Only When It's Us (Bergman Brothers #1)(2)
I sit dumbfounded for minutes, before I slowly face the board, fury shaking my limbs. My fingers curl around my pen. My hand whips open my notebook so violently, I almost rip off the cover. I want to scream with frustration but the fact is that all I have control over is the here and now. So, I bite my tongue and start writing madly.
After twenty minutes, MacCormack drops his chalk, then turns and addresses the class. In the haze of my wrath, I vaguely hear him field questions. Students raise their hands and answer, because they’ve actually followed this lecture, because, unlike me, most of them probably don’t have two lives pulling them apart. Athlete and student, woman and daughter.
Because they have leeway, wiggle room, which I don’t. I have to be excellent, and the problem is that this pressure is instead turning me into an absolute failure. Well, except for soccer. Over my dead body will I fail at that. Everything else, though, is going to shit. I’m a scattered friend, an absent daughter, a lackluster student. And if this professor would just cut me a damn break, I’d have a chance of at least scratching one of those failures off my list.
MacCormack must feel my eyes burning holes into him, because after he accepts the last answer, he turns, looks at me again, and smirks.
“Professor MacCormack,” I say between clenched teeth.
“Why, yes, Miss Sutter?”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“I’m sorry, no, that is not the correct formula for calculating compound interest.” Turning back to everyone, he offers them a smile I have yet to see. “Class dismissed!”
I sit, stupefied that I’ve been swept aside by my professor, yet again. It’s the cherry on top when Ryder rises from his seat, slides those precious notes into a worn leather crossbody bag, and throws it over his shoulder. As he secures the flap on his bag, his eyes dart up, then finally meet mine. They widen, then take me in with a quick trail over my body.
Ryder’s eyes are deep green, and damn him, that’s my favorite color, the precise shade of a pristine soccer field. That’s all I have time to notice before my resentment blinds me to appreciating any more of his features. When his gaze returns from my sneakers and sweatpants ensemble, our eyes meet, his narrowing as he processes whatever terrifying expression I wear. I am enraged. I’m sure I look murderous.
Now he acknowledges my existence, after so thoroughly ignoring me?
Rolling his shoulders back, he straightens fully. All I can think is, Wow, that’s not just an asshole. That’s a tall asshole.
I shoot out of my seat, sweeping my notebook off the desk. Jamming my pen into the giant messy bun on top of my head, I give him a death glare. Ryder’s gaze widens as I take a step closer and meet those nauseatingly perfect green eyes.
A long, intense stare-down ensues. Ryder’s eyes narrow. Mine do, too. They water, begging me to blink. I refuse to.
Slowly, the corner of his mouth tugs up. He’s smirking at me, the asshole.
And just like that, my eyes drag down to his mouth which is hidden under all that gnarly facial hair. I blink.
Shit. I hate losing. I hate losing.
I’m about to open my mouth and ask just what’s so damn funny when Ryder backs away and pivots smoothly, then jogs up the ramp of the lecture hall. I stand, shaking with rage, pissed at this jerk and his odd, dismissive behavior, until the room is virtually empty.
“Cheer up, Miss Sutter.” MacCormack switches off the lights, bathing the lecture hall in gray shadows and faint morning sun that streams through the windows.
“I don’t really know how to be cheery when I’m about to fail your class and I can’t afford to do that, Professor.”
For a moment, his mask of detached amusement slips, but it’s back before I can even be sure it ever left. “You’ll figure out what to do. Have a nice day.”
When the door falls shut, and I’m left alone, I sink into my seat once again, the whisper of failure echoing in the room.
“He really just walked off?” Rooney—my teammate and roommate—stares at me in disbelief.
“Yup.” I’d say more, but I’m too angry and winded. We’re doing technical drills, and while I’m in the best shape of my life, ladders always kick my butt.
“Wow.” Rooney, on the other hand, isn’t winded one bit. I’ve decided she’s a mutant, because I have never heard that woman short of breath, and it’s not for lack of trying. Our coach is a clinically verified sadist. “What a dick.”
Rooney looks like a life-size Barbie. Classic SoCal girl—legs for miles, glowing skin and faint freckles, a sheet of platinum blonde hair that’s forever in a long, smooth ponytail. She stands and drinks her water, looking like a beach model as the sun lowers in the sky. I, on the other hand, look like Dolores Umbridge after the centaurs got her. My wiry hair puffs madly from my ponytail, my cheeks are dark pink with exertion, and my muscular soccer quads are shaking from effort. Rooney and I could not be more opposite, not just when it comes to looks but also personality, and that’s perhaps what makes us such good friends.
“No doubt, he’s a dick,” I confirm. “But he’s the dick who has what I need: past lecture notes and the ones I’ll miss when I’m gone for two more classes during away games.”
We both jog toward the next section of the field to start one-touch drills. I run backward first, Rooney flicking the ball into the air before she lofts it my way. I head it back, she volleys it to me, I head it back. We’ll do this until we switch directions, then it’s her turn.