Page 59 of Campus Heat

“Don’t what?” she asked, looking clearly confused.

“Don’t look at me like I’m broken.”

Her eyes sharpened. “You are but unlike the team, this is only temporary. All you need is a little TLC.”

Her words hit a lot deeper than they should’ve but I couldn’t let anything like that affect me right now. If I let her see the truth, the doubts, the scars and the cracks, then it became real. And I was nowhere near ready to deal with that.

“I need to get to my test,” I mumbled.

“Ethan—”

“I’m fine, I promise, but I really gotta go. I’m already late.”

I wasn’t fine at all. I knew that, and so did she, but I didn’t know how to stand there and admit that I was losing control of everything that I held dear. So I just turned around and started walking before she could say another word.

The classroom felt small and suffocating, as if it were ready to swallow me whole. I dropped my bag in front of the room before collapsing into my chair. My mind was racing, and my knuckles throbbed in rhythm with the clock ticking overhead.

The test landed on my head, and everything I had carefully been holding up came crashing down. The first question came like a punch to the gut: Define the role of NADH in cellular respiration. I stared at the words as if they were written in a foreign language. They didn’t want to connect with anything, even though I knew the answer.

Elizabeth and I had gone over it multiple times. It was one of the easiest things I had learned. She was so proud of me for getting it. But at that exact moment, I couldn’t remember anything at all. Was it an election carrier? An inner mitochondrial membrane? Or maybe a proton gradient? I had no fucking idea. The phrases were floating just out of reach because instead of focusing on the test, my mind was replaying the fight: Malik’s voice and Dylan’s punch.

Then, without permission, my thoughts shifted entirely. I felt Elizabeth’s fingers tangled in my hair and her hot breath against my neck. Or perhaps the best part, her warmth as she curled up against me and rested her hand over my heart. Panic overwhelmed me, and I squeezed my eyes shut in the hope that it would pass. This test was super important, and I needed to focus or I was going to fail.

I moved on to the next question, hoping it would be easier: Explain the gradient formed in the inner mitochondrial membrane.

“Oh, come on,” I hissed.

There, where the answer was supposed to be stored, was emptiness. My chest tightened. I had never blanked out like that before, not even on the field. My muscle memory had always taken over, even in the worst of cases, but there was no muscle memory for this. The ticking of the clock grew louder, and my vision tunneled slightly. I was failing miserably, but not only at the test. At practice, at leading, at studying, and even at dating.

I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to force the information forward, but every time I reached for it, it slipped away. It was replaced by Elizabeth’s voice saying I’m not something that disappears. Temporary… The word echoed. What if that’s exactly what I was? What if I were just a quarterback on a losing team with a busted face and no backup plan?

My breathing became shallow. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t sit there and pretend everything was okay while it was unraveling thread by thread. My chair squeaked back so loudly that it got everyone’s attention. The teacher tried to stop me, but I pressed the paper to his chest and walked out. In the hallway, I dragged my hand down my face, bursting my lip yet again.

I was slipping, and I didn’t know how to stop it. Then, as I rounded the corner, my body collided with hers. Elizabeth stood against the wall outside the classroom with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes fixed on me.

“You left?” she asked quietly.

“So did you,” I snapped.

Her jaw tightened. “Don’t you dare.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but then I realized that I didn’t have the energy for that. She stepped forward and grabbed my wrist, and her grip wasn’t gentle.

“Come with me.”

“Elizabeth—”

“Now!”

There was something in her voice that I hadn’t heard before. It wasn’t fear or anger. It was resolve. She pulled me down the hallway, toward the stairwell and away from the curious glances.

I didn’t protest.

Because for the first time that day I wasn’t sure if I could trust myself to stand still.

22

Elizabeth