Never Underestimate Girl Math novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lab

Chase teaches her at night, kisses her, and Lou reads the text on his phone.

The math lab was a long room on the third floor with whiteboards on three walls and one lamp burning.

Chase Gilmer sat on the edge of a table with his sleeves rolled up, waiting.

I was ten minutes early and so was he.

"You came," he said.

"You said eleven."

"People say yes to a lot of things and don't show up."

"I'm not people," I said. "I'm a farmhand who wants a hundred and twenty thousand dollars."

The corner of his mouth moved.

It was almost a smile, and it changed his whole face.

He slid a marker across the table.

"Four problems," he said. "Past Cup finals. No calculator. Talk while you work."

"Why talk?"

"Because I want to hear how you think."

I took the marker and walked to the board.

The first problem was a supply chain with delays.

It looked ugly, and it was only crates.

I broke it into trays and trucks, and I talked the whole way through.

I told him about the packing shed at Stephens, where the foreman once ran out of boxes at the worst possible hour.

I told him how my father taught me to count by sixes and sevens because the picking crews never stop moving.

Chase listened with his arms crossed.

He did not interrupt once.

By the third problem, he had stopped leaning against the table and was standing behind my shoulder.

I could feel how close he was.

He smelled like soap, and chalk, and a little like coffee.

"Wait," he said, when I reached the middle line. "You skipped a step."

"I didn't skip it. I did it in my head."

"Show me."

I turned around to explain.

He was nearer than I had thought.

I had to tip my head back to look at him.

His eyes were grey, and they were not on the board.

"Here," I said, and my voice came out lower than I meant.

"Seven by six, carry the rest."

"It's the same thing you do at the till."

He took the marker out of my hand.

His fingers brushed mine, and neither of us moved.

"Lou," he said.

It was the first time he had said my name out loud.

"You've been standing in my class for two months," he said quietly. "And I have been trying not to look at you."

My heart was going so hard I could hear it.

"Why?"

"Because I'm your advisor."

"You signed a form."

"I know what I signed."

"Then stop looking at the form," I said.

He closed the space between us in one step.

His hand came up and slid into the loose end of my braid, and he kissed me.

It was not careful.

It was a man who had been holding something back for a long time and had run out of reasons.

I grabbed his shirt in both fists and kissed him back.

My back met the whiteboard.

A marker rolled across the floor.

His mouth was hot, and hungry, and he made a low sound against my lips that went straight down my spine.

I had worked since four in the morning.

I was tired, and my hands were rough, and I did not care about any of it.

I wanted this.

His thumb traced the line of my jaw.

His other hand settled at my waist and pulled me flush against him, and I felt exactly how much he wanted me too.

"Lou," he said against my mouth, rough.

"Don't stop."

He didn't.

He kissed my neck, and I tipped my head back and let him.

His phone buzzed on the table behind him.

It buzzed again.

I opened my eyes without meaning to.

The screen had lit up, face up, three feet from my hand.

PEYTON WHITAKER.

Is she in yet?

Then, right under it:

Thirty thousand clears the day she quits. Don't forget your fellowship either.

I read it once.

I did not need to read it twice.

Chase's mouth was still on my throat, and his hand was still warm at my hip.

He had not seen the phone.

I stood very still while the numbers settled into place.

A TA who volunteered to sign for the girl nobody would sign for.

A lab left open at eleven.

A man who had watched me for two months and said nothing until the day Peyton made her bet.

I added it up.

It came out the same every way I did it.

He was being paid to take me apart.

I should have shoved him away.

I should have walked out and never gone back.

Instead, I looked at his bent head, and his scarred eyebrow, and his hands shaking a little on my waist.

I had never been wanted in my life.

And I had never had anything to lose that Peyton Whitaker hadn't already tried to take.

I slid my fingers into his hair and tipped his face up to mine.

"Is that your phone?" I said.

He glanced back at the table.

"It's nothing," he said. "Work."

"Then let's work," I said, and pulled his mouth back down.

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