Luke smiled at her.Easy.Calm.“Hey, Kayla.Cramming?”
“Midterm research paper,” she groaned.“I’m looking for the abnormal psych section.Numbers 600?”
“Two aisles over,” Luke said, pointing with his pen.“Left side.”
“Lifesaver.Thanks.”She looked between us, her gaze lingering a fraction of a second too long.“You guys studying together?”
Panic spiked.Here it comes.
“Austen’s walking me through accounting,” Luke said smoothly.He tapped his notebook.“I’m hopeless.”
“Wait, I thought that was last semester,” she laughed.
“Busted,” Luke said with a shrug.“He’s studying and I’m going over strategy notes for the next game.”He gestured to his open playbook, which had a hockey rink clearly drawn in it.
“Well, you two have fun.”She waved and disappeared into the stacks.
I let out a breath that shook.My hands were trembling on the keyboard.
“We’re going to get caught,” I whispered, barely audible.“She looked at us.She knows.”
Luke turned to me.The easy smile was gone, replaced by that intense focus he used when tracking a puck through traffic.
He leaned in, pretending to look at my screen.His shoulder pressed against mine.
“She doesn’t know,” he whispered back.“She saw two roommates studying.That’s it.”
“I jumped,” I hissed.“I looked guilty.”
“You looked startled in a quiet zone.”
He moved his hand back.He didn’t put it on my leg this time; he gripped the edge of my chair, his fingers brushing my hip.Grounding me.
“I hate hiding,” he admitted, his voice rumbled low near my ear.“I hate that I can’t hold your hand while we walk here.But I will not stop touching you when I can.”
Luke was out, but his personal life wasn’t public.That was his line, and I respected it.
I looked at him.His eyes were dark, defiant.
“Let them look,” he whispered.“They don’t know what they’re seeing.Only we know what’s going on between us.”
The panic receded, replaced by a strange, fierce thrill.We were a secret world.A pocket universe existing in the middle of the library.
“Okay,” I breathed.
“Okay.”
He squeezed my knee once, then let go.He went back to his playbook.
I looked at my screen.I deleted the sentence about hidden variables.
In a closed system,I typed,stability is achieved when internal forces balance external pressure.
We left at closing.
Outside, the campus was a snow globe.Fat, wet flakes drifted down, coating the sidewalks in fresh white.
The quad was empty.
