Beth was going on a weekend trip with Asher. To somewhere called the Plaid Forest. She was making it sound like an exotic private island in the Maldives, not a patch of woods with probably more mosquitoes than trees.
"You should come too" She was stashing clothes into her duffel bag with all the fastness of a snail. Each folded top took approximately half a century.
"I think I have to sit up for Templeman's. ."
"Trigonometry " Beth yawned "Night Carter, that's all we have been hearing from you for the past three days ". Her voice had all the dejectedly deflated tone and her eye roll was enough to compliment the tired of excuses portrait. ..
But it wasn't an excuse, really, was it.
Or shit, maybe it was. .
Templeman's Trigonometry test wasn't until eight days but I had been reading back to back till my eyes had all the cheeriness of a haunted ghost.
A weekend trip with Beth to the Plaid Forest sounded nice : trees,bonfire, that weird cottage Asher rented from his cousin, the smell of barbecue and the freedom of the absence of books.
It could've made me look less… undead, more human.
Alive. Not buried in the carcass of intensive school work.
But then there was Asher.
He was perched on Beth's bed, scrolling through his phone like he wanted to punch the screen into submission. When I looked his way, his eyes snapped up—sharp, territorial, like I'd just threatened to sit in his personal oxygen zone.
And just like that, I fell right back into my safe, nerdy cocoon.
"Yeah, no," I said quickly. "Templeman's test. Very crucial. Trig ratios, sine, cosine. Very important life skills."
Beth groaned. "You're going to die one day, Night, and you'll still be conjugating math formulas in your coffin."
I shrugged. "At least I'll die knowing my angles."
She threw a sock at me....
I didn't tell her that part of me wanted to go.
Wanted to be the kind of person who just packed up and lived.
But then I looked again at Asher—the jawline, the way he half-listened to her, the way his stare sliced through me like static—and I decided Templeman's test was suddenly the most sacred academic event of my life.
.
Beth zipped her duffel bag , Asher grabbed the car keys, tossed them in his palm, and gave me a nod that said, Good riddance, algebra girl.
"Try not to marry your textbooks while we're gone," Beth called, already halfway out the door.
I managed a lazy wave. "No promises."
She laughed. Asher didn't. Typical.
When the front door shut, the house felt oddly hollow — like their absence sucked out the air and left me alone with the echo of my own overthinking.
For a second, I just stood there, staring at the door. Wondering if I should've gone. Wondering if I'd ever be that kind of spontaneous — the hop-in-a-car-and-chase-the-weekend kind.
Then again, maybe it was better this way. Quiet. Predictable. Safe.
No mosquitoes. No Asher's glare. No pretending I wasn't the weird, overstudious third wheel in my own social life.
I exhaled and turned back toward my room—
—and froze.
There, perched on my bed was Jordan Files.
Stark naked.
Completely devoid of any piece of clothing.
My chest did a little heave.
My legs wobbled.
I grabbed Beth's own bedstand for support.
"Jesus Christ," I croaked, struggling to let my eyes sit on his face alone but I was failing. Woefully "Glad to see you. Alive"
His smile had all the characteristic nonchalance that somehow didn't infuriate me today. Fuckk. He looked good normally but he was looking way too perfect naked.
"Yeah," he said. "You look more distracted than glad. What's the fuss, Night. I always drop by"
"Drop by clothed, Jordan! Clothed! That was the unspoken clause."
He stretched—stretched, like a cat basking in sunlight—and I swear my brain short-circuited. I'd seen him shirtless before but this? This was next -level chaos.
"What are you even doing?" I asked, voice breaking somewhere between outrage and bewilderment.
"Thinking," he said calmly, reclining on my bed like an art piece "You have a very introspective bed."
My jaw dropped. "That is not a compliment!"
He looked up, dead serious. "It could be."
I blinked, once, twice, then muttered under my breath, "I knew I should've gone to the damn forest."