Wilder

“Noted,” I said, taking an empty seat in the front. He surprised me by sliding into the one directly behind me instead of beside me.

“Some view,” he said quietly into my hair, which I’d left down today.

I took in the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the length of the room. For miles there was only blue Caribbean water. “Breathtaking.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, but I felt the slight movement of my hair, and when I glanced back, he dropped a few strands from between his fingers.

I snapped my head to face forward. Not for you. That guy is not for you.

“Good morning, class,” our professor said as she sailed through the doors, headed for the podium. Her red hair was swept into a topknot, and she wore the same kind of linen pants I did. “I’m Dr. Mae, and I’ll be your professor for World Literature in the first trimester. If that’s not the class you signed up for, the door is behind you,” she added with a friendly smile.

“We take on a ton of reading in this class, and I’ve found that students work better in pairs to discuss reading on their own time. First and third rows, turn around and meet your partner.”

I turned to see Paxton grin, his blue eyes sparkling more than the water we were sailing through. “Hi.”

“Go figure,” I mumbled. There was no escaping him. Why do you want to?

I nearly scoffed at my own thoughts. There was wanting something you couldn’t have, and then there was being shown fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven and being told not to touch—they’d burn you, and besides, they were for the prettier, whole girls, not the broken ones.

Broken girls got the stale, crumbled, oatmeal raisin ones.

“Now find out a few things about your partner, because you’re going to give their introduction.”

“You have to be kidding.” If there hadn’t been twenty eyes on me, I would have slammed my forehead into the desk. Like Paxton needed an introduction.

“Okay, what do you want the class to know, Mr. Wilder?” I asked.

His eyes narrowed slightly, and he sucked his lower lip into his mouth, skimming his teeth over it. My stomach clenched in a way it had no business doing, imagining what he would do to my lower lip.

“I don’t care about the class. What do you want to know?”

I blinked, tearing my eyes away from his before I couldn’t think. “I want to know what’s not on Google.”

One of his dimples made an appearance, and I had the most insane impulse to run my tongue along it. Holy shit, get a grip. “Ask anything you want.”

“What’s your major?”

“Physics. Come on, you can do better than that.”

“Why even go to college, or do this program, if you’re already a superstar?”

“I took last year off when we made it big. Graduating is part of the legal agreement to get my trust fund, among other things my father likes to bargain for.”

Trust-fund baby. Of course. “So it’s all about money?”

He shook his head. “It’s about the movie, the stunts, the rush, doing something no one’s ever done before. The money just makes it possible.”

“I thought you were sponsored? You have that energy drink stuff all over your YouTube channel.”

“Checking up on me again, eh, Firecracker?”

I felt my cheeks heat. “If I’d forced you onto a zip-line and into a documentary, scared the living crap out of you, and then nearly drowned you, you’d be checking up on me, too.”

“No, I’d be saying thank you. Everything you said sounds pretty damn good. Well, except the cameras. They get old fast.” He tapped his pencil on the desktop, and his eyes flickered toward the door, where there was, in fact, a camera with its lens against the glass panel. “Especially when they show up places they said they wouldn’t.”

“Then why keep them?”

“Because if no one sees the epic moments, did they ever really happen?”

Our eyes locked, and my breath became pure energy in my lungs, sending butterflies into my stomach while rushing a strange chill through my limbs. “I think it depends on who you define as no one. Not everything epic is meant for a worldwide audience.”

The cocky camera grin replaced the one I was quickly becoming enamored with, transforming him from Paxton to Wilder right in front of my eyes. “Well, that depends on what your definition of epic is. I can definitely say there are some one-on-one moments that aren’t meant for camera. Unless they’re giving the documentary an X rating.”

Well, if that didn’t kill the butterflies. Arrogant asshole.

“We’re going to get started,” Dr. Mae said, and the people down the line from us began their intros.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I whispered at him.

“Not nearly enough, Firecracker, but I can get through this.”

Why did I have the feeling that was going to be his entire attitude to schoolwork this year? Fine, if he wanted to skate by, I could do it, too.

Shit, it was already our turn.

“Begin when you’re ready,” Dr. Mae said from her desk at the front of the room.

“I’m Leah Baxter, and this is Wilder, but I’m sure you all know that,” I said, taking in every awestruck look on the guys and every wistful look on the girls. I nearly smacked Paxton in the stomach when I saw him raise his eyebrows for a girl in the third row. “Wilder is a senior, majoring in physics, most likely because he likes to hurl his body at every obstacle he can.” The class laughed. “He’s stubborn, ambitious, and has two X Game medals.”