Page 74 of Dead Girls Don’t Forget

Jackson blinked after her for a second, then looked down at me again.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.” He took my bag off my shoulder without asking, slung it over his own, and took my hand. We fell into step together toward the lecture hall.

Behind us, Rick and Jason started talking again, voices low. I only caught pieces of it. Jackson didn’t join in. He kept my hand in his, thumb brushing slow circles over my knuckles as we walked.

His head dipped toward me. “Did you sleep well?”

“Fine enough. You?”

“No.”

I glanced up at him. He was looking ahead, the corner of his mouth tipped up.

“Why not?”

“Spent half the night staring at the ceiling,” he said. “Trying to decide whether to text you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“You needed to come to me on your own.”

He understood me better than I wanted him to. Silence settled between us for a few steps.

“What is this, Harper?”

I thought about it for the length of three strides. Then I gave him the only honest answer I had.

“I don’t know yet.”

He nodded once.

“But I’m not pulling back.”

His fingers tightened around mine. We walked a little farther.

I kept my voice casual when I spoke again. “So was there a creepy guy last night?”

Jackson shrugged. “He was gone by the time I got there.”

I didn’t say anything. It felt too convenient. But I kept the thought to myself.

The lecture hall was already filling when we got there. Lia sat three rows from the front, books open in front of her. She didn’t look up as we passed. There was no coffee on the table.

Jackson guided us to our usual seats halfway back. He put my bag down and took the seat beside me. The familiar weight of his thigh against mine followed a second later, then his arm along the back of my chair.

Hartley spent ninety minutes on soil chemistry. Near the end, he set down the marker.

“Before we finish — group projects. You should all be well underway by now. Methodology drafts are due in two weeks. Get your samples in this week.”

The class started packing up around us. Jackson didn’t move. He turned slightly toward me instead.

“Come over this week,” he said. “We need to actually sit down with the data and lay out the methodology properly. My place. I’ll cook.”

He waited, watching me decide.

“Okay,” I said.

The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Thursday.”