Jake jolted awake at the buzz on his nightstand.
His phone lit up in the dark, casting pale blue light across his face. He didn't need to check the screen to know who it was. His father texted at the same time every morning.
Jake reached for the phone, scrubbing a hand over his face.
I expect a full report on your progress by Friday. You're running out of time.Don't make me repeat myself.
Jake stared at the screen until the light cut out. Shame was his father's favorite weapon. He sighed and stared at the ceiling, feeling crushed under it. He hated being measured against his father's standards.
He didn't bother trying to fall back asleep. He hadn't slept well in weeks, usually drifting into a hazy loop of what-ifs and dread until his alarm yanked him back. The nightmare was always the same: his father's eyes, sharp with disappointment, when Coach Miller called to say he'd been pulled from the roster. Three cups of coffee and a steady diet of anxiety kept him moving.
Jake hauled himself out of bed, pulled on his workout clothes, laced up his sneakers, then headed to the athletic complex. Morning workouts were brutal, it was two hours of sprints, agility drills, weight training that left his muscles screaming.
But at least when he was running, his brain could shut off. The noise in his head faded until all that was left was movement.
By 9:30, he was back in the locker room, checking his phone, when he got another message.
"Spoke with Coach Miller—he mentioned you missed two game film sessions last month. That's unacceptable. I don't pay tuition for you to waste time."
Jake's jaw ticked. He typed back: "I was at the academic center. Mandatory tutoring."
Jake, tutoring should be helping you improve—not serving as an excuse for slacking. Get it together.
Jake shoved the phone into his bag. He had Stats at ten, practice at noon and Maya at seven. His day was already packed, he didn't need his father's bullshit.
---
By seven, Jake was a walking corpse. The morning had left him hollow, hours blurring into one another, a haze of practice and meetings. The stale air in the library didn't help. The fluorescent lights burned into his tired eyes.
He found Maya in her usual corner of the third floor. She didn't even look up from her notebook when he sat down.
"You're on time."
"Hardly." Jake dropped his bag, the thud echoing too loud in the quiet room. "Let's just do this."
Maya finally looked up, her gaze lingering on the dark circles under his eyes. "Did you finish the problem sets?"
"Most of them."
"Most?"
"I had practice, Maya. And meetings. I didn't exactly have a four-hour window to sit around with a calculator."
"This wasn't yesterday's work, Jake," she replied, voice flat.
"I know." Jake snapped. "I know. I just—I had other things. Okay?"
She didn't argue. She slid his textbook over and flipped to the derivatives. The rustle of pages filled the silence.
"Show me what you did."
Jake opened his notebook. Three out of ten problems were attempted, and even he knew they were a disaster. He pushed the paper toward her, the scrape of his chair making him wince.
Maya's pen moved with quiet precision. Check. Circle. Circle. Circle.
"You're mixing up the rules," she said. "If it's an exponent, you bring it down. If they're multiplied, you—"
Jake's hand hit the table. Hard. A girl two rows over jumped, but he didn't care. His palm stung.
"I know," he hissed, voice tight with the effort to keep it low. "I know I'm messing it up. I've read the chapter. I've watched videos. I've solved problems until my head hurts. I still can't get it."
Maya didn't flinch. She just watched him with that steady, infuriating composure.
"My dad doesn't care about any of these," Jake went on. "He cares about the Thompson name. The win. And right now, I'm failing. At all of it." He shoved his fingers into his hair. The sharp pull grounded him. "I can read a blitz from fifty yards out. Memorize a playbook in a weekend. But this? I just can't—"
His breath hitched. He stared at the desk, waiting for pity.
"It's not about working harder, Jake," Maya said softly. "You're not the problem. You're just overwhelmed."
He looked up. She was leaning in now, gaze locked on his.
"Your brain's stuck in a loop. You're so busy bracing for impact that you've turned studying into a threat. You can't solve a problem when you're waiting to get hit." She pulled the notebook toward her. "Think about the field. When you're reading a defense, does it feel like work?"
"No," he muttered. The memory came like cool air in his lungs. "It's just… instinct."
"Because you know the patterns," she said. "You're not thinking. You just know. So we stop treating this like a math class and start treating it like a playbook. Same idea. Different language."
She sketched a derivative in the margin, then drew a crude football field beneath it.
"Exponent is the ball," she said. "You're the QB. Hand it off to the coefficient, take a step
back. Exponent drops—handoff. Power reduces—step back. Simple handoff play."
Jake stared at the sketch.
It was ridiculous. It was insulting.
And it worked.
He grabbed the pen and scribbled out x⁵. Hand off the five, step back to four. 5x⁴. He looked up, almost annoyed.
"That's it? That's all this is?"
"That's it."
"It's a handoff."
"A handoff," she echoed.
Jake let out a breath that was halfway to a laugh."Jesus. I've been losing sleep over a handoff play."
Maya's mouth twitched. "Basically."
"I'm an idiot."
"You're just stressed. It makes you overthink the easy stuff."
Jake looked at her then.
"Thank you," he said, and he meant it.
The smile vanished. Maya slipped back into her professional, guarded default.
"You're paying me, Jake. It's the job."
"I know. But still."
He was about to say more when movement behind the library's glass wall caught his eye. Three guys from his Bio class slowed as they passed, doing a blatant double take. Their eyes flicked from Jake to Maya.
The air in the room soured instantly. The easy rhythm they'd found disappeared. Jake's shoulders squared, that familiar Golden Boy mask sliding back into place.
Maya felt it too. She pulled her books closer.
"We should keep going," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "You have seven more problems."
They finished the hour in silence thick enough to feel. When the clock hit eight, Jake slid a fifty across the table. Maya tucked it away without a word.
"Next Thursday?" she asked.
"Yeah. But…" Jake hesitated, glancing at the glass wall again. "Can we meet somewhere else? Not here. I can't think when people are staring."
Maya's eyes narrowed.
"Where? Your dorm?"
"I have a single and it's quiet. There's a whiteboard." He saw her expression and held up a hand. "I'm not being a creep. I just need to actually study without the peanut gallery."
Maya stayed quiet for a long beat, likely weighing the optics of being seen with him against the risks of a dorm room. "I'll think about it."
"Okay."
She stood and packed her bag with military precision. "If we move to your place, the rules don't change.You do the work. You don't waste my night."
"I won't."
"And Jake?" She looked him dead in the eyes. "I'm your tutor. Not your friend, and definitely not your therapist. Let's keep it that way."
She didn't wait for him to agree. She just walked out.
Jake stared at the crude football field sketched beneath the derivative for a long time. It was stupidly simple, but exactly what he needed. And the girl who'd drawn it had made one thing clear: she was an employee. Nothing more.
He closed the notebook and headed back to his dorm. The cold air hit him, but for once, he felt relieved.
He checked his phone. No new texts, but the old text was still there.
You're running out of time.
Usually, reading that spiked his heart rate. Tonight? It didn't. For just one hour, he'd been an ordinary guy, learning.
He needed that feeling back.
That was the problem. He was starting to realize he couldn't get there without her.
And relying on anyone was a dangerous play. She'd seen the real him, and once someone did, there was no going back.