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Chancing a look at Holden’s face, I spot a curve to his brow. Not irritated, but not a smile.
“Isn’t it like the most famous painting of all time now?”
A small laugh escapes me. “I don’t think there’s a definitive most famous painting but, yeah, a lot of people would say that.”
Before he can say anything else, our professor calls down the line and has us introduce each other. I’d written down Holden’s information so it’s easier for me to recite, but when it’s his turn he makes a whole show of it that captures the happy attention of everyone in the room.
After the shortened class ends, Holden offers to get a coffee with me—which I agree to easily without checking my schedule.
Along the way, he gets stopped so often, I find myself half in a daze staring at the ground more often than not, struck by the same awkward feeling I get while strutting behind my dad and Carson at a business dinner. But I stay quiet and half-hidden for a while, until he seems to realize I’m trailing behind and loops an arm tightly around my shoulders.
“Stay close to me, little weirdo,” he says, lightheartedly, in a way that lets me know his tone is all niceties. That he’s not making fun of me.
It helps that Toren’s called me that before. And Toren would never make fun of me.
It also helps that Holden has tucked me under his right side, so I can easily hear him in my left ear. Even if he doesn’t know.
“All right, darlin’,” he drawls. “What’ll it be?”
My eyes scan the menu, but I already know what I want without looking. I give him my order, and he gestures to the semipacked common area for me to grab us a seat. And as silly as it sounds, having breakfast and a coffee on campus with someone from my class might be the most “college” thing I’ve done in three and a half years.
It fills me with an intense joy, one I feel desperate to hold on to, before it slips away like everything else. Back into the numbness I know like the back of my hand.
• • •
Holden helps me find my next class. It’s mathematics, my archnemesis.
I’ve always struggled with it. The first time one of my tutors noticed, she brought my dad in to get my eyes checked, assuming that’s why I couldn’t manage to hack sixth-grade geometry. Turns out I had perfect vision.
It was a never-ending battle throughout homeschooling and on to prep school—all the way until graduation, but it peaked at Harvard. Math was the class I couldn’t get through once, dropping my GPA to new lows and eventually into flunking out entirely.
There was more that factored into my leaving Harvard, a baser feeling than I’d ever experienced before, but my dad liked to blame it on my problems with math.
“You’re not even trying, Lillian.”
I preemptively take the lowest seat in the lecture hall, buzzing with a nervous energy that wasn’t there in the previous class. I don’t love sitting here, but it’s a bit of a catch-22: I need to sit up front to focus, because math is the subject I struggle most with. But I prefer to sit with my back to a wall, which makes the audio portion easier. Now, with noise from every angle, focusing on one sound gets more difficult—especially with my hearing aid in.
I’m early again, so I attempt to draw on a blank page in my notebook, scribbling everything out each time I start, frustrated and annoyed.
I wait then, tapping my pencil a bit too loudly on the edge of my desk as the class starts to fill.
No one sits next to me. It’s fine. Maybe I’m smiling a bit too widely at the girls who venture to the front rows. Or maybe there’s something inherently wrong with me that repels even the possibility of friendship. It’s always been this hard for me.
Someone slips in front of my desk, and I look up to smile politely at the girl standing there, before she hands me the one-page syllabus she’s passing out—
Only to freeze at the sight behind her.
Toren Kane in black pants and a white button-up, sleeves rolled over his forearms exposing tattooed skin. He looks entirely different than he did this morning, like he went home and showered and changed, nodding lightly as the much shorter professor goes over something with him.
Is he in this class?
There’s no way—Toren Kane is a math genius. He wouldn’t be in a freshman-level course.
I see the moment he spots me, eyes flaring under the harsh fluorescent lighting. His jaw clamps tight and he immediately flickers his gaze away from me.
Chapter 10
Toren
