Page 29 of The Beautiful Collision
“—must besointense living with Maine.”
The voice of one of my study group members cuts through my X-rated mental montage, and reality reasserts itself—buzzing fluorescents, the clicky-clacky keystrokes of last-minute panic from every direction, and my study group staring at me with expressions ranging from concern to barely concealed thirst.
Sophie goes in for the kill. “I mean, the guy’s reputation? You probably need a bouncer just to reach your door!”
Bitch, I glare at her, but we both know there’s no heat in it, because she smirks.
The others bob their heads in synchronized sympathy. Jenny death-grips her highlighter with the intensity of someone who’s already planned her Nobel acceptance speech. Priya adjusts her try-hard therapist glasses—tortoiseshell, because of course—with the expression she’s been perfecting for months.
“Must be really challenging,” Priya coos. “Navigating that kind of… predatory masculine energy in your own safe space.”
My spine snaps straight hard enough to make the chair squeak in protest. They see me as some helpless lamb while the big bad hockey wolf prowls our shared territory. The assumption burns hot, because they should know—everyoneshould know—that I’m the master of any domain I step into.
Well, except my childhood home.
“You adorable idiots,” I say, the words dripping honey laced with cyanide. “You’ve got the whole food chain backwards.”
I lean in, letting them glimpse what they’ve missed—the predator hiding in scrubs and stress—and the overhead lighting catches my gloss as I bare my teeth.
“Maine’s not hunting anything,” I say, as Jenny’s eyes go wide enough that I can see her brain recalibrating. “The man broadcasts his intentions with the subtlety I’d expect from a hockey player. He’s basically a horny pigeon strutting for breadcrumbs.”
Sophie’s coffee freezes halfway to her mouth, as if she’s only just recognized the danger of everyone else poking fun at me. “Maya, I don’t think?—“
Priya cuts her off, revealing the gossip goblin underneath her too-cool attitude: “Wait, you’re saying…he’strying to getyourattention?”
“Desperately.” The word rolls off my tongue like victory champagne. “All those muscles, all that big dick energy… he wants me more than air.”
The atmospheric shift hits like a contact high. But underneath their scandalized delight, I catch it—their doubt, that flicker of “yeah, right” that ignites my competitive neurons—and I realize that there’s an opportunity to harness all the uncertainty I’m feeling around Maine to my advantage.
“I could have him in bed by the end of today,” I say, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms. “Too easy.”
“Too easy by half,” Jenny laughs. “It’s Maine Hamilton, for crying out loud.Any of uscould have him in bed by the end of the day.”
The girls laugh, drawing attention from nearby tables, and I can’t say Jenny is wrong. Maine has a reputation, and now I’ve seen the evidence to prove it. A girl every few nights, and more if he wanted them, the whole campus basically his personal Pokemon collection. But there’s one thing hedoesn’tdo.
“Love,” confidence coats every syllable like designer armor. “He wants me so bad, I could have him in love with me by finals.”
Silence drops like someone cut the sound in post-production. Even the library’s white noise seems to buffer. The gauntlet clatters between us, impossible to ignore. My pulse throws a rave in my throat, but I keep my expression marble-smooth.
“Maya, that’s—“ Jenny searches for the words. “He’s one of the biggest players on campus; you need to be careful not to get played.”
Jenny’s sympathy strikes like an open-palmed slap.
My spine locks against cheap plastic as, around our cramped table, three faces morph into matching masks of pity mixed with concern. And, as always, that particular cocktail of emotions makes my skin shrink-wrap against muscle. And the fact it’s coming so soon after my parents wrong-footed me…
Well…
Let’s just say I’m feeling a bit vulnerable?—
—which is probably half the reason I’m getting off on the tit-for-tat with Maine.
But this? This is unacceptable.
Poor Maya. Poor little lamb. Sharing walls with campus’s most notorious wolf.
The hockey star, the comedy king, the evaporator of panties.
The assumption spreads through my bloodstream, and I feel a familiar burn—that feeling from every family dinner where my achievements earned distracted nods while my siblings’ merited Dom Pérignon, and every time my parents told me why I couldn’t or shouldn’t instead of should or could.
