Of course people notice. Of course they do.
We reach the lecture hall doors. The hallway bottlenecks, students shuffling through in uneven bursts. I aim instinctively for the back row; he angles the same way. No negotiation, just parallel instinct.
We take the last two seats beside the exit. Two escape routes at our backs. Two lines of sight to the door. The unspoken agreement is so strong it almost makes me laugh.
He drops his bag, pulls his notebook out, sets his pen on the tiny flippy desk. His thigh brushes mine as he adjusts. Just a glancing touch, denim against denim, but every nerve in my leg lights up.
He goes still.
He doesn’t move away.
The professor starts talking. Numbers. Variance. Something about confidence intervals. White equations crawl across the projector. None of it sticks.
All my focus is on the fact that Declan is a solid line of heat at my right and my body is reacting like it just found a wall to lean against after standing for hours.
I tell myself it’s because he sits between me and the rest of the room. That it’s just angles. Coverage. That if anyone wanted to get to me, they’d have to go through him first.
I don’t look at him. I look at my notebook instead. My hand is shaky as I uncap my pen. The first line of notes is an ugly, jagged mess. I try again.
A loudbangcracks from three rows up as some guy drops his backpack.
The sound detonates down my spine.
My shoulders jerk. My pen skids, gouging a line across the page, and my breath snags. For a split second, the lecture hall telescopes down to that sound and my body lurches toward the old reflex—duck, cover your head, get small.
Something warm and heavy closes around my forearm.
His hand. His fingers wrap just above my wrist, firm and careful, anchoring. That white tape bites into my sleeve instead of a throat.
Dad warned me about live wires. About staying out of the blast radius. About not getting close enough to feel the heat.
“You’re good,” he murmurs, just loud enough for me to hear over the professor’s voice. “Just a bag. You’re good.”
His thumb presses once, the smallest squeeze. Not rubbing. Not stroking. Just… here.
The logical part of my brain ticks through it. He’s right. Door at the front. Emergency exit to the left. The dropped backpack is already being kicked out of the aisle. No one’s shouting. No one’s slammed anything shut and turned it into a weapon.
I breathe in.
Coffee. It’s on his breath, faint and bitter. It blends with the normal smells of a packed classroom—old carpet, dry marker, too many bodies—but my brain tags his scent and holds onto it, drowning out the panic.
He doesn’t let go until my fingers unclench around the pen. Until the white-knuckled grip eases and the line of my shoulders softens by a degree. Then his hand slides away, leaving heat behind on my skin.
He could go back to his side and pretend it didn’t happen. He doesn’t.
Our thighs are still touching. And now, occasionally, his knee bumps mine. Not constant, not obnoxious—just enough to keep the connection alive. When I shift away to try to regain some space, he shifts too, following. Our knees line up again, the contact subtle but deliberate.
The professor moves on to an example problem. My pen finally starts moving in real words instead of scratched-outpanic lines. Somewhere in the middle of writingstandard error, my pen stutters. The ink dies.
Of course.
The point digs uselessly at the paper. I sigh and shake it, irrationally annoyed at such a small, stupid failure.
A black pen appears in my peripheral vision, laid neatly along the top of my notebook.
“Here.”
His fingers rest there a beat too long, knuckles brushing my thumb. I could swear the contact lingers a half-second after the pen is fully on the page. When I look over, his gaze is on the board, not me, like he didn’t just put his hands on me twice in ten minutes.
