Page 68 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 1

“Right here. The basic forces that govern our world. Gravity, which governs the attraction between masses and keeps planets in orbit as well as you in that chair. It keeps the universe together. Electromagnetism, which is basically the interaction between electrically charged particles. And weak and strong nuclear forces. The weak one is part of radioactive decay and it won’t be on the test. The strong one, basically, keeps all of the matter stable because it binds protons and neutrons together.” I frowned at him because his eyes were glazed while I was talking about the entire universe in the simplest terms I could find.

“Not to brag, but I’ve heard of gravity,” Sawyer said.

“That would be sarcasm,” I decided.

“Correct.” He sighed. “You’re losing me with all the electrically charged particle nonsense.”

I scratched my head and tried harder. “Imagine balls.”

“Now we’re talking.” His evil smirk was horrible.

“I’ve changed my mind. You’re not a child. You’re a teenage boy. Particles aren’t really balls, but we draw them that way because it helps us imagine them. It’s ironic in a way. We are made of this. We are particles that got together and decided to figure out what particles are.” I waited for a chuckle.

I received an ogle and a quiver of his eyebrows. “Your sense of irony is precious.”

“Right. Balls. Imagine them. They are charged with electricity. Okay? Okay. And electricity makes them attract or repel one another, depending on how these balls are charged. Positive or negative. If they are the same, they repel each other. If they are opposites, they attract each other.”

“That sounds about right. Put that lesson down into your book, too,” Sawyer said with a coy smile.

I was well aware that I was attracted to my opposites. I had always been the best of friends with other clever cogs. But I had always had a thing for mean athletes who thought running the fastest was going to change the world somehow. “That’s basically what electric force does. And the magnetic force is the product of the motion of these charged particles. A fridge magnet and your fridge are charged differently and they slam together.”

Sawyer leaned back in my chair and watched me, his butt practically hanging off the edge and his legs spread in a way that gave me unholy ideas. He tilted his head. “Got it.”

“Good. Now, let’s try to understand all of the universe and a single atom at once,” I said, rubbing my hands.

Sawyer pretended to faint and slid off the chair until gravity won once again and his ass slammed against the carpet.

It dragged a near smile from me, but I managed to wipe it away before he opened his eyes. I observed him coldly and waited for him to get serious and back in my chair before we proceeded. For an hour, I was lost in my world and I talked without a break while Sawyer asked questions and told me to slow down and, most often, found a way to make physics all about smashing butts together.

I wasn’t going to show that I appreciated the creative way of looking at things.

But by the end of the first session, I wasn’t as reluctant to schedule the second one.

Chapter Five

SAWYER

Holy fuck, my tutor was secretly a hottie.

This thought followed me the entire day on Monday, all the way through lectures and practice in the evening. On the ice, I was an unstoppable force of nature. There was a single puck I let slide in the instant my attention wavered and I thought of Noah’s towel incident.

Not smart. I needed to drop him from my mind much like he’d dropped the towel off his peachy ass. Not that I was thinking about it that much. It just popped into my head. And it popped into my head again and again.

And when that puck went right by my stick, I wanted to curse myself and Noah together. I rolled my eyes and played on, slamming my stick against the ice only once.

After practice, I took a hurried shower and raced back to the house to go over my notes the way that guy Feynman would have done. The buzz of hormones that were still coursing through my veins after the battle on the ice made me squirm and lose my attention quicker than I liked. I drummed my desk trying to go over my source materials to better understand the forces that kept an atom whole.

In the textbook Noah forced me to take, just a page after the dry and boring explanations that wouldn’t sink into my memory, there was a note.

I lifted and examined it, then realized my facial muscles were stretching my lips wide and I shook my head. “Such a nerd.”

Avery barged in and I tucked the note back inside the textbook like it was porn, then shot him a look over my shoulder. “What’s up?”

He tossed his duffel at the bottom of the bed and nodded at me. “Great work today.”

“Yeah, you too,” I said.

He circled around the room, went to the closet, then began changing into his nicer clothes.