Wilder

“What? I can’t hear you,” he said with a grin, putting his hand to his ear.

“You can hear me just fine, Paxton Wilder,” I shouted.

“Come on up. I don’t want to have to yell back at you.” He motioned to the ladder that led to the stage. “Or there’s a ramp right there.”

I opted for the second, heading for the side of the theater.

“Hey!” Brooke said from a seat at the edge, her notebooks perched on her lap. “Did you come to watch?”

“More to yell at Paxton for missing class,” I said, passing behind her.

“Nothing better than a nagging woman hanging around,” Zoe bit back, kicking her feet from the edge of the stage.

“I’m getting tired of telling you to stop being a bitch, Zoe,” Brooke snapped. “I’ll walk you up, Leah.”

“How is Wilder juggling schoolwork and practice?” Bobby asked, a camera not far behind him.

I stole Landon’s line. “That’s a question for Wilder, don’t you think?”

He tipped his hat with a smile. “You’re a fast learner.”

“You’re always in my face,” I said with an overly sweet smile.

Brooke tugged me past the crew and up the ramp.

“Come on,” Pax said with a grin, now at the top of the half-pipe.

“Would you stop going higher?” I asked, my heart jumping.

“How much do you want to yell at me for missing class?” he responded, motioning to the ladder that led to the platform at the top of the half-pipe.

My hands grasped both sides of the ladder in a death grip. The landing had a railing at the back of it, no doubt to keep his idiotic ass from falling off when a trick went wrong. I could easily make it up there. It was only twenty feet, and by God, he was not killing my scholarship because he couldn’t get his ass to class.

Rung by rung, I climbed the ladder, humming Katy Perry’s “Firework” to distract me from the distance to the ground.

My head popped over the rim of the half-pipe, and Paxton offered his hand, his eyes shining with a kind of victory.

“What are you so happy about?” I mumbled as he pulled me onto the platform, which was wider than I’d expected. My hand immediately sought and found the railing, and I loosened my death grip on Paxton.

“Look at you, up on my pipe.”

My eyebrow arched. “Your pipe is distracting you from class.”

He smirked. “It always does.”

“Oh my God, you two.” Brooke laughed, climbing up behind me. “I’ll give you some space,” she said as she skirted around us, heading to the other end.

The camera was on the opposite side, giving us a tiny bit of privacy. “It’s good to see you,” Paxton said, his eyes skimming my features.

“That’s because you haven’t been to class in about two and a half days. You’ve missed every single Physics class since Bermuda.”

“I’m studying physics right now,” he joked. “Shouldn’t that count as extra credit?”

“No.”

All traces of joking left his face, and he absentmindedly rubbed the tattoo on the side of his neck with his empty hand. “Look, I get kind of in the zone and forget that things outside this exist.”

“You can’t do that,” I snapped, keeping my voice quiet to avoid the microphones on the opposite side. “You’re losing participation points, and your homework—”

“I turned it in on eCampus,” he interjected.

“And the discussion in Lit?” He was not getting off the hook that easily.

“Did you take notes?” He lifted his arms behind his neck, his biceps flexing.

Don’t get distracted. “Of course I did.”

He shrugged. “Then what’s the issue?”

My mouth hung for a second before I managed to close it. “What’s the issue? You’re not in class!”

“But you are.”

“And?”

“And you’re my tutor. So you have notes and can catch me up, right?”

Do not smack him. Don’t do it. I sucked in a deep breath through my nose. “I am your tutor, not your teacher. You have to be there! Damn it, Paxton, there’s more than yourself to think about. My scholarship rides on your grades, too!”

“So do all of their jobs,” he said quietly, his hand sweeping to encompass everyone on the pipe. “Leah, if I don’t make grades, the documentary is canceled.”

“Wait. What? What kind of producer would tie a movie to your academics?”

“The kind who shares my last name.” He wiped away his sweat the same way Landon had, by lifting his shirt, and I kept my eyes locked on his face. I knew one look at those cut lines and I’d be a puddle of hormones, which wouldn’t do either of us any good.

“Your last…” His dad owned the boat on Bermuda, but how much money did he really come from? “Is your dad the producer?”

He nodded. “Yeah, and he agreed to the movie as long as my grades held. It’s his way of getting me to finish college.”

The ship pitched again, and my hand tightened on the railing as Paxton’s gripped my waist. He inhaled with a hiss and then dropped his hand like I’d burned him. I knew my waist was thicker than the athletic goddesses he hung out with, but really? “Well, you can’t finish college without making grades, so maybe you should get your ass to class.”