Page 36 of Ruthless Edge

Madison's friends collectively stop breathing. Madison looks like she's been told she won something.

"Yes," she says. "Obviously yes."

I turn back to Emma. Emma is staring at me with an expression that, if translated directly into words, would be several things I probably shouldn't repeat. "This is Madison," I say. "She's my date. Right, so…"

Ethan, behind me, says nothing. I can feel his silence specifically.

"Knox," Emma starts.

"You said couples only." I put my hands in my pockets. "I’m technically part of a couple now."

The walk to the restaurant is about six blocks and every single one of them is miserable.

Madison wants to talk about hockey. This is completely reasonable. She came to a hockey game, she's walking with a hockey player, hockey is on the table as a topic. I answer every question she asks and hear approximately none of my own answers because my entire attention is locked onto Emma and Owen, who are walking ahead of us, and who have been in unbroken conversation since we left the arena.

The jacket is still around her shoulders.

He leans in to say something. She laughs again. I watch this happen and feel the ugly thing in my chest twist. I've dated plenty of people. I have never once felt whatever this is. I'm not sure I like having feelings, as a general concept. It seems like a significant design flaw.

"—think you'll make the playoffs?" Madison is saying.

"Yeah, definitely. Emma, how do you two know each other?"

Emma turns. We've somehow ended up adjacent on the sidewalk while I was not paying attention. I guess my subconscious was making the decisions. She looks at me with flat, knowing eyes. "Owen and I are in the same seminar."

"Right. What made you want to ask her out?" I'm looking at Owen when I ask this, but realize a second too late what a weird question it is.

Owen, to his credit, doesn't seem particularly rattled. "She's brilliant," he says simply. "And I'd been working up to it for a while."

"For a while," I repeat.

"Few months."

"Huh." I process this. Few months. He's been sitting in a classroom with Emma for months, building up to it, paying attention, remembering things. I do something like that, I do exactly that, I have been doing that for years, and this guy has been doing it for a few months and he's the one who asked⁠—

"Knox," Ethan says, quietly, right beside me.

"I'm fine," I say quietly.

"You have your homicidal face on."

"I don't have a homicidal face."

"You've had it since the second period."

I put my attention back on Madison and ask her a question about something, I'm not sure what, and she answers enthusiastically, then I spend the next two blocks being a functional human being, or at least how I think a functional human being would act.

We get to the upscale Mexican restaurant. It's nice, which is probably because this asshole wanted to impress Emma, which means she was actually looking forward to tonight, which means this whole thing is real and not some logistical accident I can find a way around.

Everyone sits down. I end up across the table from Emma. Owen is beside her. I'm next to Madison, who is currently reading the menu like she’s having the best night of her life, and I feel genuinely bad about the fact that I recruited her as a tactical maneuver and have been half-present ever since.

That's when Owen's jacket comes off.

She drapes it over the back of her chair and I get the full picture of what Emma is wearing for the first time without anything covering it up.

The top is dark and fitted and cut low enough to make me forget what I was thinking, which was already not much… or maybe too much. I don’t know. Her clothes fit her differently tonight than they fit her at library tables and SAB meetings. These clothes are tight, clingy in all the right places, and expose the slit between her breasts low enough that my mind is conjuring up pictures of me with my erection between her breasts, slipping into her mouth with each thrust. I know she's the same person, I'm completely aware she's the same person, but my brain is having a very difficult time reconciling library Emma with right-now Emma, and the result is that I'm sitting at a dinner table across from her trying to conduct a normal evening while my entire nervous system stages a revolt.

I pick up my menu and don't look at her.