Chapter Text
LOGAN
Logan wasn’t afraid of death. Honestly, given his current life situation, a short coma sounded almost therapeutic to him.
The lecture hall emptied with the collective, chaotic violence of college students realizing they had survived another seventy minutes of Professor Harvey’s ’International Political Economy’ lecture. Laptops snapped shut, bags zipped, and the air filled with the suffocating scent of terrible vending machine coffee and academic exhaustion.
Logan didn’t move. He sat low in his seat, resting the back of his head against the wall behind him, waiting for the dull, rhythmic throb behind his eyes to ease. Merely to check the time, he pulled out his phone, but the screen instantly lit up with a bunch of notifications, flashing the exact crises he had spent the last seventy minutes trying to ignore.
Jules [09:12 AM]: Mom’s back home. She asked for you.
Jules [10:04 AM]: Stop being a jerk and reach out to her.
Jeff [11:45 AM]: Hey, do you know where the spare alternator is? Sulley’s car is dead.
Coach Jensen [12:02 PM]: Logan. Meet me at 1 PM at the rink sharp.
Logan rubbed the bridge of his nose, a dry, humorless chuckle slipping past his lips. He quickly shot a text back to his older brother – alternator is under the tarp by the tire rack – but his younger sibling’s message he left hanging.
Mom’s back home.
He couldn’t deal with his mother’s fifth ‘fresh start’ today. Not when his hands were still faintly stained with grease from a 7 AM brake job, his knees were throbbing from yesterday’s brutal hockey drills, and he had barely slept because the walls of the hockey house were criminally thin – something he kept being reminded of whenever Hannah stayed over at Garrett’s.
Yeah, I’m in a great, fucking place right now.
He shoved the phone into his pocket and quickly did the math on today’s schedule. 1 PM rink. 1:30 PM fuel-pump swap for some trust-fund frat boy who was paying him double to fix his Volvo under the table so his dad wouldn’t find out he’d wrecked it. 3 PM rink again until late. And somewhere in the margins of a day that lacked hours, he had to figure out how to pass an elective course that had turned out to be an academic death march – because Professor Harvey had just paired him up for a brutal, six-week collaborative assignment.
His eyes now glued themselves to the projector wall, where a long list of students matched with their respective partners loomed like a death toll. Somewhere in the middle, he found his name:
[Group 5: John Logan (Business Administration) – Elena Flores (Political Science)]
Elena Flores. The name rang a bell, but he couldn’t pair it with a face.
And just before he could scan the thinning crowd of students, a heavy hand dropped onto his shoulder, accompanied by the intrusive scent of expensive cologne.
“Do you feel that, my friend?” Dean asked, gesturing with his chin toward the exit. “Over there. The sudden, dark atmosphere? The heat of hell flames slowly rising to the surface?”
Logan looked over.
Amidst the sea of disheveled students, he spotted a girl who seemed entirely exempt from the laws of the harsh, Northeastern winter. Not a single black curl was out of place, falling long and glossy down her back. A pair of bright amber eyes anchored her freckled, sun-warmed skin, utterly defying the February freeze. She tucked her notebook into a sleek, expensive-looking leather backpack – packed to the brink with the precision of a brick-smuggling operation – before slipping into a grey wool coat. As she offered a parting smile to Professor Harvey, Logan watched with objective appreciation. He was not blind. It was a beautiful smile, objectively speaking – the kind that usually made him slow down and take notice – but it possessed the artificial warmth of a corporate press release. Polite. Cold. Not even reaching her eyes.
“What’s her deal?”
“Elena Flores. Your partner for the next six weeks,” Dean announced, a knowing, lofty grin spreading across his lips. “My deepest, most heartfelt condolences, my friend. May your GPA rest in peace. I’ll ensure your Hawks-jersey is retired with honors.”
“Why?” Logan leaned back, his dark eyes tracking the girl named Elena as she adjusted her backpack strap. “Doesn’t exactly strike me as a serial killer.”
“Worse. That’s the Pol-Sci department’s pocket-sized dictator,” Dean murmured, leaning in as if disclosing classified Pentagon files. "A frat brother was teamed up with her sophomore year for a policy brief and ended up getting his name scrabbed off from the final submission, failing the entire course. Legends say he’s still wandering the campus, repeating that course as a junior. Poor bastard.”
Logan stopped short, the pieces of old campus gossip suddenly locking into place. He looked at Dean, his expression shifting from mild amusement to absolute clarity.
“No way. She’s the one who made you fail that IR course last year? The reason Coach Jensen had to bench you for the entire Connecticut weekend?”
Dean’s usually untouchable smirk vanished for a split second. A flicker of deeply wounded pride crossed his face before he quickly hushed Logan with a sharp flick of his hand. “We do not speak of the Dark Ages, Logan. That was a pure miscommunication regarding the definition of collaborative research.”
“Right. Miscommunication.” Logan’s mouth curved into a sharp, knowing curve as he gave Dean’s shoulder a teasing shove. “I guess the famous Di Laurentis charm didn’t work on her, huh?”
“That charm worked flawlessly on the two incredibly beautiful figure skaters who comforted me during those cold, benched afternoons-“
“Shut up.”
“Anyway,” Dean shook his head, now slipping into his coat. “Let me speak on behalf of all Pol-Sci majors when I declare: Hell-ena over there now holds your academic future in her tiny, micro-managing claws. Do not look her directly in the eye.”
“I think I can handle some group work without getting burned,” Logan chuckled, though his eyes drifted back toward Elena as she walked toward the exit.
The brunet was not an idiot. He knew better than to blindly trust Dean’s version of reality – hell, ‘Dean’ and ‘reality’ rarely existed in the same time zone. That casanova’s concept of ‘hard work’ sometimes involved delegating his tasks to someone who found his biceps persuasive. But Logan didn’t have the luxury of time and thus, he certainly would’t let his academic survival get caught in the crossfire of a petty grudge between his friend and his newly assigned partner.
Shaking his head, he swung his heavy duffel bag over one shoulder with an easy, practiced motion. “You better keep that energy for practice later. And don’t be late. Jensen’s already on a warpath.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Flipping Dean off without looking back, Logan descended the concrete steps of the lecture hall in four smooth, athletic strides, dark eyes locked on the pile of curls in the crowd.
“Elena?” he called out before she could slip through the glass doors.
The girl turned on her heel, measuring his approach with a calculating gaze as he pulled up a few steps in front of her. He raised a hand, flashing her a relaxed, easygoing smile.
“I’m Logan. Figured we should sync up on a battle plan before the rest of the class hoards all the good study rooms.”
A practiced line of politeness appeared at the corners of her lips, though her eyes remained cautious.
“Elena. And yes, sounds good. Does tomorrow at 5 PM work for you? At the library?"
"Works. I'll be there."
“Great. I’ll book us a study room,” Elena said, already whipping out her phone with a one-handed slide. “Let’s exchange numbers so we can keep each other updated.”
She handed Logan the phone. He took the device, his rough calloused fingers brushing against her neat, freezing hands, before he quickly typed in his digits. As he handed it back, his gaze involuntarily drifted past her shoulder toward the glass doors, where he caught Dean standing in the corridor, giving him one last, smug wiggle of his eyebrows.
Good luck, the blond mouthed through the glass.
Logan returned a challenging tilt of his chin. Observe.
“Then it’s set,” Elena concluded. Her voice snapped the brunet’s attention right back to her, forcing him to replace the smirk on his face with an innocent smile. “I’ll text you the room details once it’s confirmed. See you tomorrow at five, then.”
“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”
The girl gave a brief wave before turning on her heel and sliding through the glass doors. Logan watched her go, her small frame instantly swallowed by the sea of winter jackets filling the corridor.
So far, so good, Logan thought.
But before he could even take a step, the sharp, aggressive vibration of his phone snapped him back to his own reality.
Incoming Call: Mom.
His jaw tightened instantly. He stared at the flashing name on the screen, that familiar, suffocating weight pressing against his chest. His thumb hovered dangerously close above the green button as he watched it ring, frozen in the agonizing space between duty and self-preservation. He waited out the long seconds until the ringing finally stopped.
A jagged breath escaped his lips he had not realized he was holding, but before he could slide the phone into his pocket, it buzzed again. This time, it was notifications from the hockey house group chat:
Garrett [12:45 PM]: Wellsy’s staying the weekend. Behave yourselves.
Garrett [12:45 PM]: @Dean put a fucking shirt on.
Logan stared at the glowing text, a dark, self-deprecating scowl deepening his features. Terrific. Two more nights of hearing Hannah and Garrett rocking their bed against his bedroom wall. Hearing their soft, breathless 'I love you's. Hearing Hannah moan his best friend’s name.
Fuck- stop that!
He forced the thoughts out of his head, shoving his phone deep into his hoodie pocket before pushing through the doors and melting into the corridor’s crowd. The chaotic chatter and the nearby group of giggling girls eyeing him all dissolved into a distant, underwater hum, entirely swallowed by the chaos in his own head. Yet, his mind somehow found his way back to the girl with the lethal amber eyes and the borderline corporate smile.
He let out a low scoff, shaking his head. Dean was … Dean. And Logan didn’t know much about the incident between his friend and Elena. But frankly? He didn’t give a shit. He just needed to get through the next six weeks to get the grade without his life completely imploding. He’d show up, do his part, and get out. No complications. No drama. Easy.
Right?
ELENA
Head high, amber eyes locked forward, Elena maintained a posture so perfectly straight it belonged in a military drill – in reality, however, it was desperately designed to keep her beloved yet dying vintage leather backpack from finally snapping at the seams. The interior lining was currently held together by three-week-old duct tape and a prayer. Objectively, the bag belonged in a landfill. But emotionally? Replacing it wasn’t even an option.
But god, she thought, a faint wince threatening her composed expression. My spine is killing me!
Fighting a silent war against her lower back she had not the financial freedom to care about, she marched through the crowded corridor. She had almost reached the heavy glass exit doors when her coat pocket buzzed against her hip. Without stopping, she pulled out her phone to a text from Kendall:
Kendall [12:51 PM]: Did you see this??
Kendall [12:52 PM]: [Image]
Elena tapped the screen. It was a screenshot of a Snapchat story, taken from the back rows of the lecture hall just five minutes ago – the shot captured Logan towering over her, his broad shoulders framing her smaller silhouette as she held out her phone to swap numbers. Stamped across the center in a bold banner was the caption:
[Not her trying to ruin another Hawks game]
The raven-haired girl stopped dead in her tracks, right in front of the exit doors. A tiny, involuntary twitch sparked beneath her left eye as her mind involuntarily flashed back to the blond, arrogant culprit who had started this entire circus last year.
Calm down, El. Your family would hate to see you in an orange jumpsuit, El.
Taking a slow, deliberate breath, she forced her composed armor back into place and pushed through the glass doors. Let them talk. As long as John Logan didn’t follow in Di Laurentis’ lazy, entitled footsteps, everything will be fine. However, if he or the Hawks’ beer-soaked fanbase believed she was going to let them drag her into another viral campus drama and, again, dare to risk her perfect GPA she slaved over? They were terribly mistaken.
Because then, they were about to learn exactly how she earned her reputation.