I grin. “Pretty sure they’re scared of you.”
“Good.” She slides her pens into a perfect row. “Fear improves retention.”
I laugh before I can stop myself. It echoes too loud in the half-empty room, so I try again, quieter. “So…tutoring freshmen?”
She gives me a single side-eye that could peel varnish. “Someone has to keep this campus from setting itself on fire.”
“Hey, I’m doing my part.” I gesture to my ridiculous setup. “Protecting a fragile brand. If people find out I read, it’s over for me.”
She snorts—barely, but it counts. “Yes. Tragedy. Wouldn’t want them to discover there’s more to you than a jersey and a grin.”
“Image maintenance is an art,” I say.
She nods toward my setup. “What are you actually doing?”
I set my palm on the clamped shaft and feel the flex under my fingers. “Trying to see the thing I feel when I shoot.” I tap the small meter. “A few cheap sensors taped to the shaft. I load it, the readout moves. I want to turn the way a shot feels into numbers—so the instinct becomes something you can train to, not just hope for. If it works, I can build a trial version for practice drills. If it fails, I wasted a few hours and a roll of tape.”
Her mouth does something I haven’t seen before—half reluctant, half surprised. It’s not a laugh. It’s a preview of one. “You’re measuring stick flex with breadboard sensors.”
“Hey, don’t knock my cutting-edge facility.” I motion to the vise, the cheap components, the disaster of duct tape. “The O’Connor Institute of Making It Up As We Go.”
That gets me the first real one—a quick, caught-off-guard smile that transforms her entire face. There’s a dimple. A fucking dimple I’ve never seen before because she’s never let her guard down long enough to show it.
My hand slips. The weight nearly drops. I catch it at the last second, pulse hammering.
Smooth, Kieran.
When I look back, the smile’s already gone, locked away like it never existed. But I saw it. Proof that underneath all that armor, there’s softness. Warmth. The kind of real that makes every hookup I’ve ever had feel like going through the motions.
And she gave it to me by accident.
My pulse won’t settle. I want that smile again, that unfiltered flash that felt like winning something I didn’t know I wascompeting for.
Her expression smooths back to neutral. “The lab doesn’t usually host hockey royalty this long.”
I roll the shaft again, feel the carbon load. “Heard you tutor that kid. Even though you scared him, I think he got it.”
“He just needed someone to slow him down.” She slides a paperclip over a neat stack of notes. “Most problems get easier if you can stand still long enough to see what’s actually there.”
Standing still isn’t my talent. On the ice, motion is how I think—reading plays in real time, adjusting angles on instinct. I don’t solve problems step by step. I map them, then move.
I don’t say that. I track her hands instead—firm, precise, smudged with graphite from somebody else’s homework. Before I know it, I’m handing her a clean rag from my toolbox.
“You tutor every night?”
“When people need it. It pays.”
“Why won’t you tutor me, then?” I keep my tone easy, like it’s a reasonable question. “You shut that down in under a second.”
Her head lifts, eyes catching mine. “Because I’m not sure that’s what you actually want.”
My mouth curves. “How so?”
“You walk into a room performing. It’s loud. It’s charming. It’s exhausting.” She hands me the rag back. “And underneath it, there’s something…calculated. I can’t tell if you’re being genuine or if you’re playing at something. I don’t like not knowing the rules. It throws me off.”
The words land clean and hard.
She’s not misreading me. She’s clocking me. The dare made it feel simple: show up, charm her, collect the yes. Inever stopped to wonder what that yes would mean to her. I didn’t even question why I thought I deserved it.
