Page 8 of Heartless As Puck

In need of a distraction, I opened the article on my phone and passed it to him as he approached. He scanned the text and the slight tightening at the corner of his mouth was the only hint of emotion he showed before passing the phone back without a word.

I took the phone and navigated to this week’s assigned reading for my class on motor speech disorders. Austin pulled out the other stool and dug into his meal.

“Do you need me to hang around the stadium today?” I asked, hoping he’d say no. I had a couple of classes that morning, and while I could watch the recordings later, I always preferred to attend them in person.

“No.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked over at me, his electric blue eyes giving the impression they could see into my soul. “Just drop me off and pick me up. I’ll send you a message when I’m off the ice to let you know I’ll be ready. Oh, and don’t forget the meeting with Gus.”

“I won’t.”

He nodded and returned to ignoring me. I turned my attention back to the digital textbook on my phone. I knew better than to take his dismissal personally. Nothing existed in Austin’s world except for hockey.

After a while, I heard him get up and head to his room to get ready for training. I highlighted a particularly interesting factoid, finished the page I was reading, and started cleaning up.

A short time later, I met Austin in the garage. We didn’t speak as I drove. Austin listened to his usual training morning playlist, which consisted of songs such as “Hall of Fame” by The Script and “Believer” by Imagine Dragons.

I parked outside the stadium and waited while he got out and retrieved his bag from the back. As soon as he shut the trunk and started walking toward the building, I reversed out of the space and cruised toward campus.

I had a student parking permit, so I left the Range Rover in one of the campus’s several lots and started the brisk walk to my first class.

My program wasn’t one of the more popular ones, so classes were housed in a small room out the back of the Arts building. It had off-white walls and the kind of depressing gray carpet that made the place feel institutional.

Long, rectangular tables stretched the length of the room, facing a whiteboard with projection screens set up on either side of it. I maneuvered around the desks and dropped onto a chair in the third row from the front beside my friend Clara.

The overhead lights gleamed on her coppery hair as she turned toward me and grinned, the small hoop through her nose catching my eye. She’d only gotten the piercing a week ago, and I wasn’t used to seeing it yet.

“Need caffeine?” she asked, pushing a takeout mug toward me.

I took it and breathed in the deliciously rich and bitter scent of well-brewed coffee. “You’re a terrible influence.”

She smirked. “I know. Did you get the reading done?”

“Most of it. I⁠—”

“Hey, Jane.”

Clara’s eyes narrowed as Joel Hannigan, one of our classmates, hovered on the other side of our desk.

“What’s going on with the Chaos?” he asked, his hair flopping in his eyes, reminding me of an eager puppy.

I sighed and drew in a long, steady breath before answering. “I can’t tell you anything.”

“Come on, Janie.” This came from another guy, who was somewhere behind us. “Spill the tea.”

“Leave her alone,” Clara snapped. “You know she’s sworn to secrecy about that stuff.”

I sank lower in my chair. Already, the changes with the Chaos were intruding on my predictable life. Sure, people asked me about the team occasionally, but usually, they didn’t bother, because they knew they wouldn’t get anything out of me.

The professor called the class to attention. I withdrew my tablet from my bag and focused on taking notes, my hand flying across the page as I recorded everything he said.

When the class ended, the professor assigned us another set of pages to read from the textbook and warned us that there would be a multichoice test next week, worth five percent of our grade. I wasn’t worried about it. I’d been learning about fluency issues and disordered speech my whole life, first from necessity and then out of interest.

As I packed my tablet away and drained the last few drops of my now-cold drink, Joel leaned against the desk and flashed his teeth.

“Want another coffee?” he asked, a dimple appearing in his cheek. “I’d be happy to buy you one.”

“No, thanks.” I managed not to stutter, thank God. Joel was cute in a boyish way, but even if I was interested in dating, he couldn’t compare to Austin. My boss was practically a force of nature. Between his maturity and his impressive self-discipline—and, okay, his ass—I doubted I’d be able to put him out of my head for long enough to date anyone else until after I’d quit.

Then there was the fact that Joel really only wanted to pick my brain about the Chaos.