46

Adam

Mind Your Business

Spring training was everything.

It usually meant waking at dawn and getting ready for a practice I knew I was going to be five minutes late for. That routine ended. I had an ice princess on the other wall to beat in the morning. There was no way in hell I was letting that good girl get the last laugh and wake me up. My alarm was set to account for an extra twenty minutes and I ate breakfast propped against the wall that connected to hers, waiting for the sound.

And there it was - her music, drifting through the wall. And her shower, flipping on.

"Motherfucking go-time," I muttered, pushing up from the chair.

My stuff was packed from the night before. I threw my dish in the dishwasher, ripped open the fridge's door, and grimaced at the sight of Kassie's drinks in the back.

Those peach lemonades might've looked innocent, but their alcohol content put me on my ass more than once. I shook my head and grabbed my water bottle, heading back to rest my forehead against the front door, listening for her keys.

"Come on, Piper." I tapped my forehead against the wood. "Get it moving."

There it was - the jingle of the keys.

I practically tore my door off its hinges two seconds before Piper had time to touch hers, and she raised her eyebrows at me, her blonde hair up in a bun, a Marrs hoodie on, and a tube of lip-gloss out.

"You're…up?" Piper asked slowly, lowering the lip gloss.

"And you're…?" I snapped my fingers, pretending to think of the word. "Slow? Let's get that speed up, ice princess. I want my coffee in the morning."

I strode over to push the elevator button and had to hide my smile when I heard Piper's stifled chuckle behind me. She didn't want to laugh at my jokes. Fine. But she couldn't help but laugh at them. And that was all that mattered.

The week was a long one of back-to-back practices, achingly long classes, and hitting the sack at a decent hour to get up early the next morning and beat Piper to the elevator.

Then there was taking the shortcut between Pérez Hall and the law school library to grab burritos from the Nacho Average Truck with Piper after her morning classes, going the long way around the school gardens so we could both hit our afternoon classes and every week, Coach Lawson required us to clock in some hours at our tutoring hall.

"You got your nerd gear ready to go?" I asked her, walking down the halls in the training center.

Piper raised her eyebrows. "Do you have your work ready to go?"

"I don't need to do anything. I'm golden, ice princess."

"You're a golden ice princess?"

"This is why I call you a nerd. You're too literal. I meant don't worry about me, I'm good." I turned around to walk backward in front of her, taking up all her space and attention. "You wouldn't understand. Because you're a nerd."

"Yet…I don't see you doing any homework."

"You need glasses."

With a glance to my left, I pushed the double doors open, letting Piper get the full view of something there was no way she had ever seen at KYU.

The tutoring hall was a huge study room with towering ceilings, bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling, tutors and paid teachers' assistants lounging everywhere, just waiting to be called, and more than forty round tables with comfortable chairs and tablets to check up on your grades. It was Friday, the last day you could get your hours counted for Coach Lawson. The place was packed.

The nearest football player looked up and stared at me. "Uh…Adam?"

"Hey, dude." I nodded at him but saw four other guys glancing up in surprise. What are they staring at? I frowned at them. "What?"

Suddenly, everyone was busy with their work.

"This…place…is… beautiful ," Piper whispered, spinning around to give the hall a proper view. "Oh my god . I could live here."

"Knew you'd say that. Nerd."

Piper rolled her eyes, but she pulled up a chair next to me when I sat down at a table. On the tablet, I typed in my school number and pressed the button to start up the clock, counting my time.

"Mr. Russell?" One of the tutors inched along the outskirts like a hyena. "It's wonderful to see you. As always , I am here to help. Can I—?"

"Nope." I shook my head. "Hang ten, bud. Just get your money and play a phone game or something."

The tutor grimaced at me. " Please . Is there anything I could do—"

"Not a thing," I said firmly.

Begone, dude. I'm in the middle of something .

"My parents would love this place. They're academics," Piper whispered, pulling out her color-coordinated folders. "My dad's an archaeologist and my mom's an aquatic and marine biology professor."

"I know."

Piper stopped pulling out her folders for a moment. "Wait, you know?"

"Yeah, your dad's working on the Oklahoma City dig."

"When did I…?"

I hesitated.

Oh, shit. She didn't.

In my following spree on her social media accounts, I must've picked it up from scrolling. That wasn't a cool thing to say. Hell no. I could still remember the secondhand embarrassment from hearing Ryan confess something similar when he cyberstalked Kassie last semester.

Play it cool.

"You must've told me when you were drunk." I shrugged.

"Oh." She sat back in her seat. "Yeah. That's why I don't drink, I cannot control myself."

" Smashing good time, huh?"

Piper gave me a hard look. "That's not funny."

"They can't all be winners."

"Next time I commit a crime with someone, it's going to be with someone that doesn't make puns about it," she muttered, breaking out a thick stack of paper.

A group of sixty or seventy bright markers followed. There were more colors in her bag than I knew existed. She placed all of them on the desk and then the list of residents on her floor. It was door decoration time.

With a glance my way, Piper bit her lip. "You're not going to rip this one off, right?"

"Probably."

And put it in my locker so nobody tears it down.

She sighed. "Just don't throw it in the trash where I can see."

"Got it." I tugged one of the pieces of paper from her hand and picked up a marker. "I'm sure Coach Lawson would love to see this."

Piper started coloring in one of the decorations, her lips curved in determination, and my eyes dropped down to her hand, only a few inches away from mine.

It was easy to make fun of her for how often she whipped out her pink tube of lotion but the results were undeniable. My marker stilled over the paper while I studied her hand. She was soft and pretty. Feminine. The complete opposite of me. My eyes flickered back down to mine, with the hard scars on the back of my hands and a few new calluses from spring training. Nobody would ever look at my hands and think about what it was like to hold them.

Because I couldn't stop thinking about that while I gazed at her hand. Inches from mine.

I never held someone's hand before. I never wanted to.

My thumb tapped against the table, thinking it over.

What's it like to hold your hand?

"Mr. Russell." Another tutor approached the table with a plea in his voice. "It's so nice to see you bring a friend for once, but sir, please— "

"We're fine, thanks. " I gave him a sharp nod and watched him leave, irritated. "Jesus, you think they can take a hint."

And then it hit me, exactly why everyone around us was giving us the fishbowl treatment. I had never brought a girl into the tutoring hall. That's why everyone athlete in the room kept staring at us. Nosy bastards. I swore under my breath and went back to work, coloring in the door decoration.

"What's that about?" Piper whispered.

"I don't know. They get like fifty bucks an hour, you think they'd be fine with sitting on their ass."

"Why would they be like that though?" she pressed. "I thought you did all your homework."

"I did enough of my homework," I corrected her.

" What? "

I held up two markers. "Should I use the blue or the blue-blue? All of this shit looks the same to me."

I thought Piper was going to drop the issue but her eyes flashed to the tablet, with my picture and my grades on it. I could see the wires connecting under that blonde hair. All my records were on that tablet.

"Piper…" I warned her.

It didn't matter.

My RA snatched it off the table and shoved herself off the chair, weaving between the other tables before I could get off my seat. She was tall, but I was a massive fucking dude and it was a hell of a lot harder for me to stomp after her than it was for her to duck and dodge between the tables.

"Piper!" I called after her, trying to grab the tablet. "Goddammit—"

"Adam Russell, what is this?! " she demanded.

" Nothing . That's what the hell it is," I told her and found myself surrounded by football players with their mouths open. My jaw tightened. "All of you jackasses, mind your own goddamn business."

Everyone's eyes conveniently went back to their papers.

Before I could locate Piper again, she already returned to the table, with the tablet set neatly on top of her door decorations.