Page 29 of Ruthless Edge

I don't have an answer for that.

"You deserve someone who makes it easy," she says. "Not someone who makes you do this much work just to get through a Friday night."

She's right. She's completely right. Knowing it doesn't actually help, though, which is a design flaw in the whole human system, but it's where I am.

"I'm not quitting the SAB," I say.

"I would never suggest that."

"I just need to stop being an idiot about him."

"You've never been an idiot." She reaches across the console and squeezes my arm once. "He's just very good at being him. At being nice, fun, and happy with everyone. That's the whole problem."

I get out. "Thank you for the rescue."

"Always." She points at me. "Text me when you're inside."

I walk up to the door and I do what I always do when something is hard, which is make myself think clearly. Here is what I know. Knox Carter is my co-chair. He is a hockey player I happen to work with for the next eight weeks. He is charming and warm and he is genuinely good at making a person feel seen, and none of that is new information, and none of it changes anything about what I know.

Tonight almost happened. I got close to someone I can’t afford to get close to. I'm not going to let it happen again.

Three years of trying to get over Knox Carter and I've never done it right. I've been too busy being angry at him, which is its own kind of attention. Paige is right about that. So I'm going to do it properly this time, starting now, and the first step is remembering what I apparently keep forgetting… that Knox Carter needs to be ignored and kept at arm’s length, no matter what.

I let myself in, lock the door, and text Paige: Inside. Thanks again.

The response comes back almost immediately: You're the best thing in every room, Emma Lawson. Don't let anyone make you forget that.

I put my phone face-down on the counter.

I don't think about Knox standing on the sidewalk with that look on his face like he'd lost something and couldn't figure out where it went.

That is not my problem.

It never was.

Chapter Eight

Emma

By the time everyone else has packed up and filtered out of the study room, it's just me and Owen.

This is not unusual. Advanced Counseling Techniques is a small upper-level seminar, and study sessions tend to start with six people and end with two once it gets past eight o'clock and the free coffee runs out. Owen and I are usually the two. We work at the same pace, which is to say we don't leave until we've actually finished what we came to do, which puts us in a small and apparently unfashionable category.

"Beck Depression Inventory," I say, flipping back three pages in my notes. "I want to make sure I have the scoring right before the practical."

Owen leans over to look at my notebook. He has warm brown eyes and the kind of face that makes people feel immediately comfortable, which I've noticed because noticing things about people is an occupational interest when you're a psychology major. He's also good at this. We've been in the same class since September, along with attending the same seminars on occasion, and he asks the right questions and actually listens to the answers, which is rarer than it sounds.

"You have it right," he says. "The cutoffs are fourteen, nineteen, twenty-nine."

"Mild, moderate, severe."

"You knew that already."

"I like to verify."

He smiles and closes his own notebook, which is the signal that he's done for the night even if I'm not. I keep writing for another two minutes while he stacks his things and puts his highlighters in a specific order that I've noticed he always does, colors arranged from warm to cool. Not something I'd do.

"Hey," he says.