You weren’t exactly failing math… but you were dangerously close.

That’s how you ended up in the library after school, sitting across from Katie Cooper—Bay City’s most effortlessly charming overachiever. She’d offered to tutor you after Alexa not-so-subtly told her, “You’re basically the only one who can keep them from zoning out.”

Turns out, Alexa was wrong.

Because if anything, Katie was the reason you couldn’t focus.

“Okay,” she said, tapping her pencil against your notebook. “Quadratic equations. Easy stuff once you stop overthinking it.”

You nodded, pretending to pay attention. But your eyes kept drifting—to the way her hair fell over her shoulder, the way she bit her lip when she was thinking, and especially the way she smiled when she caught you staring.

“Are you even listening to me?” she teased, tilting her head.