Chapter 263: [4.81] Cassidy’s Personal Vietnam

"I never said you were." I kept going. Problem four, correct. Five through eight, all correct. Nine had a minor arithmetic error that didn’t affect the final answer because the mistake cancelled itself out two steps later by sheer luck, and I circled it in red anyway so she’d know. Ten through fifteen, clean. Sixteen was wrong, but the setup was perfect and the error was in the final division step, the kind of careless mistake that happened when your brain got tired at 2 AM and numbers started swimming.

"Sixteen is wrong."

Her jaw tightened. I watched the muscle jump beneath the skin of her cheek, the same tell she’d had since our first session when wrong answers felt like confirmation that she was everything her mother said she was. But she didn’t explode. She didn’t throw the paper. She didn’t stand up and storm out.

She pulled the page back, found the problem, stared at it for eight seconds, and then whispered a word that would have gotten her a detention if Mrs. Chen had been within earshot.

"I divided by four instead of three."

"You divided by four instead of three."

"Because I wrote the three as a four because my brain hates me."

"Your brain doesn’t hate you. Your brain wrote a four because you were exhausted at 2 AM and fours and threes look similar when you’re running on fumes. That’s not a learning issue. That’s a sleep issue."

Cassidy looked at me over her glasses. The purple of her irises caught the morning light and turned almost violet, and the blush had reached her cheeks now, right on schedule, twelve seconds from the moment I’d sat down. Her lower lip was slightly chapped where she’d been chewing it while working, a nervous habit she only displayed when she was alone or when she forgot I was watching.

She was always forgetting I was watching.

"Seventeen through twenty," I said, returning to the grading. "All correct."

Her breath hitched. Not a gasp, not a dramatic intake, just a small catch in the rhythm that she covered immediately by adjusting her glasses with the heel of her hand.

"That’s eighteen out of twenty."

"Ninety percent."

The number sat between us on the library table, surrounded by colored pens and graph paper and the morning light that kept making her hair look like it was on fire. Ninety percent. The same score she’d hit on our practice quiz two weeks ago, except this time she’d done it alone at 2 AM without me sitting across from her counting chips and providing real-time feedback. No poker game. No competition. No reward structure. Just Cassidy Valentine alone in her room doing math because she wanted to prove she could.

Her throat moved when she swallowed.

"That’s. Good, right?"

"That’s very good."

"Don’t say it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you’re proud of me or whatever. It’s just math. It’s twenty stupid problems."

"Eighteen correct stupid problems."

"Shut up." But her mouth twitched. The scowl she wore like armor cracked along one seam, and beneath it was the ghost of a smile she’d kill me for noticing. She pulled the graph paper back to her side of the table and stacked the pages neatly, then less neatly, then gave up on neatness entirely and shoved them into her bag with the kind of aggressive tenderness that only made sense if you knew Cassidy. She handled the pages roughly because holding them gently would mean admitting they mattered, and admitting things mattered was Cassidy’s personal Vietnam.

I let her pack up without comment. Sometimes the best thing you could do for someone was shut your mouth and let the moment exist without narrating it.

The library filled gradually around us as students arrived for the day. Mrs. Chen wheeled her cart past our table and gave me the approving nod she reserved for students who actually used the space for its intended purpose, which at Hartwell was a distressingly small percentage of the population. Felix texted asking if I wanted breakfast from the cafeteria, and I declined because I’d eaten a granola bar in the car and also because Felix’s idea of breakfast was four chocolate chip muffins and a suspicious amount of ranch dressing.

Cassidy stood, slung her bag over one shoulder, and looked down at me with an expression that was trying very hard to be casual and failing in every direction.

"So. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

"The festival. The cafe. The costume thing."

"Yes, Cassidy. I remember the festival that we’ve been setting up for two weeks."

"Don’t be a smartass." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her left thigh-high slipped another centimeter down her leg. "I just. I’m not going to see you until tomorrow morning because I have tennis at four and then Vivienne’s making me do some brand thing tonight and Harlow’s doing a final costume check and Sabrina’s being Sabrina."

"Okay."

"So this is. Like. The last time I see you before it all. Starts."

Her ears were so red they could have guided aircraft in low visibility conditions. She gripped the strap of her bag with both hands, her knuckles pale, and her lower lip was caught between her teeth again in that way that made me think about biting it myself, which was a thought I’d been having with increasing frequency and decreasing guilt.

"It’ll be fine, Cassidy."

"I know it’ll be fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine." She exhaled hard through her nose. "I’m going to pass that test on Monday."

"I know you are."

"And then. The bet."

The bet. Twenty-four hours. Whatever Cassidy wanted. Whatever I decided to collect. The terms we’d set in the alcove with her heartbeat drumming against my sternum through her fingertip and her purple eyes daring me to run.

"The bet," I confirmed.

She held my gaze for three seconds. Then four. Five. The library was quiet around us except for the scratch of pens and the distant hum of the ventilation system pushing warm air through ducts that probably cost more than my apartment’s entire HVAC setup. At six seconds, Cassidy’s composure snapped in the most Cassidy way possible.

She reached down, grabbed my tie, and yanked me forward out of the chair so hard my knees hit the edge of the table. My face ended up approximately two inches from hers, close enough that I could smell the mint of her toothpaste and the faintly chemical tang of the energy drink she’d already consumed at 7:50 in the morning. Her grip on my tie was tight enough to wrinkle the fabric Iris had picked out for me, and her purple eyes behind those black-framed glasses were absolutely unhinged.

"I’m going to win, Isaiah Angelo." Her voice was barely above a whisper, raw and fierce and close enough that her breath warmed my lips. "I’m going to pass that test and then you’re mine for twenty-four hours and I’m going to make every single second count. So don’t you dare forget."

She released my tie with a shove that sent me back into my chair, turned on her heel, and walked out of the library with her bag swinging and her hips carrying the particular rhythm of a girl who knew exactly what she’d done and was proud of it. Her left thigh-high continued its slow descent down her leg, unbothered by gravity or propriety or the fundamental laws of hosiery.

I sat there with my wrinkled tie and my hammering pulse and the ghost of mint and energy drink on my face.

Eighteen out of twenty.

She was going to pass.