24. Corey

Fallon’s blue eyes are wide with panic as my words reverberate around us, the truth of me wanting her soaking into both of us.

The waiter returns too damn soon and hands me the leather check holder with my credit card and receipt before gathering the plates to package up.

Fallon’s shoulders are practically stapled to her chair as she leans back as far as she can without tipping over.

I glance down long enough to scribble in a tip and my name, then silently dare her to say something.

She doesn’t.

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

“That the universe is taunting me. That I wish you’d acted like an asshole and blown up when that waiter was short with us so I’d have a reason not to like you. That you should have accepted being partners with that guy, so we aren’t spending even more time together because this is going to become impossible.”

The waiter once again destroys every bit of momentum by returning with a sack filled with leftovers. He wishes us a goodnight, and Fallon is out of her chair before I can slide my wallet into my pocket.

The night air is barely tepid. Soon, it will be too hot even at this late hour.

“Fallon,” I wrap my hand around hers, forcing her to stop.

She glances at our joined hands and then at me, pain and conflict visible in her blue eyes. “Kelly really likes you, and even if she didn’t, the feud between your teams was exacerbated on Saturday after whatever you guys did. Becca would probably find an excuse to bench me if she knew I was your partner. Imagine if we were more.”

“Wait. Saturday?”

“At the birthday party,” she says. “The prank or joke or whatever your team pulled. The guys’ soccer team wants blood. Your team’s blood.”

I shake my head because it doesn’t matter. “The feud between our teams is just that, between our teams. It has nothing to do with Becca or with us.” I gently squeeze her hand.

“Do you think wars don’t impact civilians?” She shakes her head, refusing to meet my stare. “The library closes in an hour, and your leftovers need to be refrigerated. Let’s call it a night. If you text me your schedule, we’ll arrange to meet again soon.”

Bitterness fills my mouth and writes an objection on my tongue, but the resignation in her gaze warns me she won’t hear it.

As I nod, Fallon’s shoulders sink as though she’s relieved, but her slight frown has me itching to retract my silent agreement. Before I can, she turns toward campus, ready to bury this as another part of our past.

To my surprise, she slows after a few steps, hesitating before spinning to face me, her brow drawn and fingers tangled in front of her. I soak up every detail just like I had that night at the bar.

“I didn’t think you’d want more. If I’m being honest, I didn’t even expect you to kiss me the night we met, and when you left your number, I assumed it was because you were interested in one thing and one thing only.” She pauses as I close the distance between us, her admission blazing my path. “This situation feels impossible, not just because of our conflicting schedules and the feud, but Kelly’s my friend, and I don’t want to hurt her.”

I shake my head. “It’s not. I’ll talk to her.”

Fallon’s eyes slowly rove across my face. “It would still hurt her if we began seeing each other.”

“Right now, we’re just class partners. Friends.”

Her lips curl, and her eyes turn sharp. “You just told me friend roles don’t fit us.”

“They don’t, but you haven’t asked me out yet.”

She releases a sound caught between a scoff and a laugh that makes her eyes shine even brighter. “Good to know I’ll have to do everything first in our relationship.”

I raise a brow. “There’s one thing I’ll always insist you do first…”

Her cheeks color, reflecting that she knows exactly what I’m insinuating: her pleasure.

“I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone that night, either, and I sure as hell wasn’t looking to find someone who could make me evaluate my life with a set of questions, but here we are.” I edge closer to her. “There’s no rush or finish line we have to sprint to. You’re finding your footing here at Camden, and things with my sister are still up in the air, so let’s just leave things open for now and keep talking. I miss our texts. I miss waking up to a random question that makes me think about my place in this world and what I want. And whether you’re ready to admit it or not, I know you do, too. I won’t tell you some cliché bullshit about us being friends because you’re right, I want more than friendship, but for right now, this might be the best we can both offer.”

“Friendship and class partners,” she says, as though testing the idea.

“For now,” I tack on.

She swallows, and for a second, I think she wants to protest the terms as badly as I did our first night together when she told me we wouldn’t exchange any personal information, including our names. “I miss our texts, too.”

I nod knowingly. “So stop avoiding me.”

She smiles but doubt pinches the outer corners of her eyes. “Deal.” Once again she clears her throat, and I already know she’s about to change the subject before she asks, “You guys still haven’t received results from Anna’s biopsy?”

I shake my head.

“I’m sorry. The wait must feel like purgatory.”

“Waiting to see you again felt like purgatory, too. Now look. We’re class partners, and I’ll be seeing you every morning in Media Training for the next six weeks.”

Fallon’s smile turns genuine as she bumps me with her shoulder. “Want me to walk you back to campus since I have to be the one who asks?”

I scoff, and she immediately laughs as we fall into step with each other.

“Did you always want to go into mechanical engineering?”

I nod. “What about you?”

“I considered ancient history and astrology first.”

“Astrology?”

Her eyes shine with humor again. “Lexie is really big into the whole chance encounters, star signs, moon signs, all of it… She thinks our lives are charted in the stars.” She waves a hand at the star-studded sky. “If you see her again, don’t be surprised when she asks for your birthday.”

“What does your chart say?”

“That I’m stubborn, impatient, and competitive.” Fallon flashes a wide smile as we stop at a crosswalk, wind running through her hair. She tucks the stray light brown strands behind an ear before the wind dismisses her efforts.

I capture the same locks and slide them between my fingers before slipping them behind her ear, where they remain. I let my fingers linger there, grazing the shell of her ear. “I like traits of stubbornness, impatience, and competitiveness.”

“Excuse me. Do you guys know where Clayton Street is?” a stranger asks.

Fallon and I remain locked, our chests inches apart, neither of us wanting to break this moment.

“Excuse me,” the woman calls again.

Disappointment carves through me as Fallon turns to face the woman fast approaching with her phone pressed to an ear. Fallon recites a short list of directions that has the woman turning in the direction we came from before the light turns green for us to walk.

When we reach the dorm, a short line of people are waiting at the elevator. “Want to take the stairs?” I ask.

She nods, following me into the empty stairwell with scuffed white walls and a familiar acrid scent.

Our footsteps echo as we climb to the third floor, where I debate stepping out to walk Fallon to her door.

She turns to me. “Thanks for dinner. It was fun. I’m glad things don’t have to be weird between us. Friendship is a good step.”

“For now,” I remind her again.

Something smacks me in the shoulder as I finish attaching a sheet of drywall. When I turn around, Palmer’s grinning at me like the pain in the ass he is. He nods at the stairs that Grey, Cole, and Abe have been working on.

“Will a couch even fit now?” Nolan asks, studying the new staircase that extends two more feet into the room than the old ones had.

Abe scoffs. “I think the words you’re looking for are thank you.”

Nolan looks ready to tackle him, and I have no interest in moving to defend Abe. “Maybe we scrap the living room.”

“Not happening,” I say.

Nolan’s gaze jumps to mine. “We haven’t finished these walls.”

“You need a living room,” Grey insists.

“Why?” Cole asks. “If someone comes down here, they should expect to see some aggressive cuddling. Though, I’d be praying it was Hadley’s bare ass I saw rather than yours…”

Nolan’s gaze turns murderous as quickly as Cole’s turns cunning.

“He’s going to throw a hammer at your head, and I’m not going to stop him,” Grey warns his childhood best friend.

Cole merely snickers.

Mila descends the stairs. “These are so much better. If you guys did nothing else to this space, the new stairs would still impress the hell out of Hadley. The old ones were worse than those at the underground fighting ring.”

Grey’s frown becomes pronounced. He wants to forbid her from going there again but knows trying to do so would only incite her to go.

“Let’s get something to eat. I’m starving,” Palmer says.

We track up the stairs where Evelyn and Hudson are setting out sub sandwiches and bags of chips.

“Hey, what happened at Pops’s Saturday?” I ask. The question has occupied my brain since Fallon told me the soccer team wanted revenge last night.

Nolan raises his brows. “We celebrated his birthday…” He draws out his words.

I shake my head. “What did you and Lenny do to the soccer team?”

Hudson’s attention snaps to Nolan. “I thought we talked about this?”

“You should go in the other room for a minute. Culpability and shit,” Nolan points at the living room.

“If anyone asks, I wasn’t here.” Hudson shakes his head and takes a big bite of a sandwich without moving away from where he’s standing beside Evelyn.

“What happened?” I ask again.

“Did they say or do something to you?” Nolan asks me, his hackles rising, ready to battle with me—for me.

My annoyance deflates marginally, recalling how this damn war started. Their team has escalated things at every turn.

I run a hand through my hair as I shake my head. “No. I just heard they were pissed.”

Nolan’s shoulders relax, and he snickers before grabbing a plate. “Did you know you can connect a vehicle’s brakes to the horn?”

Hudson shakes his head and swears.

“It took them two days to figure it out,” Nolan adds with a smile.

“You mean every time they braked, their horns went off?” Mila asks.

Nolan nods as he stands straighter, pride radiating off him.

“That’s actually pretty ingenious,” Palmer says.

“Except now we need to watch our backs… and likely our vehicles,” Grey growls.

“That’s it for now,” Hudson says. “The last thing we want is any negative shit being brought back to the boosters or the athletic director when we don’t know what in the hell’s happening this year. We don’t want anyone thinking we need Peters here to keep us in line.”

The reminder spreads somberness through the kitchen as we eat and return to work. Our head coach, Peters, is a huge unknown that has the potential to impact this year and our future. When we made the unanimous decision to stay last year rather than enter the draft, we’d hoped he wouldn’t be a factor, but that confirmation is yet to come.

My phone vibrates with a text.

Anna: Call me when you have a few minutes.

My heart drops as I read the text several times, knowing my sister wouldn’t ask me to call her if it was good news.