By the next week it starts to feel like a pattern.
He waits after practice. Not every time. Often enough that I start expecting the low “Texas” when I come out. Often enough that it starts to feel like maybe this is just what we do now.
We drift into late-night study sessions almost by accident. The library has a dead zone on the third floor where athletes go when they’re too tired to flirt and too disciplined to quit. It smells like dust and old carpet and espresso.
I’m there with two textbooks open when Tristan drops into the chair across from me and slides a bottle of water across the table.
No greeting.
I look at it. Then at him. “You’re strange.”
“You’re dehydrated.”
“That is an aggressive assumption.”
“You’re chewing your lip and your highlighter cap is off. You only do both when you forget to drink water.”
I stare. He stares back. Not smug. Just right.
I take the bottle.
We study. Or pretend to. He works through Econ problem sets with tired male competence that should not be attractive and absolutely is. I rewrite the same sentence three times because a lock of his hair keeps falling over his forehead and every time he pushes it back my whole body has a moment.
Halfway through, Kane appears with a protein shake and a giant textbook. He looks between us slowly.
“Well. This feels intimate.”
I don’t look up. “You smell like a locker.”
“And you still sound like Texas money and judgment.” He grins, then turns to Tristan. “You stealing my study date?”
Tristan doesn’t grin back. He just sits there, pen stilled, watching Kane with that low, unreadable expression he gets when the joke lands somewhere older than the moment.
“You had a study date?” he asks.
Kane’s smile widens. “Not with her, prince. With the concept.” He looks at me. “You surviving him?”
“Barely.”
“That’s the correct amount.”
Then his gaze flicks over my shoulder. I turn.
Two tables over, half-hidden behind a pillar of criminology books, Stella stands with a stack of articles. She’s not looking at us directly. But I know the body language of a girl who knows she just entered somebody else’s atmosphere. She shifts the papers higher and moves on.
Tristan’s attention follows for one beat. Then he’s back in front of me. Too late.
Kane sees that I saw. His expression changes for one bare second. Knowing.
He taps the table twice. “Don’t let him get too poetic, Texas. He gets dangerous when he’s tired.”
Then he leaves.
I stare at my notes for three straight minutes and retain nothing.
Because there it is again. The almost-real thing I’m building with Tristan. And just underneath it, a fault line with Stella’s name on it.
Still—he’s here with me.
