I touched her jaw, let it land slower. “I like you. A lot.”
Her eyes flicke
red,soft before she masked it. “Don’t get weird,” she said, voice gentler than the words. “Just… keep showing up.”
“I will.”
Her smile came sharp and wrecking. “Good. Now go be respectable, Mr. Hale. You’ve got lesson plans and Grandma waiting.”
I wanted to tell her Grandma already asked about her. Wanted to walk her right into Sunday dinner. But I wasn’t a fool. Not yet.
Back home, I opened my laptop, meant to draft lesson plans. Instead, the margin filled itself:
Momentum: mass × velocity. How hard it is to stop once moving.
Application: A woman who laughs with her whole mouth and plays like there’s always a way through.
A man with glasses who stopped counting long enough to feel it.
Conclusion: Some collisions are elastic—you bounce and keep your shape. Others are inelastic—you stick, change, and stay changed.
I stared at it, knowing which one we were.
I wanted her. Not just her body—thoughGod, yes. I wanted her voice in my kitchen, her tools on my table, her hand finding mine in dark rooms just because.
And I was one heartbeat away from telling her that out loud.
“Every game is chance.”
Chapter 11
What We Carry
Jada’s apartment wasn’t fancy—white walls, worn wood floors, windows that rattled when the bus went by—but it had her stamp. Plants lined every sill, reaching toward the light like they knew she was too busy to water them on schedule, but they forgave her anyway. A diffuser in the corner puffed lavender into the air, like she was trying to force calm on herself. And the couch, soft and wide, was half-buried under throw blankets and cords from three different laptops.
Ihadn’t planned to stop by. I left school with the last bell still in my ears, a stack of ungraded quizzes in my bag, and the urge to see her. Something about how distant Rayna had been reminded me of how my sister always faded into the background.
I knocked once and used my key.
She was at her desk in the corner, hair tied up fingers flying over the keyboard. One screen flashed charts, another lines of code. A third showed a video call frozen on “connection lost.”
“You at home,” I said, leaning against the doorframe, “but you still at work.”
She looked startled. “Quentin, what are you doing here?”
“Thought I’d check in.” I let the door shut behind me. “Your director told you to rest, right? That’s why you’re not at the office?”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t deny it—probably hating that she shared through texts with me how the CEO of KIB himself, Khalil Berry, told her that while he appreciated her dedication to his company and that she made a difference, he hired enough people that everyone could find work-life balance.
“Rest is relative.”
I dropped my bag by the couch, sat down. “Rest is not three screens and an empty coffee mug.”
She shot me a look, the one that said stay in your lane. I lifted both hands in surrender. “Alright, I’m just saying. You do everything at once. Been like that since we were kids.”
Her mouth quirked. “And you don’t?”
Touché.
