1. Emmett

CHAPTER ONE

emmett

Bowser leans in close,whispering in my ear. He’s been doing that more and more lately: invading my personal space. I have no idea why or what has changed, but dude, calm down. We may be seat buddies, but we’re not friends.

I’m not allowed friends.

Not here, anyway.

Not when I’m known as⁠—

“Benny, are you following anything this professor is saying?”

—Benny. My twin brother.

To answer his question, yes, I’m following every single word that falls out of Professor McHottie’s mouth. Maybe if my English professors at San Diego State were this hot, I wouldn’t have made Benny take any writing-heavy classes for me. Maybe I wouldn’t have so easily accepted my expulsion from the school. Maybe I’d be more interested in learning.

Numbers I can understand. English? Sentence structure? Hell, even spelling, none of it sounds like, well, English.

Benny and I definitely shot ourselves in the foot by deciding to swap places all those years ago. In theory, it was a perfect plan. Ben does my English classes, I do his math classes, and that way, we’ll ace our way into college.

The issue with that now is I can’t tell the difference between a comma and an apostrophe, and Benny can’t do basic multiplication.

We used to joke that being identical twins, we’re two halves of the one brain. Together, we make one smart human being. Separately … we’re kind of hopeless.

I’ve always had the need to fix Benny’s life. To make his life easier. I’m the fixer. The one who makes everything better. But it’s gotten to a point where it’s getting difficult to step back and separate myself from Ben. It’s getting difficult to keep his mannerisms and attitude separate from who I am. It’s impossible to just stop and be me because I don’t know who that is without my other half.

I don’t want to know.

Eventually, we’re going to be a package deal to whoever we end up with.

I hope whoever is my person, they’ll look like Professor Brooks. The more he talks, the more I stare at him.

He has this whole founder of a start-up vibe. A bit nerdy but in a sexy way. He’s young, mid to late twenties, and his closet only consists of sneakers, jeans, T-shirts, and blazers.

His caramelly-brown hair is neat, smooth, and styled. Unlike the mess of blond curls I have tied up in a bun that sits through the small hole in the back of my cap.

It’s Brooks’s first year here as a professor. Supposedly, he did his undergrad and master’s here, but I’ve never seen him on campus before. Not hard when I was only here for a few classes a week the last couple of years.

He talks a mile a minute, locks the doors so you can’t be late to class, and I get the impression he’s trying to be authoritative and scary.

It’s cute, honestly.

“I’m not following,” Bowser says.

I reluctantly pull my gaze away from Professor Brooks and show Bowser how to do the formula and replicate it with different numbers attached.

“You’re so good at this. Maybe you should be teaching statistics.”

I let out a loud “Pfft” noise, catching the attention of a small group around us. I slink further down in my chair.

Benny is dating some Harrison guy in this class. Someone who I cannot let see me here and let him think I’m Ben. We swap places often but never with partners or boyfriends. It’s a rule.

The less attention we have on us while pretending to be the other one is best.

“Seriously. You make it easier to understand.”

“Math is easy when you have the formulas.” Which is why I decided to study engineering. There was a lot of math.

But just because I can do math doesn’t mean I enjoy it. I actually despise it. Well, despise is a strong word. I don’t care for it.

There’s really only one thing I’ve ever been passionate about, and even though the culture can be toxic, the pressure is severe, and Benny and I decided to quit for a reason, I can’t help missing it anyway. Hockey was our life for so long. It’s in our blood, it’s in our family, and I thought I was ready to let it go, but I was wrong.

So fucking wrong.