Page 74 of Lethal in Pink

I set my tote down, pulling out my laptop, notebook, and pen. I align everything neatly on the wood—no messy overlap, no wasted space—and sit without giving him a single glance, refusing to acknowledge that the space between our chairs suddenly feels three degrees warmer than the rest of the room.

Damn him for being so effortlessly courteous.

Literally, how dare he.

The iron chair groans under my weight. Jae’s fingers go still over his keyboard. The sudden silence is heavy, loaded with the quiet certainty of someone who knew the exact second I entered his orbit. Then, without a word, he sweeps his backpack off the desk and drops it onto the floor. The movement is fluid, unthinking—the kind of casual politeness that makes my throat tighten because it wasn't performed for an audience.

Now his desk is clear, my notebook has room to breathe, and my internal tailspin over a moved bag is something I’ll dissect later.

He’s staring straight ahead at the empty lectern, but the corner of his mouth is hitched up in a slow, quiet smirk. He doesn’t look over—just sits there looking like a guy who’d just pulled off a quiet heist.

“Are you fucking stalking me?” I murmur, keeping my voice low enough that it doesn't carry across the front row.

“It’s a possibility,” he grins.

I glare at the side of his head, leaning an inch closer so he can feel the sharp edge of my whisper. “You swapped your schedule. We talked about our electives two weeks ago, Jae. You were supposed to be in Bioethics on the other side of campus right now.”

Jae finally turns his head, propping his jaw on his hand. His dark eyes glitter with a lazy, deliberate innocence that makes my blood pressure spike.

“Bioethics was full,” he says softly, his tone entirely reasonable. “And as a future practice owner, I actually need to understand commercial leases, zoning regulations, and property disputes before I sign my name on a clinic building. It’s called long-term professional planning, Amiyah. You should be proud of me.”

I stare at him, my jaw tightening as I search for a flaw in his logic and find absolutely nothing.

“You're insufferable,” I mutter, snapping my eyes back to my screen.

“You're welcome for saving your seat,” he whispers back.

“Get fucked,” I breathe, keeping my lips barely moving as I align my notebook with the edge of the desk.

The professor arrives before he can hit me with a reply. She’s short, sharp-featured, with a gray bob so precise it looks drawn with an architect's ruler, and wire-rimmed glasses hanging from a beaded chain around her neck. She drops a thick leather binder onto the lectern three feet in front of us, adjusts the microphone, and begins roll call.

“Anderson.”

“Here.”

“Bishop.”

“Present.”

The list drones on in the dead air, each answer dropping like a stone onto dry floorboards. Beside me, Jae settles back. His breathing slows into a steady, deep rhythm—distinct from the ambient rustle of eighty people opening highlighters.

Before she reaches the Gs, Jae leans sideways.

His shoulder presses into mine—a deliberate, warm contact through his shirt that lingers just long enough for his breath to touch my cheek.

“You must have missed me so much you dragged your feet so I'd get here first,” he murmurs.

His accent thickens when he whispers—the consonants rounding off, the vowels stretching into a cadence that turns English into something far too smooth for a nine-thirty lecture. The low vibration hits my skin before the sentence fully registers, and my pulse spikes out of control.

I keep my eyes locked on my composition book, my pen poised half an inch above the paper.

“You followed me into this class, you cuntgrunt,” I say, keeping my tone level and laced with lethal precision. “Face forward before I cite you for harassment.”

“Go ahead,” he replies softly, tilting his head just enough that his attention focuses entirely on my profile. “I'll hire you as my defense.”

From the corner of my eye, I catch the clean line of his jaw—stubble shadowing his skin, sharp enough to cut glass—and the quiet, deliberate way he tilts his head. He’s wearing those thin, black-framed glasses today, the ones he only puts on when he’s staring at a screen for hours or trying to pretend he’s paying attention. They sit low on his nose, making him look unfairly, outrageously hot in a way that should be illegal in a nine-thirty lecture.

His forearms are resting flat on the desk, the sleeve of his shirt pulled back just enough to show the corded muscle from months of weight training. The rest of the room is fidgeting, tapping feet, clicking pens—and Jae is just sitting there, completely relaxed, radiating heat like a furnace.