the most stunning woman he’d ever seen.
And the shitty lighting they kept finding themselves in wasn’t doing anything to change that fact.
Stunning.
“It’s your loss, not mine, Ms. Aldrich-St. James.” The professor spoke curtly. “You and Mr. Callaghan will be partners for the pairs project. Please pick up a packet and take a seat with your partner.”
That was enough to get Rose moving. She swiped a packet off the edge of the desk near the door, and Kirin followed, grabbing one for himself before climbing the stairs as Rose took the seat beside the one he vacated.
The professor fielded questions as the TA passed the packets out, Madi continuing to interject with questions.
He didn’t hear any of it. His attention was entirely on his new partner.
Aldrich-St. James.
Her name tumbled around his head for the rest of class. He knew that name, had heard it used as a muttered, vicious curse by a few different people. One of them had hissed it in his mom’s living room.
Fuck.
No.
“Do you—” he whispered and spun his highlighter, wondering if he really wanted to know this answer, when her amber eyes glanced from her notebook and the project packet to him. “Do you play soccer?”
She looked at the packet again, her voice flat. “Yes.”
Fuck!
“Did you transfer from Westmont?” He breathed and prayed it was just a coincidence. Maybe she had a twin who broke his sister’s nose last year. Or a distant cousin? Or she was from another dimension, where she wouldn’t have a clue why he’d ask such a specific question.
She pulled a pen out of her backpack and scrawled a few notes across the page before flicking to the next one and circling a section.
If he was suspicious, he might think she was delaying, like she didn’t want to answer, and then as everyone started packing up around them, he got another quiet, flat, “Yes.”
Fuckity fuck.
They sat there, unmoving, and waited for the surrounding rows to clear out.
Professor Nadae paired people up as they left, her TA marking them down on a sheet.
Beside him, Rose worked at reorganizing her backpack into something that looked more like a filing cabinet, sliding her pens back into the pencil case with smiling, cartoonish, pink-cheeked soccer balls on it.
He smirked at it—yet another thing that seemed at odds with the tight-lipped woman he had encountered twice.
And yet, he realized he knew more than he had an hour ago.
The soccer team whining over tequila shots the other night was about her, which meant the comment about how she was in the top fifty of the ranked players was about her, too.
So, his sister and the team didn’t hate her.
They were jealous and wary of an outsider.
That made nothing better.
In fact, it might make it worse.
“Okay,” she said with a huff as she zipped up her backpack and hoisted it over her shoulders, pulling the straps tight as she slipped out of the row and started down the steps.
Okay?
What the hell does that mean?
He threw the packet and the highlighter into his backpack and yanked it closed. She was just reaching Professor Nadae when he stopped behind her.
“I’m sorry for being late, but I’m going to need a new partner.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Kirin corrected before the professor could speak. It earned him a look of annoyance from Rose, a wary glance from the TA, and an intrigued eyebrow raise from their professor.
“Actually, I do. I don’t need your sister to have another reason to make my life a living hell.”
“I can handle Laurel,” he assured her. The TA walked away with a wince. Neither Rose nor the professor seemed to like that response either, so he rephrased. “I can speak with Laurel. She won’t—”
“There’s no switching partners, and as it is, there’s no one to switch with. You two will have to make it work.” She glanced between them and added, “I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”
Effectively dismissed, Rose had slumped shoulders as she walked out into the hallway, and he followed her. There were a few stragglers, mostly other pairs, working out their schedules and planning to meet for the submission of their project plan that was due the following week.
“Do you have another class?” he asked while tucking his fingers into his pockets of his jeans.
“Just practice in a couple of hours.”
“Didn’t you come from practice?” he asked, and she scratched her head with a frown.
“I was in the ice baths,” she said, her gaze on something over his shoulder when her brow furrowed. He followed her gaze as she took a step closer to him and caught the few guys hanging around. Eyeing her like they were considering approaching her.
“Did you want to discuss the project before your practice? I don’t have to be in the weight room until five thirty,” he offered, and she glanced at him.
“I don’t know if our being seen together is the best idea. I have enough issues with my team without starting rumors.” She frowned. “I wasn’t kidding. I don’t need Laurel to have any other reasons to hate me.”
Kirin considered the woman in front of him, the overly organized backpack and the way she didn’t seem to like strangers looking at her.
An odd combination for any athlete, let alone one in the top fifty nationwide.
She was a puzzle he wanted to solve. Some pieces slid into place before his eyes: a top-ranked player who transferred from one top school to another.
Not just from any other school, but from the biggest rival.
No Westmont player would do that without a damn good reason, reasons that superseded the hate between the schools and the fact that Laurel had a personal grudge against her.