Page 5

Chapter

Four

I made it to the science theatre with three minutes to spare, winded from speed-walking across campus and dodging two separate high school tour groups and a guy trying to sell student union planners out of a duffel bag.

The class was already half full. Turns out, math students are huge nerds and have nothing better to do than show up early to lecture.

Professor Kowalski stood at the front, fiddling with the transparency projector.

He wore his usual tweed jacket and brown slacks, his salt and pepper hair tufting in the back like a duckling.

He looked up as I slid into my usual seat near the front. “Miss Taylor.” See? He hadn't been to my house or walked down my hall half naked, and he still remembered my last name. “A word, if you’ve got a second before we start?”

My pulse kicked up. Not because I was in trouble—Kowalski liked me—but because being summoned by an authority figure still triggered academic fight-or-flight in my DNA. I stood and walked down to the front, clutching my notebook like a shield.

“A little bird told me that you recently offered to tutor a couple of student-athletes.” He ground the R's in that sentence, his eastern European accent mostly beaten out of him after living in Alberta for the past forty years.

My spine straightened. A little bird? The only person who knew I'd offered tutoring was Chase. Warmth bloomed in my chest. Had he been talking about me to other professors? “Yes? I mean—I offered, but I don’t know if they’re taking me up on it.”

He tilted his head. “Well, I hope they do because, frankly, we need more students like you involved in the mess that is athletics right now.”

Mess? He spat the words with enough passion that I almost believed he cared about something other than differential equations.

He adjusted his glasses. “Douglas is putting together a small academic-athletic oversight committee. It’s in partnership with the registrar’s office.

We’re looking at building a pilot program to support at-risk athletes academically.

” He muttered something under his breath, shook his head, and then the dam broke.

“This is exactly the problem, Madelyn. We’ve got administrators bending over backward to keep players eligible like we’re running some junior version of the NCAA.

It used to be that if you couldn’t keep up academically, you didn’t play.

Simple. Consequence. Accountability. But now?

Now we’re talking about ‘retention support’ and ‘performance optimization’ like these kids are fragile little glass dolls who’ll break if they open a textbook. ”

He was heating up now, pacing a few steps in front of the projector cart.

“You know what this is? It’s American rot.

That’s what it is. Booster culture. Grade inflation.

God help us, there’s talk of corporate sponsorship on jerseys next year.

Jerseys! Can you imagine? ‘Douglas Outlaws brought to you by Tim Hortons.’”

He snapped a cap back on his pen like he was sealing a bomb.

“This is academia, not a farm team. We’re supposed to educate these students, not groom them for TSN highlight reels.

But no—now we need committees to make sure our delicate athletes don’t fall behind while they’re off skipping class for a game in Moose Jaw. ”

He stopped suddenly, narrowed his eyes at a speck on the transparency, and scraped it off with his thumbnail. Then, like nothing had happened, he straightened. “I’d like you on it.”

I blinked, trying to rewind and remember what we were talking about before the decline of University athletics. “On the committee?”

“You’d be the only student,” he said. “Everyone else will be staff or faculty. It’s not a casual ask.”

“No, I—yes. I mean, absolutely. Yes.”

Kowalski nodded once, satisfied. “Perfect. The first meeting is this afternoon. Four o'clock sharp."

Well. Nothing like spur of the moment. I tried to play it cool. But inside, I was already writing the scholarship essay paragraph in my head. Demonstrated leadership and creative initiative in a revolutionary collaboration with administration for the support of student athletes ? —

"Miss Taylor?"

My head snapped up.

Professor Kowalski looked amused. "I'd like to begin class now if it's alright with you."

"Yes. Of course. Sorry. And thank you so much for thinking of me."

He nodded once and turned to the projector as I found my seat. Four o'clock. That was fine. I would have just enough time to drive back to my apartment and change for trivia night, then come back for the meeting. That would save me the drive back again to pick up Shar and Crystal.

I pulled out my text, notebook, and pencil. So. Chase may not have emailed me, but obviously he'd been working behind the scenes. Did he know that something like this would be far more impressive than a simple paragraph about tutoring?

I grinned to myself, then turned my attention to the projector.

_____

When my last class ended, I jogged to the parking lot and headed home, ignoring the way my Rabbit made a grinding noise every time I turned left.

I would have exactly forty-three minutes to shower, change, and emotionally prepare myself for a faculty-led committee meeting.

Kowalski had given me his thoughts on the athlete/academic situation, but I was beyond curious about what the other administrators and professors would bring to the table.

Why would they start a committee if they didn't want to help?

And why was the situation dire enough to require this kind of organization?

By the time I slammed the apartment door behind me, I’d already stripped off my jacket and pulled the scrunchie out of my hair.

Tash looked up from her perch on the couch, a half-painted toe propped on the coffee table and a European cinema book open on her lap like Sailor Moon reruns weren't playing on the TV behind her on loop.

“Hot guy or crisis?” She raised one perfectly sculpted brow. "Never mind. A hot guy would be a crisis for you."

I snorted, kicking off my shoes and heading toward my room. “Trivia at the Den. Want to come?”

“To celebrate intellectual hedonism?"

“So that's a no?” I called over my shoulder. I darted into my room, yanked open my closet, and stared, faced with an instant conundrum. I pulled out my satin halter top. Definitely not appropriate for a committee meeting, but perfect for trivia night. I flicked through my blouses.

Tash appeared in the doorway. "Do you want to look like a librarian at trivia night?"

"Librarians here are all white."

Tash chortled. "You like math. You're the whitest girl I know."

I channelled all my attitude and flipped her the bird, but she wasn't wrong. Not having my dad around meant I grew up solely with my mom and her side of the family. As a kid, it wasn't until someone tried to touch my hair that I remembered I didn't look like everyone else.

Tash smirked and sat on my bed. She pointed at a black tank top—scoop-necked, fitted. “Your boobs look great in that.”

“I can't wear that to my meeting."

"You said trivia night."

"Yeah. I have a meeting first, though." I frowned at a floral top I thought I'd thrown out last semester. It made me look like a kindergartner.

"So what you do is . . ." Tash jumped up and walked over to the closet. She grabbed a maroon knit sweater from the shelf and handed it to me. “Layer."

It was excellent advice. As long as the sweater didn't leave threads all over the tank top. I took a lint brush just in case.

I pulled into the university lot with time to spare but zero idea where I was going.

The Douglas administration building loomed in front of me.

I hadn't thought to ask Kowalski where the meeting was, but the offices were still open for the day.

If I was in the wrong place, they'd be able to direct me.

I leaned over to see myself in the rearview mirror and swiped on a layer of berry lipstick.

Too much? Maybe. I tried not to overthink it.

I tucked the lipstick back in my coat pocket, grabbed my bag, and opened the door. A blast of wind hit me square in the face, and I immediately regretted my shoe choice. Black heels under my bootcut jeans. Cute. Professional. Zero traction. Hopefully I wouldn't have to hike across campus.

I trudged up the walkway, dodging a sandwich wrapper that flung itself at my knee like a tiny paper ghost.

I burst through the doors and took a moment to compose myself in the airlock, then stepped inside. I walked up to the front desk, trying to ignore that the sharp click of my heels on the tile echoed through the entire atrium.

I smiled at the receptionist. “Hi, I’m here for the committee meeting?” I winced at the vagueness of that description. This was a university. They probably had more than a handful of committee meetings happening every afternoon.

“Madelyn Taylor?” She gave me a questioning look. When I nodded, she pointed me toward a sign that read, Meeting Rooms A–D. “You’ll be in C.”

I thanked her, then walked past the desk and down the hall. I’d never been past the entry of the admin building, and it felt strange. Privileged. Like I was seeing behind the scenes at Disney World.

I didn’t have to do any sleuthing to find the room because Professor Kowalksi was standing at the end of the hall with a woman I didn’t recognize. She had jet black hair that grazed her shoulders and an easy smile that made me wonder if she taught poetry or drama.

Kowalski introduced me—she was the Dean of Business, which made me internally promise that I would never make snap judgments about anyone again.

A promise which I immediately broke. Because as I walked into the room, after noticing that the walls were the colour of manila folders and there was a long, rectangular table that looked like it had been repurposed from a church basement, my eyes landed on a familiar figure.

He was at the far end of the table, seated sideways with one arm draped across the back of his chair, talking with someone. Chase looked up mid-sentence and froze, two lines forming between his brows.

He hadn’t known I was coming. No, more than that. He had no idea it was a possibility that I would come. Which meant he hadn’t been the little bird that talked with Kowalski. He hadn’t emailed me, and he clearly hadn’t done a damn thing to move forward with my tutoring offer.

Judgment snapped into place faster than a slapshot off the tape—clean, fast, and final. I didn’t know anything about Chase Wilson. And I no longer wanted to.