Page 50 of Wish You Were Mine
Not that it was illegal to look up my students’ public bios. But still. It felt…weird. Invasive.
She turned her head in my direction as she tucked some loose hair behind her ear.
A second later, our eyes met.
Her eyes widened briefly, like she hadn’t expected to see me here.
And not knowing what else to do, I gave her a small nod—cool, casual. Like I hadn’t just been low-key reading her gymnastics résumé like it was a love letter.
She nodded back—polite, unreadable—and turned back to the counter with her friends.
No smile. No double take. Just another day in Eden Falls.
Which was exactly how it should be.
She was my student.
Not my friend.
Not the girl I kissed in a hot tub.
Not the one I’d been thinking about way too much for someone who should’ve moved on by now.
Just a student.
I stared down at The Brews logo that was stamped on the cardboard sleeve of my coffee cup and tried to shake my paranoia away.
I needed to get Lucy out of my head. Needed to find someone else to occupy my mind.
So, doing that the best way I knew how, I pulled up the Meet Your Match app on my phone and started swiping through the various women who popped up.
Hopefully, a few dates with other interesting women would help me stop thinking so much about the one who was completely off-limits.
The energy inside the EFU arena hit me the moment I walked through the doors—upbeat pop music pulsing through the speakers, the buzz of conversation echoing off the high ceiling, a low hum of anticipation beneath it all.
There were still fifteen minutes until the meet officially started, but the place was already filling up. Students, families, faculty. Even a few little kids in sparkly leotards running around near the bottom rows.
I glanced toward the competition floor, scanning past the balance beam and uneven bars until my eyes snagged on the red leotard near the vault runway.
Lucy.
She was talking with her coach, head tilted slightly, hands on her hips, her expression focused like she was getting some sort of feedback.
Her bleached-blonde hair was parted cleanly down themiddle, two tight French braids slicked back and twisted into a bun at the crown of her head. A light dusting of chalk clung to her thighs, probably from brushing against the bars or beam mid-warmup—evidence that she’d already been hard at work.
And despite all the reasons I’d been dreading tonight—sitting near her parents, praying they didn’t pick up on the fact that their daughter’s professor had a not-so-mini crush—I found myself suddenly, stupidly eager to see the expertise I’d read about in her bio in action.
I just had to make sure that if I looked impressed, it came across as academic. Respect for her athleticism. Her power. Her technique.
Not because I was fighting off memories of what it felt like to hold her in a hot tub.
Her gaze drifted toward the stands and for a split second, I could’ve sworn we locked eyes.
My heart thudded. Hard.
But then, she turned back to her coach, rubbing her shoulder absently while listening to whatever correction she was given, like nothing had just happened.
Okay. Maybe she hadn’t seen me.
