“Okay, fine. But sketch fast.”
As Harper quietly read the paragraph out loud, her voice turned the chaos in my head into pictures I could actually use—a bowling ball, a muffin, a single nucleus, a solar system, a cloud—and I drew what I saw.
“Your sketches are amazing,” Harper said, “but they don’t have to be this good. We’re running out of time.”
“Two minutes,” Langford said from the front of the classroom, as if to confirm.
“Relax, love,” I drawled, keeping the irritation out of my voice. “It’s too early in the day to be this intense.”
I slid the drawings to Harper, and her eyes widened in shock at the detail. Then she got busy labeling with something like panic, as if this were a final exam and not a meaningless assignment.
“Label,” Harper said with urgency. She tapped two of my drawings without looking up. “I can’t get to them all.”
“’Fraid not,” I said. “All that sketching wore me out.”
“Can you please be serious for one minute?”
“Possibly. But only for a minute.”
“Orion.”
But it was too late.
“Time.”
Langford collected our work and gave them a once-over.
“Wow, Harper and Orion. The sketches are worthy of the Louvre. Conceptually brilliant. Too bad I have no idea what they represent.”
He moved on, and I could feel Harper’s exasperation buzzing beside me.
“Easy, love. It’s just a—”
“Don’tloveme.” She stopped, her cheeks pink again. “I mean… You know what I mean.”
She gave me the silent treatment the rest of class, which made my bloody skin itch. When the bell rang, she abruptly gathered her things and strode out. I followed, feeling guilty for giving her a hard time while the old anger and exhaustion boiled below. I was so damn tired of this dance.
“Harper, hold on,” I called.
She turned around, inhaling to steady herself. “Look, chemistry is my life. We’re stuck together for the entire year. My grade is tied to yours, so I need you to take it seriously.”
Her tone was calm and collected but beneath was fear. Pressure. Survival. It glinted in her dark eyes. I recognized it because I had it too. A different shade and flavor, but a similar, incessant anxiety to succeed despite the mountain we had to drag behind us.
“I can pull my weight,” I told her. “My father is CEO of Mercer Chemicals. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”
Her brows shot up. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
I gritted my teeth. I’d meant to reassure, not brag. Now I was just annoyed too.
“Yes,” I said. “My background is in chemistry. My brothers are at Cambridge as we speak, learning the trade, and I’ll eventually be there too. Point being, I know what I’m doing and like to have a bit of fun while doing it. No harm in that, is there?”
I tossed her my trademark grin that helped me charm my way outof dodgy situations.
Harper saw right through it.
“Orion, you may have everyone wrapped around your finger with that smile of yours, but I don’t have time for games. My father is CEO of Walked Out the Door, and I have no direct line to Cambridge or any other college. I can’t afford to fuck around, so do me a favor and cut the BS, okay?”
Four years at the Academy and no one had dared speak to me like that. And she had no idea what she was asking. How much BS was required for me to survive this place. Heat crawled up the back of my neck, and my jaw clenched.
