Page 41 of His Reckless Freshman

The first person my eyes land on is Angelica, and I force a bright smile. I’ve already decided that I won’t be saying a word about my date to anyone.

Ben swore he wouldn’t tell, and all I can hope is that Kieran isn’t a blabbermouth.

When Angelica greets me with her friendly grin, I have to assume she’s none the wiser to my disaster, so I get straight to the point.

“I finished my article. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to look over it before I hand it in?”

“Of course.” Her smile grows even wider as she ushers me to her desk with a flick of her fingers. Grabbing a red pen out of the Nolan U mug on her desk, she then proceeds to work through the article.

To my relief, her suggested changes are minimal.

“This is really good,” she murmurs as she goes through each paragraph. “Oooo, I like that quote. Nice.” She glances at me, and my smile starts to feel genuine. Once she’s done, she recaps her pen and slides the pages back to me. “So, you could only get one person to interview?”

“Yeah.” I sigh. “The rest of the team weren’t that keen to talk to me. But do you think I have enough here with only Ben Evers?”

Angelica nods. “It would have been stronger with more, but I think he’s done a good job speaking for the team, so you’ll get away with it.” She taps her finger on the pages I’m now holding. “Have you got your laptop on you? You could make those changes right now and submit the article. I’ll tell Kieran I’ve already gone through it. Tell him it’s worth publishing.”

“Really?” My voice pitches in excitement.

“Yes,” Angelica laughs. “You’re a good writer, Jolie.”

Oh my gosh, those words mean everything coming from her.

“Thank you,” I manage to rasp as she gets up and walks toward Kieran’s office.

I swallow and try not to shake as I pull out my laptop and quickly make those changes. I only have to rewrite two paragraphs, adding in her suggestions, and then it’s just five small punctuation errors I missed.

Within fifteen minutes, the article is good to go.

“Kieran said to pop in. He’s keen to read it.”

“Uh… now?” I whip around to look at Angelica.

She nods, her eyebrows starting to dip.

Crap. What’s my face doing?

I quickly school my expression and nod, forcing a smile as I rise from my seat. Carrying my laptop carefully into Kieran’s office, I avoid eye contact, placing the computer on his desk, then stepping around to the other side of it so he can’t reach me.

“Good morning.” He smiles.

“Hi.” I wave at him, then tuck my hand behind my back, embarrassed by the dorky move.

Kieran lets out a soft laugh, then focuses on my article. I stand there sweating while he silently reads it through. As soon as he’s done, he leans back and smiles up at me.

“This is good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’m going to run it. Good job, Jolie.”

“Wow. Thank you.” For a moment, I forget about the awkwardness between us and give him a bright smile. “That’s amazing.”

“You deserve it.” He nods before gently closing my laptop and handing it back to me.

Our fingers brush for a moment, and I flinch.

He sighs. “About the other night. I⁠—”