Page 22 of Study Buddies

“This is Kyle. Kyle, this is Lucas and Jayden.” It was just an introduction—why was I nervous?

Maybe because of the really uncomfortable silence.

Finally, Jayden spoke up. “Hey, man.”

“Hey,” Kyle said back. Lucas just gave a curt nod.

Jeez, did men even know how to talk? Couldn’t one of them have said it’s nice to meet you? And then it hit me, the way they were staring at each other. Or glaring at each other, at least in the case of Lucas. This wasn’t their first meeting.

I paused as I reached for the back of a chair. “Wait, you guys know each other?”

Looks flew around the room, ones I couldn’t interpret. Finally, Jayden answered. “We went to the same high school.”

Oh! I opened my mouth, about to ask if they’d been friends, but then I snapped it shut because it was rapidly becomingobvious that they hadn’t been friends. Not with the tension in the air. It wasn’t hard to guess at a possible reason why. Kyle was a good-looking athlete, probably a really popular guy. Lucas had been the super smart kid. It was probably safe to assume that they hadn’t gotten along—and that perhaps Kyle had even bullied him. But I didn’t know that for sure, and maybe I wasn’t being fair to Kyle.

I looked up at him, wondering if he was going to leave, given the chilly lack of welcome, but he gave me an easy grin, as if it didn’t matter. He pulled out the chair in front of me, gesturing for me to sit.

Unsure what else to do, I did just that, grabbing onto the table when he pushed the chair in in one swift move. Then he settled on the other side of me.

Lucas’s gaze flicked between Kyle and me, and I wished I knew how to ease this tension. “What are you working on?” I asked him.

I got back a one-word answer.

And two from Jayden when I asked him.

So… small talk wasn’t going to be on the agenda tonight.

I turned to Kyle. After all, he was the one I was supposed to be helping. “Why don’t you work on the?—”

“Got it,” Kyle said, and he opened his notebook.

God, this was going to be a long night.

It washard to study when Lucas kept glaring at me. Except I eventually realized that the daggers from his eyes weren’t aimed at me but at Kyle. Kyle was sitting so damn close to me, it was a bit hard to tell.

Normally, it wouldn’t have been a hardship to have a gorgeous baseball player practically looming over me. But Iwasn’t naive. Star athletes didn’t go for women like me. No, this was some kind of power play.

I froze as he rested his hand on the back of my chair, his fingers grazing my hair. His body was angled toward me as he read from the textbook that both our classes used. Or pretended to read. But what he was really doing was laying claim to me.

Not because he wanted me—but because he wanted to piss off Lucas.

And, from the glower on my usually mild-mannered friend’s face, it was working.

Something had to be done, and it was my job to do it. Kyle was my responsibility—I’d been tasked with making him learn the material, and he clearly wasn’t getting much done tonight. And Lucas and Jayden were my friends, yet I’d forced them to be in the company of a man they clearly didn’t like.

Crap.

After another minute of thought, I raised my arms, stretching. As I casually swung them around, I ‘accidentally’ almost elbowed Kyle in the face, and he was forced to back off. Jayden and Lucas were staring at me, but I kept pretending that I was just innocently stretching. But I probably wasn’t fooling anyone, because when I snuck a quick peek at Kyle out of the corner of my eye, he looked amused as hell.

Damn.

But at least he wasn’t glued to my side anymore.

With a little more room to breathe, I slid my phone out of my bag and positioned it next to my laptop, trying to keep it hidden. Then I sent a text to the one man at the table who wasn’t acting abnormally.Is it just me or are things really tense?

Jayden answered right away.It’s not just you.

I took a quick glance at him and met his eyes. He shrugged slightly, and I returned to my phone.Should we call for a study break?

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