Page 1 of Ruthless Edge

Chapter One

Emma

The skirt was a mistake.

I knew that the second I put it on this morning, I knew it again when I left my apartment, and I know it right now standing outside Wilson Hall with a damp coffee stain seeping through my white blouse. My hair got a little wet from the coffee and it’s messed up as hell. Four minutes in the Hartley Building bathroom pressing paper towels against the damage accomplished nothing except making the stain more evenly distributed. The woman in the mirror had looked back at me with a resigned expression. There was nothing more she, or I, could do to make me look presentable. The hair and blouse will just have to do.

This is what I get for trying.

The skirt is light blue and hits above my knee. It would probably look fine on someone with the right legs, the right proportions, the right everything. I've lost a lot of weight over the last few years, right around forty pounds, and people keep telling me I look great, I look amazing, I look completely different. What they don't tell you is that different isn't the same as comfortable. I still dress like I'm trying to take up less space than I'm actually taking up. My roommate, Sienna, pulled this skirt out of my closet last week and said I should wear it, and I'd said sure while privately thinking absolutely not. Then this morning I'd put it on because I was tired of being afraid of a piece of fabric, and the universe had dumped iced coffee all over me as a direct response through the use of a rogue pigeon who I swear was aiming for my eyes, but collided with my coffee instead.

The universe has opinions about my wardrobe choices, apparently.

I push through Wilson Hall's front door and head toward the third-floor conference room, already counting the minutes until I can go home and change.

Laura Prescott is going to have a field day with this.

Not out loud, of course. Laura doesn't do anything out loud that she can do with a look. She'll see the stain, the hair, and the skirt I'm increasingly convinced is a terrible idea, and she'll smile like she's sorry about it while being very clearly not sorry about it. The SAB committee had chosen me over her to run the revived Bachelor Auction. She'd wanted that role for herself, and had made it obvious for the better part of two semesters that she had her eye on this event, and when they went with me instead, she'd smiled and said she was thrilled and immediately volunteered to help in any capacity needed.

Laura smiles when she's furious. I've known her long enough to see through the smile to the simmering rage.

I'm ten minutes late when I push the conference room door open and slip inside. Dr. Neely, our faculty advisor, glances up from the head of the table and gives a polite nod to acknowledge my lateness.

"Emma, perfect timing." She sets down her folder. "We were just getting to the leadership structure for the auction."

I start toward the nearest empty chair. I'm halfway around the table when Dr. Neely continues.

"Everything's been settled. You'll be serving as co-chair this year, which we're all very excited about." A pause. "Your co-chair, representing the hockey team, will be Knox Carter."

I stop.

I know I stop because I can feel it. My feet simply don't continue moving and I'm standing in the middle of the conference room like I've forgotten how legs work, which is embarrassing, and I need to get it together immediately.

I turn toward the far side of the table.

Knox is there. He's leaning back in his chair with that easy slouch he's had since he was nineteen, the one that suggests he's comfortable in every room he walks into, which he probably is, because Knox Carter has never walked into a room and doubted his right to be in it. Sandy hair, blue eyes, that particular way of carrying six-foot-four that makes it look effortless. He's got a grin on his face that I used to think meant something specific, and now I know it’s just the way his face always is.

Laura is beside him.

Of course Laura is beside him.

Her hand rests on his shoulder, and she's angled toward him, laughing at whatever he said right before I walked in. She's in her cheerleading warm-up jacket, her hair is perfect, and she looks like someone the universe would never dare spill coffee on. They look comfortable together. They look close. They look like two people who belong together, and my brain cruelly reminds me of that, even while I try to push the thought away.

Knox is staring at me, and when our eyes meet, his grin widens.

My stomach drops so fast I feel it in my feet.

I sit down in the nearest chair and look at the folder I’ve started to put together for the auction and tell myself that my heart beating like mad in my chest is just leftover panic from the coffee incident and has nothing to do with Knox Carter.

Dr. Neely is already moving on, going over the timeline, sponsorship meetings, marketing materials, and I hear all of it from a very long distance, because my brain has stopped processing new information and has instead decided this is an excellent moment to unlock memories I've pushed to the back of my mind for three years.

I can't stop it. It opens without my consent.

Freshman year. September.

Knox sat next to me the third time our class met. He came in late, did a quick scan of the room with those blue eyes, and dropped into the seat on my left.

"You always sit in the same spot," he said.