Chapter 139: Problem
"We have a problem," I said.
Ryder didn’t look up immediately. He slowly closed the textbook with one hand, the way someone closes something they’ve been staring at for a while without actually reading it.
"I know," he replied.
I stopped. "You know?"
"Jake sent it to me at noon." He finally looked up. The glasses were still on. "Along with approximately forty crying-laughing emojis and a voice note I didn’t listen to."
"And you didn’t call me?"
"I was figuring out what to do about it first." He leaned back in his chair. "Did you see the like count?"
"Over a thousand as of yesterday afternoon."
"Fourteen hundred as of an hour ago," he said. "Donovan’s been tracking it."
I sat down in the chair across from him. Of course Donovan was tracking it. Of course the whole house already knew. I’d spent two days carrying this carefully, waiting for the right moment, and it had already been a full Sin Bin conversation before I got here.
"Okay," I said, pulling myself back to the problem. "So we both know. What do we do?"
"Friday," he said, which was exactly what I’d been thinking all week.
"Friday," I agreed. "You’re benched but you’re in the VIP section. The entire athletic department in one room, all of them with this post in their heads. If we walk in and out of that game looking like the post is laughable, most people drop it."
"It needs to be convincing without being performed," Ryder said, straightening. "Too perfect reads staged. We need to look comfortable. Boring, even. Like two people who forgot other people were watching."
"That’s harder than it sounds."
"Not for you," he said. "You shut down Liam at the Sigma party without blinking. You know how to own a room."
"That was anger," I said. "Anger is easy. This is different."
"How?"
I looked at the desk for a second. "Anger gives you something to push against. Tomorrow I just have to look like I’m exactly where I want to be. Standing next to you. Voluntarily." I met his gaze. "That requires a different kind of acting."
Something moved across his face, and he didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the desk and cutting the space between us in half. The faint scent of cedar and mint instantly wrapped around me.
"So don’t act," he murmured in a low, gravelly voice.
I blinked, my brain momentarily short-circuiting. "Huh?"
Ryder leaned in a fraction more, invading my personal space entirely. His dark eyes locked onto mine, burning with a sudden, intense challenge that left my chest tight and my breath hitching.
"Don’t act," he repeated softly. "Actually want to be there. Actually want me standing next to you."
The air in the room suddenly felt incredibly thin.
I opened my mouth to fire back a sarcastic retort, to remind him that this was just a business arrangement, but my vocal cords flat-out refused to cooperate.
He was too close, his gaze was too heavy, and the terrifying truth was that I wouldn’t have to act at all.
"Can you do that?" he pushed, the corner of his mouth tipping up into a knowing smirk.
"I..." I swallowed hard, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. "I... yeah. I can do it."
He held my gaze a beat longer than necessary, clearly enjoying the fact that he had completely flustered me.
"Good," he murmured. He finally leaned back, breaking the spell and allowing me to breathe again.
He nodded once. "Then wear something that isn’t a statement. The green dress was perfect for the party but tomorrow needs to look like you just showed up because you wanted to. So maybe jeans? With a hockey jersey if you have one."
"I don’t."
Without responding, he stood up, went to his closet, and pulled out a folded jersey. Number fourteen. He set it on the desk between us. "You do now."
"I do?"
"Bring the hoodie back too. It’s going to be cold in the rink."
I looked at the jersey. "This is you claiming territory."
"This is us looking like an actual couple," he corrected. "There’s a difference."
"Is there?"
He held my gaze a beat longer than necessary. "Probably."
I picked it up and set it carefully on top of the returned hoodie in my lap. "What else?"
"Don’t arrive together," he said, sitting back down. "If we walk in as a unit it looks coordinated. You get there first, find your seat. I come in, find you, and sit down. Like it’s just where I naturally end up." He paused. "Don’t check your phone during the game. If you’re on your phone, you’re not present. People notice."
"What about Liam? He’ll be there."
"Let him look," Ryder said flatly. "If he comes over, you don’t move toward him and you don’t move away. You stay exactly where you are and let me handle the talking."
"I can handle my own talking."
"I know you can," he said. "But at that game, I need people watching us be easy together, not watching you verbally destroy your ex-boyfriend." He almost smiled. "Entertaining as that would be."
I conceded that with a small nod. "Fine."
"And the post," he continued. "Don’t acknowledge it. Don’t repost it, don’t comment, don’t even like someone else’s comment defending us. The second we acknowledge it exists, it gets bigger."
"Silence reads as guilt to some people."
"Silence reads as confidence to more people," he countered. "Whoever wrote it wants a reaction. We give them nothing. We just show up Friday looking like we have absolutely nothing to prove."
I exhaled slowly. It was a good plan... a frustratingly, annoyingly good plan.
"Okay," I said. "Should we do the Chain Rule now, or have we just turned this into a strategy meeting?"
"Both," he said, already reaching for the textbook. "We still have an exam in three weeks and I’m not failing because someone posted something stupid on Briar Confessions."
I pulled out my notebook, fully prepared. Inside the cover were four sticky notes labelled in block letters: OUTER, INNER, DERIVE OUTER, and MULTIPLY.
I peeled off the first one and stuck it to the edge of the desk between us.
Ryder looked at it. "What is that?"
"Don’t argue with the system," I replied. "Outer function is something cubed. What’s the derivative of x cubed?"
"Three x squared," he said without hesitating.
"Good. But leave the inside alone. The inside is two x plus one. So it’s three times two x plus one, squared." I peeled the next note. "Now, multiply by the derivative of the inside. What’s the derivative of two x plus one?"
He worked through it out loud, stepping through each part the way he’d learnt to. The second you took the letters off the page, his brain moved fast and correctly.
"Two," he said.
"So the whole thing?"
He paused. "Three times the inside squared, times two." Another pause as he did the mental math. "Six times two x plus one, squared."
"That’s it," I said, peeling the final sticky note. "That’s the Chain Rule."
He stared at the sticky notes. "You actually carried those in your bag for this."
"Because I knew you’d throw the salt shaker at me if I tried to recreate the diner on your desk," I said.
That pulled a short, genuine laugh out of him, and the tension in his shoulders dropped a fraction.
We worked through two more problems, and for approximately fifteen minutes the Briar Confessions post didn’t exist and Friday was just another day of the week and we were just two people in a frat house bedroom doing calculus with sticky notes.
Then, a commotion started downstairs. It wasn’t typical party noise... the house had been quiet when I walked in with no sign of a party happening soon.
This sounded different.
Jake’s voice was louder than his usual easy chatter, strained in a way that suggested he was trying to handle a situation he couldn’t quite control.
Ryder went still and listened for exactly three seconds. "Stay here," he said, standing.
"Absolutely not," I replied, already getting up.
He gave me one look that was supposed to stop me from following him. It didn’t. He went first anyway, moving quietly while I followed down the wide staircase into the entryway.
Jake was at the open front door, one hand braced on the frame, doing his best to fill the space with his considerable frame.
He turned when he heard us on the stairs, and the expression on his face told me everything before I even saw who was on the porch.
It was the kind of face that said I tried.
Lexi stood in the doorway.
She was wearing a Briar Hockey sweatshirt and held a set of notes, though it was obvious they weren’t why she came. She looked past Jake the moment she heard us on the stairs. Her gaze landed on Ryder first... then on me.