Chapter 193
Summer's POV
The morning sun blazed through the café windows, so bright it turned everything it touched into white glare. Outside, the trees were thick with deep green leaves, lush and heavy in the July heat. I sat at our corner table at Brewed Awakening, arranging my physics homework with the kind of precision usually reserved for stage makeup. Chocolate croissant. Pink M&Ms. Two coffees—one black, one drowning in caramel. The yellow cardigan I'd chosen felt too bright, too obvious.
Maybe I was trying too hard.
My phone buzzed. On my way. Ten minutes.
Last night's confrontation in the alley still felt raw—the way he'd pushed me away, the way I'd pushed back, the careful negotiation we'd finally reached in that dim corridor. We'd agreed on this arrangement: physics tutoring in exchange for payment he could accept without his pride shattering. But agreeing on paper and actually sitting across from each other, pretending this was just business, were two entirely different things.
The bell above the door chimed. Kieran walked in, and the entire world contracted to the space between us.
He looked exhausted. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his hoodie hung loose on his frame like he'd lost weight he couldn't afford to lose. Lily trailed behind him, her mushroom-cut hair slightly disheveled, clutching a worn coloring book and a ziplock bag of crayons. A clunky beige hearing aid curved behind her left ear, the plastic slightly yellowed with age. Kieran pointed toward a corner booth near the window. Lily nodded and skipped over to it, settling in with the quiet contentment of a child accustomed to entertaining herself.
When his gaze found mine, something in his expression softened.
He crossed to the table slowly, dropping his canvas bag beside the chair. His eyes swept over the spread—the coffee, the food, the neat stack of textbooks—and something complicated flickered across his face. Surprise, perhaps, or the wariness of someone unused to being cared for.
"You didn't have to do all this," he said quietly.
"I wanted to." I pushed the black coffee toward him. "You still take it without sugar, right?"
He nodded, wrapping both hands around the cup. When he sat down, I noticed the way his right hand trembled slightly. The scars on his knuckles stood out stark against his pale skin.
I wanted to reach across the table and take his hand. Instead, I flipped open my physics homework.
"So," I said, forcing brightness into my voice. "I tried the energy conservation problems from the summer school packet. Pretty sure I failed spectacularly."
Kieran leaned forward, scanning my work. His eyebrows drew together. "You set up the equation right, but then you plugged the wrong variable into the wrong term. You basically told the universe that all the energy disappeared."
"I did what?" I blinked at the page. That part wasn't entirely an act—the problem had three different heights and two velocity variables, and somewhere around step four my brain had quietly surrendered. "Okay, that does sound bad."
"It's a common mistake." He pulled the paper closer, reaching for his pen, and walked me through where I'd gone wrong—separating the kinetic and potential energy terms, showing me how to keep track of which variable belonged where. When he focused like this, the tension in his shoulders eased. The guardedness faded. He became just a boy who loved physics, sharing something beautiful.
"Does that make sense?" he asked, glancing up.
"Yes," I said softly. And I meant it. Not just about the physics.
He held my gaze for a moment too long. Color crept up his neck. He looked away first. "You should try the next one. I'll watch."
I picked up my pencil, hyper-aware of his attention. My understanding of multi-step energy conservation was shakier than I'd admitted to Ms. Thompson when I'd signed up for summer school—but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't playing up my confusion just a little, letting my brow furrow more dramatically than necessary, asking for clarification on steps I half-understood. Every time I admitted I didn't understand, he relaxed a fraction more. Like being needed gave him permission to stay.
Halfway through the problem, I felt his gaze shift from my work to my face.
"What?" I whispered.
"Nothing." But his ears were red. "You're just... you're really trying."
"Of course I am. You're taking time to help me. I'm not going to waste it."
Something in his expression cracked open. He looked down at the notebook where I'd been carefully writing down every word he said. His throat worked like he was trying to swallow something difficult.
"Kieran?"
"I'm fine. Just... thank you. For taking this seriously."
Before I could respond, a small tug pulled at my sleeve. Lily stood right beside our table, coloring book hugged to her chest. She must have slipped out of the booth and padded over without either of us noticing. Up close, I could hear the faint, tinny feedback whine leaking from her old hearing aid.
"Summer?" She spoke a little too loudly, her voice bright and unmodulated. "Is it really that hard?"
"Um." I felt heat flood my cheeks. "Physics is just... not my strongest subject."
Lily tilted her head, the gesture so like her brother's it made my heart squeeze. "But you go to St. Jude's Preparatory Academy, right? My friend Emma's sister goes there. She says everyone there is super smart."
The air in the café suddenly felt very thin.
Kieran's gaze snapped to me. He leaned back in his chair, and I watched his expression shift from earnest tutor to something far more dangerous. A small smile played at the corner of his mouth—not mocking, but amused, like he'd just solved a particularly elegant proof.
"So, Hayes," he said lazily. "Real questions or fake ones?"
My face was on fire. "I... they're real! I just—"