Chapter 81: Puck’s Constant Presence

POV: Georgia

He keeps showing up like it’s nothing.

Eventually, it stops feeling like nothing.

The first time is a Tuesday.

I’m at the bottom of the science building steps, my brace clicking every time I shift my weight, my bag slowly sliding off my shoulder. I’m trying to figure out how I’m supposed to get my books, notebook, and myself to the second floor without dropping at least one of them. My knee throbs in that particular way that means I’ve been on it too long already, and I still have three flights ahead of me.

Then a hand reaches past me and takes my bag.

"I’ve got it," Puck says, his voice low and final.

He doesn’t wait for me to argue.

He doesn’t even look at me.

He just throws my bag over his shoulder and starts up the stairs.

I stand there for a second with my mouth slightly open, watching him go. The morning air is cool against my skin, and somewhere behind me a group of freshmen laughs too loudly, but all I can focus on is the width of his shoulders and the ease with which he carries my entire academic life like it weighs nothing.

This is the same boy who hasn’t said a word to me in weeks.

He skipped our project meeting. Sent Liam in his place with some flimsy excuse. Walked past me in the hallway like I was part of the wall.

I told myself that was what I wanted.

He’d called me beneath him, or something close enough to it, and I’d decided I was fine with the distance. I’d practiced the indifference in the mirror some mornings, testing the shape of not caring on my face until it almost looked convincing.

Apparently, I’m not fine with anything.

Because now he’s carrying my bag.

"Puck," I call when I finally make it to the top, breathing harder than I want him to notice. "What are you doing?"

"Going the same way."

His tone is flat. Completely unbothered.

He isn’t going the same way.

I know his schedule. Everyone knows his schedule. The girls in my dorm have basically memorized it. They could probably tell you where he’ll be at any given hour without checking a calendar. I’ve heard them whisper about it over breakfast, tracking him like weather.

Puck sets my bag on the desk beside the door.

Then he leaves.

"Okay," I mutter.

He doesn’t hear me.

Or pretends not to.

His shoulder brushes the doorframe on his way out, and for half a second, I catch the scent of him. Cedar, with something darker underneath. Something almost scorched. It lingers even after the door swings shut, and I find myself breathing it in longer than I should.

Then he’s gone.

I decide it was a one-time thing.

Maybe he felt guilty.

That’s all.

Except the next day, he’s there again.

It’s never anything big. That’s what makes it so difficult to call him on it.

He always has a reason.

Wednesday, he’s standing at the dining hall entrance when I get there.

"I forgot something," he says, holding the door open.

I glance behind him.

"There’s nothing in here."

His jaw shifts, a small tightening that he probably thinks I don’t notice.

"I know."

Then he walks away, leaving me standing there with my tray half-raised, wondering what exactly I just witnessed.

Thursday, he’s leaning against the brick wall outside my history class, arms crossed, one boot braced behind him. The late afternoon light catches the sharp line of his jaw, and for a moment he looks less like a boy waiting and more like a sentinel posted at his station.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

"Waiting for someone."

His eyes slide past mine as he says it, like lying to me is barely worth the effort.

He isn’t waiting for anyone.

When class lets out, he falls into step beside me anyway.

That’s when I notice how slowly he’s walking.

He shortens his stride until it matches mine.

One step from him for every step from me.

He never looks down at my brace.

He never tells me to slow down.

He just does it, like adjusting his pace is as natural as breathing, like he’s done it a hundred times before instead of three.

I hate how much I notice.

"You don’t have to do this," I say on the third day.

My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to, edged with something that feels dangerously close to hope.

"I know."

He doesn’t even glance at me.

"It’s on my way."

I look at him.

It absolutely is not.

I’ve spent enough time wandering around campus with this stupid brace to know exactly where everything is. He has to take a completely different route to end up beside me.

I could point it out.

I don’t.

There’s something about the way he’s acting that makes me afraid to push too hard. Some fragile thing hanging between us that feels like it could shatter if I breathe on it wrong.

Not because I’m scared of him.

Because I’m scared he’ll stop.

So I let it go.

After a while, the excuses stop mattering.

He shows up.

And I let him.

He carries my books between classes, his knuckles going pale around the stack when I hand them over, like he’s holding something far heavier than paper. He walks the longer route with me, the one I take because it has fewer stairs, and he never complains about how long it takes, never checks his watch, never makes me feel like an inconvenience folded into his day.

Sometimes he shows up when I’m not expecting him at all.

One afternoon, I’m in the library with my leg propped on the chair beside me, trying to get through a reading I’ve already reread twice. The words keep sliding off the page, refusing to stick, and I blame it on the fluorescent lighting rather than admit the real reason.

I look up.

Puck is sitting at the next table.

There’s a book open in front of him.

He doesn’t look at me.

I stare for a second before dropping my eyes back to my own page, my pulse doing something embarrassing and traitorous.

Maybe he actually has work to do.

That would be normal.

Except I notice his finger tapping against the spine of his book.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

I keep reading.

Or pretending to.

Fifty minutes later, I look up.

He hasn’t turned a single page.

I close my eyes for a second, torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to ask him outright what he thinks he’s doing.

Seriously?

I don’t know what to make of him.

I keep waiting for him to explain himself.

Where did the cold go?

Why did he pull away in the first place?

Why is he suddenly pulling back toward me?

I have questions.

A lot of them.

They line up in my head every time he appears, all sharp edges and bad timing, demanding answers he clearly has no intention of giving.

But then I look at him, and I swallow every single one.

Because he’s here.

And I’m not stupid.

Whatever this is between us, it feels fragile.

Too fragile to touch.

It reminds me of a bone that’s only just started to knit. I’m not ready to put my weight on it yet, not when one wrong move could undo whatever careful healing has already begun.

If I ask him why he’s doing this, he might pull away again.

If I push, maybe he’ll disappear.

So I don’t.

I let him walk beside me.

I let him carry my bag.

I let the silence stretch between us until it starts to feel like its own language, one made of small gestures instead of words, of proximity instead of promises.

And somewhere along the way, I start looking for him.

That’s the part I really don’t like.

I catch myself scanning the crowd outside class, my eyes moving faster than my thoughts, searching before I even realize what I’m doing.

Listening for his footsteps.

I know them now.

The weight of them. The rhythm.

I could pick them out of a hundred people.

When he isn’t there, I notice. The absence feels louder than his presence ever does, which makes no sense at all, and yet there it is.

It’s ridiculous.

It feels like a missing tooth, my tongue finding the empty space without me thinking about it.

Then there’s the ache.

I haven’t told anyone about that. Not Darcy. Not the twins. Certainly not my mother, who would probably diagnose it as weakness and prescribe more ice time.

It started weeks ago, around the same time Puck went cold, although I’ve been trying very hard not to connect those two things.

It’s a dull pressure behind my sternum, right in the center of my chest.

It has nothing to do with my knee.

It doesn’t change when I move.

It just sits there.

Heavy. Hollow.

Some days it’s barely there. Other days I press my palm against my chest and wonder why taking a full breath suddenly feels harder than it should, like there’s a stone lodged somewhere beneath my ribs that no amount of stretching will dislodge.

My therapist says my knee is healing at a normal rate.

Nobody has an explanation for the ache.

I don’t either.

Friday evening, it gets worse.

The sun is going down, and the quad is almost empty. My last class ran late, and my leg is burning after a full day of walking. Every step feels like it costs something I don’t have enough of anymore.

I make it to a stone bench beside the path and sit, grateful for the relief even as the cold seeps immediately through the fabric of my jeans.

I lean back and close my eyes for a moment, letting the ache in my chest settle into something almost bearable.

Then the bench shifts.

I open them.

Puck is sitting beside me.

He doesn’t say anything.

There’s a small space between us.

Not much.

Just enough.

We watch the sunlight fade across the tops of the trees, turning everything gold before the color starts disappearing, bleeding into the deep blue that comes right before dark.

I don’t know how long we sit there.

Long enough for the air to get colder.

Long enough for my knee to throb.

Long enough for that familiar pressure in my chest to settle into the background again, quieter than before, though never fully gone.

Puck is the one who finally speaks.

"We should get you inside."

His voice is quiet.

Almost reluctant, as though some part of him would rather stay exactly where we are.

"Yeah."

I look down at my leg.

"I think I need a hand."

He stands.

Then he holds his hand out to me.

Palm up.

Steady.

I stare at it.

It’s just a hand.

There’s nothing threatening about a hand.

Except I remember the first time I touched him.

I remember the heat of his skin.

The way my palm burned afterward, as if I’d been holding a coal, the memory still sharp enough to make my fingers twitch with something between fear and want.

I hesitate.

Then I take it.

His fingers close around mine, warm and certain, like he’s been waiting for this exact moment longer than I know.

He pulls me carefully to my feet, keeping his grip steady until my good leg is planted.

My brace clicks.

And his hand is still holding mine.

Warm.

Too warm.

The ache disappears.

I freeze.

It doesn’t fade.

It doesn’t ease.

It’s just gone.

One second, there’s that heavy pressure behind my sternum.

The next, nothing.

Warmth spreads through my chest, and suddenly I can breathe. Really breathe. All the way down, like something that had been holding its fist closed around my lungs has finally let go.

I stand completely still.

I don’t understand what just happened.

I don’t know what to call it.

I don’t even know if I imagined it.

But I’m still holding his hand.

And when his fingers shift slightly around mine, I realize something worse.

I don’t want him to let go.