Page 15 of Cruel When He Smiles

The classroom is freezing, which doesn’t help.

I’m sitting in the third row of my Anatomy and Injury Assessment class, watching Dr. McKenna scrawl some shit across the board about ACL tears. Her voice is a low drone in the background while I stare down at my notes and realize I’ve written the same incomplete sentence three times.

Ligament damage is most often caused by…

I blink down at it, hand frozen around my pen, and will myself to focus long enough to finish the goddamn lecture. Just longenough to stop thinking about Liam fucking Callahan and the words he said yesterday. His voice still rings in my ears, and I hate that I remember the warmth of it or how close he stood.

And I really fucking hate that I can still hearhervoice underneath it all.

Sweetheart. Nathaniel. Baby.

Jesus fuck, my skin crawls just thinking about it.

I breathe out a sigh while trying to concentrate, but the words on the screen blur at the edges. I know this shit. I’ve been studying the mechanics of pain since I was sixteen, trying to make sense of what people do when they’re hurting. How they mask it. How they push past it. How the body betrays the mind when it’s stretched too far.

I can diagnose a dislocated shoulder in under thirty seconds. I can wrap a torn ligament with my eyes half shut. I can predict how long it’ll take for someone to heal based on the pattern of bruising and swelling on a single knee.

But I can’t fix this.

Whatever the fuckthisis.

The class ends, and I snap my notebook closed, shoving it into my bag with more force than necessary. Sage is waiting by the door because the bitch has my schedule attached to his own. He’s already halfway through a protein bar, blond hair is sticking up in three different directions, and it looks like he overslept but didn’t give a shit.

“Hey, bitch,” he mutters around a mouthful. “You look ready to kill someone this morning.”

I shoulder my bag. “Thanks. You gonna join?”

He grins and falls into step beside me as we move through the hallway. It’s crowded with students pouring out of lecture halls and labs, everyone checked out already, even though it’s barely mid-week. Sage doesn’t speak again until we’re outside, the sun barely warming the chill clinging to the air.

“You sleep at all?” he asks.

“No.”

“You eat?”

I shoot him a look. “You my mom now?”

Sage shrugs, unoffended. “Nah. She wouldn’t have asked. She’d have psychoanalyzed your hunger and made it your fault.”

My breath stutters, and he notices, quickly speaking again. “Shit. Sorry. That was—” he pauses, grimacing, “—not helpful.”

I exhale slowly, my hands jamming into my pockets. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not.”

We cross the quad in silence for a minute where there are students splayed out on benches and grass, pretending the cold doesn’t bite. Everything looks too normal. Too bright. Like the world didn’t tilt yesterday.

Sage nudges my arm. “Wanna grab coffee before your next class?”

“I should go study.”

“Right. Because ignoring your trauma with textbooks has worked so well before.”

I glare at him. “You’re such a fucking—”

“Sweetheart, right?” He grins, and I want to punch him.

But I follow him to the student café anyway because the alternative is being alone with my thoughts, and I already know how that’ll end. Probably in the gym. Probably punching a bag until my knuckles split again.