Until the second that girl raised her hand and ruined everything.
“Is resilience an individual trait, or is it built through community?” Professor Reid asked, scribblingNature vs Nurture in the Home Environmenton the whiteboard as he did. It was the first day of my Human Behavior in the Social Environment class — an elective I’d selected with team leadership in mind.
If I wanted to be a leader, not just on this team but on the ones I’d play for in the future, I needed to understand how humans ticked. I needed to know how to work with players from all backgrounds and upbringings.
Again, all part of the plan.
Two rows in front of me in the lecture hall, a hand bolted into the air.
I had a clear view of the girl the hand belonged to — or at least to the back of her head. She wore a white t-shirt, and her dark blonde hair was plaited into a thick braid that she had pulled over one shoulder. Even from two rows back, I could see that her nails were bitten short.
And she had a scar — right in the middle of that hand suspended above her.
“Yes,” Professor Reid said, nodding to the girl as he clasped his hands behind his back. “Miss?”
“Ariana Ridley,” she answered, lowering her hand. Her voice shocked me. It was smooth and raspy, like that of a woman twice her age. “I believe it’s an individual trait.”
Professor Reid nodded. “I see. Can you explain your reasoning?”
“Resilience is about the fight inside you — even when no one else is there to help or bail you out. It’s born out of necessity, out of circumstance, and out of a will to survive. You can put two people in the exact same situation with the same community around them and they’ll respond differently.”
Professor Reid jutted his lip out in thought, bobbing his head side to side as he considered.
“Support systems are nice, but they’re not what gets you through.Youget you through,” she finished.
A ripple of murmurs echoed through the classroom.
Before I knew what I was doing, my own hand was in the air.
Professor Reid’s brows shot up, and he nodded to me. “Go ahead, Mr…?”
“Shane McCabe, sir.”
I didn’t miss the flutter of noise at my name. The students sitting in my section had already noticed me, but now the whole class knew they had Boston College’s star winger in their class.
“I disagree with Miss Ridley.”
As soon as I said it, she turned around, balancing her forearm on the back of her chair as she looked up at me.
And once again, I felt my world tilt.
She was a knockout. There was just no other way to describe her. She had the kind of beauty that robbed a man of common sense — smooth, alabaster skin, golden hair, heart-shaped, rose-colored lips.
But it was her eyes that had me speechless for so long it was embarrassing.
They were piercing, a shocking bright blue like two glowing pools of spring water.
And they were haunted the way only a survivor’s can be.
“Go on,” Professor Reid said with a smirk when I didn’t elaborate.
I thought I heard a few chuckles near me, but I blinked, swallowing and tearing my gaze from Ariana and back to Reid.
“I don’t disagree that survival comes down to what’s inside you,” I said slowly. “But I’ve lived enough to know sometimes what’s inside isn’t enough. Sometimes, you’re standing in the wreckage with everything you thought you could count on gone.”
I paused; the weight of those words heavy on my ribcage.
“And the difference between drowning and making it to the surface isn’t how hard you struggle in the waves.” I leaned forward, tapping my desk for emphasis. “It’s how graciously you accept the hand that reaches for you. It’s the steady voice of a coach, the encouragement from a brother on the ice.” I shrugged, sitting back again. “It’s your team — whatever that may look like.”
