Not cringing. Gawking. Her mouth has fallen open to a degree that compromises the structural integrity of her jaw, and her green eyes are so wide that the gold ring around her pupilsis visible from three feet away. She is looking at me with an expression that can only be described as appalled fascination, the face of a woman watching a car crash in slow motion and realizing she is in the passenger seat.
And I am fully smiling now.
Because the expression is fucking hilarious. This tomboy Omega with her scarred knuckles and her oversized hockey camp t-shirt and her absolute refusal to cooperate with anything resembling social convention is standing in her mother's meticulously curated living room, holding my hand against her will, listening to me fabricate a tutoring arrangement that has never existed and will never exist, and the indignation radiating off her body is so potent it is practically a scent note.
Fuck. She turns me on even when she is furious.
Especially when she is furious.
"I need to maintain a certain GPA to keep the scholarship active," I continue, because the lie is flowing now with the smooth inevitability of a breakaway rush and I am not about to dump the puck when the net is wide open. "So I asked for her assistance. I overheard through the grapevine that she offers tutoring from time to time, given her academic record. She is quite talented. Intellectually."
I add that last word with a deliberate glance at the three Alphas on the settee, whose combined intellectual output could not power a desk lamp.
Coach Holloway's frown has shifted from anger to suspicion. His gray eyes move from me to Sage and back, performing the rapid-fire assessment of a man who has spent thirty years reading body language on the ice and can spot a manufactured play from the press box.
"Is this true, Sage?"
Sage opens her mouth.
And I can see it. The defiance coiling behind her teeth. The instinct to deny, to expose my lie, to maintain her independence at the cost of the escape route I am constructing in real time. She would rather stay in this room and fight her mother and face down three predatory Alphas than accept assistance from someone she has known for twenty minutes across two chaotic encounters.
That stubbornness is going to be a problem.
And I kind of love it.
A throat clears from the doorway.
"The news is indeed true."
Jeffrey.
The driver. The man with the military posture and the kind brown eyes who opened Sage's car door at the community center parking lot three days ago while I happened to be crossing the adjacent lot on my way to the public library. The man who witnessed our brief, catastrophic exchange of broken glasses and e-transferred funds and apparently catalogued the entire encounter with the meticulous attention to detail of a man who considers his employer's daughter his personal responsibility.
He stands at the room's entrance with the composed authority of a butler who has served this family long enough to understand exactly when intervention is required and exactly how to frame it.
"I was present during the confrontation with Mr. Rosedale in the parking lot after picking Miss Holloway up from practice." His voice carries the measured professionalism of someone delivering a testimony rather than a fabrication. "She did offer her academic skills to aid him."
She did not offer anything of the sort.
She offered to pay for my glasses and then sprinted away like the trail was on fire.
But Jeffrey is selling this lie with the conviction of a man who has decided that the truth is less important than getting his charge out of this room, and I am not about to correct him.
Jeffrey lifts his other hand, revealing a large envelope that I recognize by the weight of the paper and the navy-and-gold crest embossed on the upper left corner.
"It also seems Miss Holloway has important documentation that requires her attention in a timely manner." He extends the envelope toward Sage with the formal precision of a courier delivering classified material. "So I have come to borrow her for its attendance, if you will."
Valenridge.
That envelope is from Valenridge University.
She applied.
Sage gawks at the envelope. At Jeffrey. At me. At the envelope again. I can see her brain cycling through the implications at high speed, the realization cascading across her features in real time: Jeffrey intercepted the response. Jeffrey brought it here. Jeffrey is handing her a lifeline disguised as administrative paperwork while simultaneously corroborating a lie that gives her an exit from a room she should never have been trapped in.
Her hand tightens around mine.
Not gently. Not tentatively. Her fingers clamp down on my hand with a grip strength that makes my knuckles creak and confirms my earlier suspicion that this woman could probably bench-press a significant percentage of my body weight without warming up.
