Page 58 of Ruthless Edge

"You don't have to⁠—"

"Take it."

"Knox, then you'll be cold⁠—"

"I run warm." He holds it out. "Take the hoodie, Emma."

I take the hoodie.

The problem is it's dark, I've had three drinks, and the hoodie is enormous. Somehow, all of these factors combine into a situation where I get my head through what I'm fairly confident is the neck hole, but one arm finds a sleeve and the other arm finds nothing, then the fabric is over my face, I can't see, and I'm not sure which direction I'm supposed to be going.

"I'm in trouble," I announce, from inside the hoodie.

Knox laughs.

"Help me."

He laughs harder.

"Knox, I'm not kidding, I can't find the sleeve⁠—"

"It's right—" he's still laughing, "—it's right there."

"Where is there? I can't see anything."

"Okay, hold on." He steps in. His hands find the fabric and he turns it slightly and says, "Your right arm, straight out." I straighten my right arm and he guides it through the sleeve, then he says "duck." I duck, and the hoodie comes down over my head.

My face emerges.

Knox is directly in front of me.

Closer than I feel like he should be. His hands are still on the front of the hoodie, at my waist where he pulled it down, and he's looking at me with an expression that has nothing to do with lost sleeves or cold March air.

The joke drains out of his face.

His hands don't move.

Neither do I.

I'm aware of the street, the empty sidewalk, the sound of something far off on campus. I'm aware of how warm his hoodie is, and how he smells like the party and something underneath it that I have a vague memory of. I'm aware that he's looking at me like a question he's been working up to for a long time.

His hands move to my hips.

He pulls me slightly closer. I let him.

There are a hundred reasons I've been keeping distance between us and right now, standing on a sidewalk in his hoodie, I cannot locate a single one of them. I know they exist. I know there's a whole architecture of reasons, built carefully over three years, and they're still there somewhere. I just can't feel them from here.

He leans in slightly. I don't move back.

He's maybe four inches away, maybe three, and I think I might actually let this happen, and then headlights sweep over us from behind.

A car slows.

Stops.

The passenger door opens.

Someone leans out and throws up onto the street approximately eight feet away from us.