Page 4 of Learning Curve

“What the hell, Scottie? You’re bleeding.”

It’s an accusation, not an attempt at comfort. I nearly roll my eyes.

“Come on,” he says again, but this time, he drags her up from her seated position straight into a run.

She glances back at me apologetically as she trots to keep up with him on a limping leg, but I just jerk up my chin. Like my older brother Reece always says: Not my rodeo, not my horses.

It doesn’t matter if this particular horse is beautiful.

I’ve got bigger fish to fry, and the grease will start sizzling in about ten minutes when I come face-to-face with Professor Ty Winslow for the first time ever.

Scottie

Dane keeps a grip on my wrist as we scurry down the wide hallway of the Newton Building and head into the auditorium-style room of our first class—English 101 with Professor Winslow.

It’s the only class we have together, and I don’t know why I’m relieved about that fact, but I am. Maybe because it’ll be easier to concentrate.

Dane Matthews has been my boyfriend for the past two years. The clichéd star quarterback and cheerleader couple of our high school, we started dating when we were juniors, and now, we’re both attending Dickson University together. I’m still a starting cheerleader, but Dane is no longer the star quarterback. He barely got on the team as a walk-on, and seeing as Dickson is a Division I school and their current quarterback, Blake Boden, is a sophomore—who was highly recruited out of Southern California and rumored to have a magic arm—the odds of Dane becoming the star quarterback again are slim.

Though, I’d never say that to Dane. He’d lose his shit in a nanosecond.

College as a whole is overwhelming so far, and this is only the first day of classes. But since moving in a week ago, it’s been a constant rotation of cheerleading practice, orientations, and meeting new people. Plus, I’ve never lived in a big city, and New York is about as big of a city as you can get. I can only pray I’ll finally know my way around the campus by the time I start my second semester.

All it takes is two steps inside the lecture hall to remind me of just how different my life is about to be for the next four years. My private high school in Upstate New York was small. There are more students sitting in this massive room than in my graduating class.

“Scottie, what are you doing?” Dane asks as his grip on my wrist stops my forward progress to the front of the room. “Let’s sit back here.”

“But I want to sit a little closer…” Truth be told, I forgot to put in my contacts this morning, and Dane hates when I wear my glasses. He says it reminds him of our sixty-year-old high school librarian, Donna Lanser.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Let’s sit right here.”

“Dane.” I lean toward him to whisper in his ear. “I don’t have my contacts in. I need to sit closer so I can actually see.”

“Don’t be a nerd, babe.” He laughs and drags me toward two seats in the last row.

I want to tell him he’s being an asshole, but I clamp my lips shut instead. Lord knows my calling him out will only make him more annoyed with me, and since I’m now going to have to use my glasses for this class, I decide to pick my battles.

As I sit down beside him, setting my backpack on the floor between my feet, I unzip the front pocket to grab my glasses, but when I don’t feel the familiar texture of their leather case, anxiety starts to fill my chest. Shit.

“I don’t have my glasses,” I whisper toward Dane, but he just shrugs.

“Can’t say I’m disappointed to hear that. You look way hotter without them.”

Looking hot is the absolute last thing I’m worried about right now.

I rummage through the other pockets of my bag and still come up empty-handed. On a sigh, I lean back in my seat and try to figure out my next move, but in my periphery, a head of familiar dark hair catches my eye—the mystery guy who witnessed my clumsy butt tumble to the sidewalk in the most unladylike fashion.

I don’t know his name, but he was incredibly kind, despite my having run directly into him in my haste to get out of the rain. He also, as it happens, has the most soul-piercing brown eyes I’ve ever stared into, the kind of chiseled jawline that Paris Fashion Week would eat with a spoon, and muscles that stand out effortlessly in his rain-soaked T-shirt.

I’m not the only female in the room to notice, though I probably shouldn’t. Several pairs of eyes look in his direction as he walks near the professor’s desk. He’s a little blurry, but from what I can tell, he has a gray backpack swung haphazardly over his shoulder and his dark jeans are just the right amount of tight—fitting like a glove over his firm butt but avoiding the horrible skinny-jean look on his long, toned legs.

He runs his hand through his dark hair as he chooses a seat near the front—lucky duck—and sits down in an empty row. Besides me, he appears to be the only person who wants to sit so close to our currently empty professor’s desk.

I blow out a breath of air, its contents beleaguered, and glance over at Dane. He’s busy staring down at his phone, Instagram front and center on the screen. He must not be aware that I can see what he’s doing, because the first thing he does is like a girl from our high school’s bikini pic. And then, I see him do the same thing three more times, but for three different girls I’ve never seen before.

My older sister Wren would say that’s a huge red flag, and it instantly makes me miss home. I was close with a lot of girls in high school, but now that we’ve gone our separate ways to college, it’s almost comical how quickly we’ve lost touch. Besides some of the cheerleaders I’ve met through tryouts and practice, Dane is the only person I know at Dickson.

And he’s too busy staring at IG tits and ass to even notice you.

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