College boy.
Professor.
Blueprint.
Homework.
Every insult they could think of, and half of them weren’t creative enough to land.
But then old Rafe clapped me on the shoulder one night and said, “Good. World’s changing. Club’s gotta change with it.”
Another elder said, “About time one of you younger idiots learned numbers instead of just counting bullets.”
They laughed.
But there was pride under it.
That got to me.
More than I wanted to admit.
So I worked.
Runs when Callum needed me.
Classes when he didn’t.
Remote lectures with bad internet from motel rooms. Quizzes done at two in the morning after twelve hours on the road. Flashcards taped inside a cabinet at my place. Building code PDFs on my phone. Math I had not touched since high school coming back ugly, slow, and humiliating.
I hated it.
I loved it.
Both.
It made me feel like I was stealing something back from the boy who had washed his jeans in the bathtub and gone to school with wet cuffs because his mother couldn’t be bothered and his father couldn’t stay sober.
That boy had thought the world was made of locked doors.
Turns out, some doors opened if you were stubborn enough to learn the damn code.
Destiny had done that to me.
She didn’t know it.
Probably never would.
But watching her take the wreckage of her life and turn it into nursing school, ocean views, matcha runs, new friends, and Dean’s List grades made every excuse I had ever made taste like ash.
If she could become more than the fire, I could become more than the smoke.
That didn’t mean I stopped thinking about her.
I didn’t.
I knew things I should not have known, because security updates were a blessing and a curse.
She had a roommate named Lily from Idaho who apparently looked like she got lost on the way to a library and accidentally became Destiny’s best friend. She and Destiny found a stray cat and named it Cupcake, which sounded like a crime against the animal’s dignity. They drank matcha tea lattes. They went to concerts. They studied like maniacs. Destiny made Dean’s List.
