He doesn’t have to and girls can tell.
That’s what makes him dangerous. Texas crosses one arm under her chest and tilts her head between us.
“Do all Stanford men speak exclusively in challenge coins and testosterone?”
“Yes,” I say.
“No,” Vale says at the same time.
That gets her.
The laugh slips out clean this time, low and quick and genuinely amused, and I feel it hit me right in the sternum because God, there’s nothing prettier than a sharp girl laughing when she didn’t mean to.
But the laugh lands on him too. Then she gives him the name she withheld for me. “Isabella Calloway… or Isa for short.”
Vale’s face softens for one second in a way most people wouldn’t catch.
I catch it.
And now I’m irritated for real.
Because I know this look.
I know this pattern.
I know when a man is not all the way available but still magnetic enough to ruin somebody anyway.
And worse—I know Texas doesn’t know it yet. Vale spent the entire last week trying to get with Stella Cortez. I heard he even missed a team weight training session to follow her dawn bleacher cross training sesh. Now he’s looking at Texas like he already forgot the other girl’s name.
We stand there a few minutes more, the conversation splitting and recombining around waves and lights and athlete small talk. She gives as good as she gets. Better, sometimes. Vale watches her when she looks away. I watch him do it.
Then the night opens wider.
Somebody starts a bonfire relay game.
Music gets louder.
The beach becomes one big blur of bodies and ambition and expensive teeth.
Texas gets pulled away by one of her teammates.
Vale gets called over by Jace and Nate.
And I’m left standing alone with sand under my feet and the very specific feeling that I just watched a play develop one beat before everybody else saw it.
Not the ending.
Just the route.
I pick up another beer and head toward the fire.
Kane catches up with me halfway there.
“How’d it go?”
I look back over my shoulder.
Texas is laughing at something now, but her eyes flick toward Vale between moments like she can’t help it.
