Page 28 of The Beautiful Collision
“Count me in,” Mike says with a shrug, having given me an out I’d refused.
“Same,” Cooper adds with his robot efficiency.
Schmidt, Martinez, Kellerman, and Rook—they pile on.
“Well?” Rook extends his palm. “Are we doing this, or are you all talk?”
The smart play is to laugh it off. Double back. Take Mike’s exit ramp. But they’re all watching and waiting, and there’s no way in hell I’m backing out of this now. So my hand moves on autopilot, gripping Rook’s and shaking, his palm dry with confidence while mine is slick with panic.
“You’re on.”
The range erupts.
“This will be beautiful,” Rook says, releasing my hand.
The golf mockery? Ancient history. I’ve given them something better, because Maya doesn’t do relationships, doesn’t do feelings, andabsolutelydoesn’t do love. She does one-night precision strikes where her eyes make you feel like the only person alive, then forgets your name by sunrise.
And I’ve just bet $600 I don’t have that I can rewrite her code.
Think, you colossal idiot. THINK.
But all I can see is Maya in those yoga shorts. That surgical wit that dissects me every time. The way she’s looked at me a few times, real heat in those dark eyes for one cardiac-arrestsecond, before she shuts it down. The way she smells, the way she laughs…
And, suddenly, I decide to go for it.
Why not?
I’m MainefuckingHamilton, and it’s game on.
nine
MAYA
My clinical textbookmight as well be Maine’s abs for all the studying I’m managing.
The memory sucker-punches me—water tracking down his chest, collecting at that criminal towel line, the flex when he’d raked fingers through his wet gold hair. My pen attacks the cardstock with personal vengeance at the thought, because he’s getting to me.
“Morning, bro.” Two words. That’s all it took to establish dominance and send Tyler scrambling like someone lit his Sperrys on fire.
Point: Maine.
Except I’d clapped back, hadn’t I?
Emerged wearing nothing but Maine’s stolen jersey, the hem playing a dangerous game of peek-a-boo with decency. And then I’d turned fruit consumption into a fellatio masterclass, working that strawberry like I was auditioning for late-night cable.
The response?
A jaw clench and a jeans adjustment that screamed “unexpected wood alert.”
Point: Maya.
My thighs squeeze together under the table, a full-body betrayal I refuse to acknowledge as I get back to the textbook. Cardiac output regulation—hilarious, considering my heart redlines every time I think about our living situation, which is both necessary (money…) and intoxicating (everything else…).
We’re locked in this psychosexual game of chicken, each morning a fresh escalation in our war of attrition. His shirtless pull-ups. Those gray sweatpants that violate several Geneva Convention articles. The way he emerges from showers with that towel hanging by a prayer and physics I don’t understand.
My retaliation: yoga performed with malicious intent, nighttime skincare in silk that clings like a whisper to wherever gravity dictates, and reorganizing his shower caddy just so I can imagine him fumbling blind, wet, cursing my name in ways that make my spine tingle.
It—
