Begin Again(23)

I look away, zeroing instead on an engraved piece of metal that says AMY JANSON, FOUNDER OF THE KNIGHTS’ WATCH, along with the years she went to the school.

“You ready to go?”

I take a sharp step back from the wall. “Yeah.” Milo doesn’t miss it, looking at me quizzically. I clear my throat. “Great show, by the way.”

He shrugs the praise off, grabbing a set of keys out of his pocket. “I try my best for our seven listeners.”

I lightly swat at his arm as he locks up. “It’s gotta be at least a few thousand. You really have a knack for this.”

Milo makes a face like he’s about to brush the compliment off, but we round the corner to the window and see a flurry of snow starting to fall so fast it looks like someone shook the campus up in a snow globe. Shay catches up to us in the hallway and joins us in our staring, her eyes going wide.

“It’s so beautiful,” I say quietly, already wondering how it will look in the arboretum if I manage to break away long enough to catch a glimpse.

“It’ll be even more beautiful if they cancel classes,” says Shay.

Milo nods. “Your mouth to the weather gods’ ears.”

I shrug off Milo’s coat. “Thanks for—”

He’s already walking toward the door, waving me off. “You can give it back at the dorms.”

“But it’s your coat, and it’s snowing, and—”

“I’ll be fine. Besides, if you freeze to death, it’s a hell of a lot of paperwork I’d rather avoid.”

He’s smiling, but something in his tone tells me it would be a waste of breath to argue. I’m starting to recognize it—the stubbornness of the way he cares. The way he really only pretended to strike a deal with me before helping me get a work-study position. The way he acts like he dreads his RA duties and yet seems to accidentally-on-purpose leave his door open for people to wander in and out during the day.

I shrug the coat back on, at ease in its warmth, but uneasy with something else—at the feeling of being taken care of, when so often I’m determined to be the one who takes care. At the surge of gratitude, but also something else that follows it, too warm and indistinct to name.

I wrap the coat around myself as tightly as I can, letting the fresh sting of the cold chase it away.





Chapter Nine


I’m back in my own coat a few hours later when I’m trudging through the snow to the library to meet the tutor Shay scheduled for me. I scan the tables near the coffee stand at the front for her, and only one of them is occupied—or at least, I think it’s occupied. There are so many books piled on it that I have to circle all the way around before spotting a girl with thick, glossy brown hair and high cheekbones frowning into a paperback, her hand poised over a notebook.

“Valeria?” I ask.

Her head snaps up so fast I almost apologize for startling her. “Oh. You must be Andie,” she says, blinking hard like she’s trying to bring herself back to the library from somewhere far away. She pushes the notebook aside as she stands up and hovers over the two piles of books, trying to figure out which of them to move first to make space for me. “I’m Val. Sorry. I just completely lost track of time.”

“Here. I’ll take the romance pile, you can take the . . .” I squint at the spines of the books, which all seem to feature daggers, skulls, and thorny roses. “Murder pile?”

“Fantasy pile,” says Valeria. “And thanks.”

I heave a portion of them and set them on the floor, but even then barely make a dent. “So did you accidentally join fifteen book clubs?”

Val lets out a laugh, her voice low and warm. “I wish. I was trying to cure my writer’s block. Thought reading anything I could get my hands on might help.”

I maneuver the other empty chair out of the way of the precarious piles we’re making and plop my bag in it, rooting around for my textbook. “Huh. I figured you’d be a math major.”

“Oh, I am,” says Val. She pats the last pile of the books on the floor with the energy of a parent tucking a kid into bed. “Writing is just something I do to pass the time.”

This, I’ve been learning, is a typical Blue Ridge State response. Everyone here is so ridiculously talented that it’s not a matter of whether they can succeed in anything, but a matter of choosing which things they feel like succeeding in.

I glance down at the stats book in my hands. All Val will have to do is glance at my attempt at this week’s practice problems to know that I’m an exception to that rule.

“What’s blocking you, then?” I ask, moving my bag and settling into the seat.

“Oh.” Val sweeps her curtain of bangs behind her ear, pursing her full lips. With her striking dark eyes, thick lashes, and gentle smile, she fits right in with all the beautiful heroines on the books at our feet. “It’s a long story.”

Ordinarily I might pry, see if it’s a story she wants to tell. But now that I’m here, about to reveal to another student just how in over my head I am with this class, I can’t help the unwelcome nerves that seem to have an agenda all their own.

“But I did manage to change a character’s name three times.” Valeria picks up the notebook full of her scribbled notes and squints at it. “So, baby steps.”