“I’ll see you around,” I said, before turning away. And I would. I was going to chase this chilly, abrasive woman. I’d chase her all the way to her f**king ice palace and melt it down if I had to. I was used to women wanting me; she wanted nothing to do with me — wouldn’t even tell me her name. As I watched her walk away I knew two things: I wanted her, and it was going to be a lot of work.

No one knew who she was. I was completely baffled by it. The girl was so high above anything I’d ever seen, I thought every guy on campus would respond to my description — wicked dark hair, seething eyes, a waist small enough to wrap your hands around. I had to use my connections in the admissions office with a girl I’d dated in high school who still had a thing for me.

“Caleb, I’m not allowed to do this,” she said, leaning over the counter. I ignored her attempt at getting me to look at her cleavage.

“Just this once, Rey.” That’s all it took.

“Okay, building?”

I’d seen her walking into Conner’s.

“There are over five hundred girls in Conner’s. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Sophomore,” I said, guessing.

She typed something into her keyboard. “Great, now we have two hundred.”

I racked my brain for something else. Blue jeans, white shirt, black fingernail polish. I could take a guess at her major.

“Try pre-law or philosophy,” I said. She had one of those combative personalities that lawyers specialized in. But, she was staring up at a tree, deep in thought…

Rey looked around and then quickly spun the monitor toward me. I glanced through the column of photographs. There were about thirty to a page. She scrolled and my eyes searched.

“Hurry up, Casanova. I could get in trouble for this, you know.”

“She’s not there,” I said after a few seconds. I tried to look nonchalant. “Oh well, guess I’m out of luck this time. Thanks anyway.”

Rey opened her mouth to say something, but I gave her a quick wave and jogged out. Her picture had been there, third from the top. I hadn’t wanted to put her on Rey’s radar — she had the bad habit of spreading rumors about the girls I liked.

Olivia Kaspen. Aivilo What a perfect little name, for a perfect little snob. I smiled all the way back to the dorms.

I looked for her everywhere. She didn’t go to the gym. She was never in the cafeteria or at any of our home games. I went back to the spot I first saw her and hung out outside of her dorm. Nothing. She was either a first class hermit or I’d imagined the whole thing. Olivia Kaspen. A cross between Snow White and The Evil Queen. I had to find her.

I wasn’t smiling a week later. I’d spotted her in the stands at one of our last games of the season. We’d made it to the playoffs and were leading the game by ten points. The minute I saw her, I was distracted. I kept glancing up into the stands where she was sitting, clutching a Styrofoam cup between her hands. One thing was clear — she wasn’t looking at me. I don’t know what possessed me to believe that I could impress her with my game play, but I tried. The visiting team went on a ten-nothing run. The game was tied. I stood at the free throw line, and to this day I don’t know what possessed me to pull the little stunt that cost us the game. I jogged over to my coach. Normally a stunt like that would have gotten me kicked off the team, but I happened to be the BMOC and it helped that he was a family friend.

“I can’t focus. I have to take care of something,” I told him.

“Caleb, you have to be f**king with me right now.”

“Coach,” I said quietly. “Give me two minutes.”

He narrowed his eyes and stared at me over his glasses. “Is this about that girl?”

My blood ran cold. My coach was an insightful guy, but-

“The one who’s missing?” he finished.

I stared at him blankly. Laura? We’d dated, but not seriously. I wondered if my parents had said something to him. My mother was friends with her mother. She had been enthusiastic when we’d started dating, but Laura was all looks and no personality. We had fizzled out almost immediately. Before I could correct him, he said, “Go. Hurry up.”

He called a time out and put the team in a huddle.

I took the stairs two at a time. The closer I got, the paler she got, and she was already pretty pale. When I crouched down next to her, her eyes were wide and she looked ready to bolt.

“Olivia,” I said. “Olivia Kaspen.”

She looked momentarily shocked. She composed herself quickly. Her eyes danced around my face before she leaned toward me and said, “Bravo, you found out my name.” Then in a lower voice, “What the hell are you doing?”

“You’re quite the mystery on campus,” I said, tracing the outline of her lips with my eyes. I’d never seen such sensual lips in all my life. How had it taken me this long to find those lips?

“Are you going to be making a point any time soon, or are you holding up the game to brag about your detective skills?”

Oh my god. How could I not laugh at that? I wanted to tell her right then and there that she was going to marry me, but I was pretty sure she’d slap me if I did. I decided to turn on the charm. It would have worked with any other girl. But, damn if she shot me down.

“If I make this shot, will you go out with me?”

She all but rolled her eyes. The look on her pretty little face was of absolute disgust. Then she stole my line and called me a peacock.

“It took you all week to think up that one, didn’t it?” I said, smirking. I was fairly certain at that point she was playing hard to get.

“Sure,” she said, shrugging.

“So then, it’s fair to say that you were thinking about me all week?”

When I was a kid I watched a helluva lot of Looney Tunes. Smoke was always coming out of the character’s noses when they were angry. Usually, it lifted them right off the ground. The expression on Olivia’s face was that of smoke coming out of her nose.

“No … and … no, I will not go out with you.” She wasn’t looking at me anymore. I wanted to grab her chin and steer her face back to mine.

“Why not?” My first inclination was to say: Why the hell not?

“Because I am a llama and you are a bird and WE are not compatible.”

“Okay,” I breathed. “Then what will it take?” I was completely out of my element. Begging a girl to go on a date with me. This was f**ked up.

“Miss it.”

I stared into her cold, blue eyes and knew I’d just met the kind of girl books are written about. There was no one like her.

“Miss it,” she said again, “and I’ll go out with you.”

I didn’t say another word. I was in shock. I jogged back to the court, my mind so stuffed with opposing thoughts I figured I’d die of a brain explosion before I got to make the shot. I wasn’t going to do it. It was crazy. She was crazy. Fuck. That. Shit.

But, when I stood at the free throw line, ball in hand, I had a couple seconds of deep thought. I was angry. I should have done what came naturally, which was to win the game, but I kept seeing her face. The way she looked down her nose at me and said, “Miss it.” There had been something in her eyes that I couldn’t shake. She asked me to do the impossible. She set the bar high and she expected me to fail.

I raised the ball, my palms curved around it like it was an extension of my body. How many hours did I spend playing basketball each week? Twenty … thirty? It was nothing for me to make this basket — I could do it with my eyes closed. But, something about the look on her face tied an invisible string around my wrist, making me clutch the ball harder than I normally would. I could see the sad victory on her face, like she had resigned herself to all men being disappointments. She was wrong if she thought that she could predict what I was going to do. If I wanted her…

I wanted her.

I missed the shot.

I was in way over my head.

Chapter Four

I missed a shot. People looked at me like I’d gunned down a gym full of people instead of shooting an air ball. My mother was always teasing me, telling me that I didn’t take anything seriously. It was a joke in my family — my lack of dedication to anything. I was good at most everything I did, but I didn’t love any of it. Not basketball or finance, or boating, or the money that came so easily to my family. It all made me feel empty. My friends — the ones I’d grown up with — spent their time and money getting box seats or floor seats at baseball games and football games and basketball games. I’d go to the goddamn games and enjoy them, but at the end of the day, there wasn’t a damn thing that filled me. I started reading books about philosophy. I even took a couple classes my sophomore year. I liked it. Philosophy gave me something to believe in. But, Olivia Kaspen stepped into my life, and for the first time, I was dedicated to something. Her philosophy. Her emotional makeup. I was taking her seriously. All five feet, two inches of her. She was mouthy and condescending and she never smiled, but I liked her. I wanted to give her something. So I missed the shot.

“Is it true?”

I looked up from my plate of pancakes. Desiree, one of the cheerleaders, slid into the seat opposite me. She was wearing her makeup from the night before and my buddy, Kiel’s jersey. Why did girls want to wear a guy’s jersey? Eerised

“Is what true?”

“You missed the shot for a girl?”

“Where did you hear that?” I pushed my plate away and took a sip of tea.

“Everyone is talking about it.” She smirked at me and ripped off a piece of my pancake, sliding it between her teeth.

I looked at her through narrowed eyes. I was having a hard time pulling off this charming act when my palms were sweating. “Who are they saying I did it for?” If people found out it was Olivia I’d missed the shot for, things would get very uncomfortable for her.

Desiree sucked the syrup from her fingers. “Oh, there are rumors. Who knows if they’re true? You know how people can be.”

I shrugged, trying to be nonchalant, but my shoulders were tense.

“Humor me, Des.”

She pursed her lips and leaned forward. “A pre-law major. No one really knows who she is. Some people say they saw you talking to her before you missed the shot.”

“Maybe my game was just off,” I said, setting my mug down and standing up.

Desiree smiled up at me. “Maybe. But, your game has never been off before. If you ask me, it’s kind of romantic.”

“Romantic?” I repeated.

“Yeah. She must be pretty hot.”

I leaned down until both of my hands were flat on the table, and Desiree and I were on eye level.

“Does that really sound like something I would do, Des?”

She looked at me for a long minute before shaking her head.

“No, actually.”

“Well, there you have your answer.”

I left, wiping my palms on my pant legs. How many people had seen me speaking to Olivia? It was stupid … careless, but then I could have never anticipated her challenge. If things had gone my way, she would have agreed to a date for making the shot. Everyone would have walked away a winner, aka I would have walked away the winner.

I couldn’t help but smile as I jogged down the stairs in front of the dining hall. Forget it. Girls rarely surprised me. I would have missed that shot five hundred times for a date with her.

I’d never felt anything like her.

Olivia burned. When she walked into a room you could feel her fire. It rolled off of her in waves. She was angry and passionate and fearless. She burned hot enough to keep everyone away. It was a good trick, except I played with fire.

Bang, bang, she shot me down.

“I just don’t think we’re compatible.”

She was afraid of me. I knew it the moment we locked eyes that first day, under the tree. She might not have known her type, but I knew it.

I almost laughed. She delivered those words in her clipped, matter of fact voice, her eyes dancing everywhere but my face. We’d been on our first date the week before. I’d practically conned her into it, sending the very basketball that I’d used to procure the date, to her dorm room with a note to meet me in the library. The library had gone well. She wore this long sleeve, black lace shirt that was so tight, I could see every curve, not to mention her ivory skin peeking through all of the eyelets in the lace. I wanted to kiss her, right there, in the stacks. I would have pushed her up against the Dickens’ section if I hadn’t thought it would scare her away. Reluctantly, she agreed to the date. I took her to Jaxson’s, my favorite ice cream place. At the start of the evening, she’d been standoffish, but then she opened up and told me things about her past. I thought things had gone great. Until…

I just don’t think we’re compatible.

“That’s not how it feels to me,” I said. Our chemistry was palatable. She was either in denial or lying her ass off. I’d bet anything it was the latter.

She blinked at me — fast little blinks, like bird wings.

“Um, well I’m sorry. I guess we are just on two different wavelengths.” She dragged out wavelengths, as if she wasn’t sure that was the right word to use. We were actually on the same wavelength — I wanted her and she wanted me, but I wasn’t going to be the one to point that out. Olivia didn’t know she wanted me yet.

“No, that’s not what I meant. I know you like me, just as much as I like you. But, it’s your choice, and I am a gentleman. You want me to back off? Okay. Goodbye, Olivia.”