It’s enough.
The city air burns clean through the fog in my head. I tuck my phone into my pocket and start toward the apartment, the gi folded carefully in my bag.
Tutoring Kieran O’Connor is a terrible idea. I know it’s a terrible idea.
But terrible ideas pay for vanilla body spray and groceries and the quiet dignity of not needing to ask for help.
I spend the rest of Saturday enduring Larisa’s tween monologues about middle-school drama and Tanti Dana’s not-so-subtle reminders about keeping my scholarship. By Sunday morning, I’m on the bus back to Boston, watching the skyline collapse into gray.
The ride hums steady beneath me—mechanical, rhythmic, almost soothing. I pull out my notebook and write:
Kieran O’Connor — Engineering 204 tutoring, $100/hr, twice weekly.
Maybe he really does need help with 204. Hockey stars don’t notice girls like me—scholarship girls who take notes too neatly and say no too fast. But Kieran keeps noticing. Keeps circling.
The strangest part is, I don’t hate it. His voice shouldn’t feel safe. But it does.
Steel blue, threaded with silver. Cool, steady, the opposite of the noise that usually scrapes at me when someone gets too close.
I don’t trust him, but I trust that color—the calm it leaves in its wake.
I want Theo. I’ve wanted Theo since before Kieran walked into my lecture hall. Theo is safe. Predictable. Understandable.
Kieran isn’t. He’s motion. Pressure. Velocity. Everything I can’t quantify.
I need to keep it transactional. Tutor him, take the money.
That’s the plan. It’s simple. Logical. Contained.
I close my notebook, press my forehead to the cold bus window, and try not to think about the color steel blue settling somewhere deep in my chest—quiet, constant, and impossible to shake loose.
10
SOCIAL ENGINEERING 101 (KIERAN)
Iget there early, stake out a two-top by the windows with two coffees and my laptop. Black, no sugar—the way I saw her take it. Notes arranged in casual piles that took longer to arrange than I want to admit.
If anyone’s watching, I’m just grinding on Engineering 204. But the real point? Sixty uninterrupted minutes with Wren Marin.
Footsteps. Coat swish.
She appears from between the stacks—dark hair scraped into a knot, cheeks pink from the walk over, wool scarf she tucks down as she scans for me. My chest tightens before I remember I’m supposed to look casual. She does that little blink when she finds what she’s looking for, and something in me loses its edge.
“Hey,” I say, tipping my chin.
“Hi.” She’s composed but not cold—the kind of polite you reserve for lab partners and clients. Her gaze drops to the coffee and catches. “You stay true to your word.” There’s a ghost of a smile, and my balance goes with it.
She lifts the cup and takes a slow sip, eyes shutting forhalf a second. When they open, there’s surprise there—pleasure, gratitude, something softer.
Heat slides through me, quick and stupid.
Don’t.
“You remembered,” she says quietly.
“I pay attention.” I hold her gaze.
Color floods her neck, and she looks down, hiding behind her hair. But I saw it—that flash of beingseenthat makes her both nervous and pleased.
