The letters blurred.

Didn’t matter how hard I squinted at the page, didn’t matter how much I tried to piece the words together, they still danced around like little bastards, refusing to make any sort of feckin’ sense.

She was pretending not to notice.

Acting like she wasn’t catching every single mistake, wasn’t watching me struggle. And I hated it. Hated this—the way my skin itched under my collar, the way my brain went sluggish the second I needed it to work.

And most of all? Hated that she was here.

Not because I didn’t like her. No, that would’ve been easier.

But because she was trying to help.

She leaned in, her voice quiet, gentle. “You keep flipping the ‘b’ and ‘d’ here,” she murmured, pointing to my notes. “And I think you missed a word in this one.”

I bristled.

Didn’t mean to. Didn’t want to. But I couldn’t help it.

“It’s fine.” My voice came out too sharp. I scratched out the mistake, pressing the pencil so hard to the paper it nearly tore through. “Just leave it.”

She didn’t.

Of course she didn’t.

Because she was stubborn, and too good, and she had this annoying little habit of caring about things she shouldn’t.

“Gibsie—”

“I said it’s fine.”

She went quiet.

And that was somehow worse.

Because I could feel her watching me, like she was seeing something I didn’t want her to see. Like she was realizing the same thing everyone did when they got too close—that I wasn’t as funny, or charming, or put together as I made out to be.

That I was just a fuck-up with a brain that didn’t work right.

She shifted slightly, and I expected her to leave. But instead she turned my notebook upside down.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I muttered, glaring at her.

She shrugged. “Sometimes it helps. If the words are like that, your brain might pick them up differently.”

I stared.

Then down at the page.

Then back up at her.

She looked completely serious.

And somehow, some-fucking-how, I felt my mouth twitch.

“You just make that up?”