Page 20 of Ignition

His hands flattened and splayed on the table in a wide arc, drawing my gaze to smooth, sun-touched skin, before I snapped it back to my notes.

“Next thing you know, nobody’s buying their books anymore.”

His eyes turned flat and unseeing for a second, as if he was miles away, before he blinked and focused on the table, on a grain of wood that seemed to piss him off, by the way his expression clouded over.

The silence grew teeth. I took another sip of cool coffee and mulled it over, not sure where the prickle on the back of my neck had even come from.

The paper cup landed on the table with a thwack that sounded louder than it should have.

“You’re right. The why doesn’t matter,” I blurted out.

His eyes flicked to me—fast, sharp—the darkness dissipating under a glint that pulled my stomach into a little uneasy flip.

Did I just agree with him?

My surprise mirrored over his face, before he smoothed it under a veil of bored curiosity.

“What I’m trying to say is,” I pressed on as my palms grew damp again, “we should focus on the angle of authorship.”

Matthew clapped his hands together, drawing all our attention.

“All right. So, what do we have? E-mails?” he chimed in, pages rustling as he flicked through them, then nudged the papers to the middle so we could all see what he’d circled.

“And draft backups,” I supplied, flicking through my notes.

My hair fell over my shoulder, and I brushed it back as I leaned forward and tapped a finger over the line of e-mails the author had sent herself every time she’d done changes to her work.

Josh loosed a slow breath. Matthew nearly knocked the cup over in his haste to pull the papers closer.

“Draft backups?” she repeated, tone implying I was a toddler for suggesting it.

Funny how she didn’t question anyone else’s idea.

The plush chair groaned under me as I turned to face her.

She ran a hand through her glossy black hair, leaned back, and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Yes, draft backups,” I bit out, not bothering to keep my tone pleasant. “Time-stamped proof of her edits, of her voice.” I glanced meaningfully at the rest, steel clinging to my lashes. “If we spot when the shift happened…”

I clicked my pen and turned to scribble a small note on the ink-peppered page in my notebook.

“Then we can prove it—the two draft theory,” Josh supplied, as though he’d fought against himself to say it.

When our eyes locked, something I’d never seen before glimmered in his, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. But what concerned me most was the ease with which we’d fallen on the same page and how, for the first time, I didn’t want to strangle him.

A temporary affliction, to be sure.

Professor Vaughn’s heels clicked closer, until she stood to my right, eyebrow arched in silent question, mercifully pulling my attention away from the dangerous musings.

To my utter shock, the girl to my left piped up—Tiffany, apparently. She smoothly described the line of defence we’d settled on with the air of having come up with it herself.

This bitch!

The pen groaned under my grip and my stomach lurched to the point of nausea—but I couldn’t exactly jump in and correct her without coming across as dramatic… or worse, pathetic. Especially since neither of the guys bothered to say a damn thing. So I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood and kept my gaze down as pen stabbed paper over and over.

Tap, tap, tap, went Professor Vaughn’s almond nails as she studied us, before her eyes narrowed on me and took on a dark, knowing glint that made me feel both small and terrifyingly seen. Then, they dipped to the stab wounds bleeding ink onto the page and betraying me.

Swallowing hard, I resisted the urge to shift in my seat, to flip the notebook closed, and compromised by nervously flattening my blazer, which needed no adjustment.