CHAPTER ONE
NICK
White Mountain University
Graniton, New Hampshire
OCTOBER
Even though being a varsity baseball player might make me feel atinybit pretentious sometimes, I’ve gotta admit—the perks are freaking sweet.
For one, there’s the exclusive common room.Technically, it’s for the Kinesiology program, not athletics, but let’s be real—there’s a huge overlap between the two, to the point where the common room is almost always empty when both football and hockey are on the road.
As usual, when I swipe in through the sleek electronic gates at the entrance, the place is deserted, save for my teammate Ian. Tiptoeing toward him, I lock eyes with his boyfriend Callum, who simply smiles when he catches me. That lets me stay hidden, sneak up, and?—
“Sup, fucker!” I yell next to Ian, making him jump with surprise, instinctively swinging at me and backhanding my stomach. Messing with my buddy who has killer aim might not be thesmartestway for me to have fun, but it’s how the two of us bond.
“Hey there, shithead,” he mutters, suppressing a chuckle and returning his attention to the laptop in front of him. “How was class?”
I plop myself down onto the leather couch opposite him, spreading out and relaxing. “Fine. I got my Advanced Ethics test back. Aced the thing.”
Another perk of being a varsity athlete is that the professors here tend to give us a little more slack, not that I’ve ever needed to make use of that, at least consciously. After almost four years here, I haven’t been dragged into Coach Ramirez’s officeeverfor one of his desperate “get your ass in gear” lectures, which is more than can be said for the rest of the baseball team.
Or the shitshow that our hockey team is turning into. But they aren’t super important.
“That’s nice,” Ian says with a smile. “I’m hoping I’ll do as well on my French test.”
Ah, French—the default language elective for anyone who plays a sport. A couple of sneaky backroom deals between the athletics department and the trio of tenured professors who run French mean every student athlete is all but guaranteed a passing mark.
And that just doesn’t sit right with me. Don’t get me wrong, classes definitely get in the way of me doing what Iactuallywant to do, but I want to graduate on my own merit, not because of some shady pact.
Hence why I chose Introductory Chinese.
I definitely don’t think I’m ageniusor anything, but for some reason, every single class I’ve taken since coming to college hasn’t pushed me the way I’d hoped. Even the intermediate algebra class in my sophomore year was just a reheated version of what I took in twelfth grade, so if math that uses more letters than numbers wasn’t enough to push me, maybe a language without any letters at all will do the trick.
Speaking of that class, I should be getting my first midterm back today, too. Sure enough, when I pull my phone out, there’s a student portal notification waiting for me.
I click on it, and my blood fucking runs cold.
Oh,shit.
This is bad.
I freeze, my eyes glued to the damn student portal.
There’s a first time for everything, and today, it’s my first time failing a test. Scratch that, I didn’t just fail—Ibombedthis.
Thirty-seven percent in Chinese 107.
Blinking, my mind swirls with a plan—I need to make one, and fast.
The weekly quizzes weren’t anything to write home about, not that I have one ofthose, and there was no reason for me to transfer classes before the deadline last week.
I need three language credits to graduate, and I’m a senior. I’m gonna have to start studying for real unless I tack on a fifth year to this degree I don’t even like too much.
Besides, the baseball draft came and went in July, and I missed out by the skin of my teeth; it isn’t like I have a definite out, either.
Studying it is.
