OFF LIMIT FOR THE HOCKEY CAPTAIN

By lunch, I'd almost convinced myself I'd imagined the whole thing.

Almost. Except every time I closed my eyes I saw it again, that smaller, sharper smile, the one that didn't belong to the Dylan Kingston everyone else got. I hated that I'd catalogued the difference. I hated more that some small, traitorous part of me wanted to see it again.

"You're doing the thing," Maddy said, sliding her tray across from mine, dropping into her seat like she'd been chasing me down half the cafeteria.

"What thing?"

"The staring-into-space, replaying-something thing. You did it in second period too. Mr. Alvarez called your name twice."

"I was thinking about the history test."

"You were thinking about Dylan Kingston."

I stabbed my fork into my salad like it had personally wronged me. "I was not."

"Gin. Your ears go red when you lie. They're doing it right now."

I covered them out of pure reflex, which was, admittedly, not helping my case. Maddy grinned like she'd won something, and across the cafeteria, as if summoned by his own name, Dylan walked in with two of his teammates, laughing at something, completely at ease in the way people are when the whole room has already decided to like them before they've done anything to earn it.

He didn't look at me. Not once. Which shouldn't have bothered me, but did.

"Okay, weird theory," Maddy said, watching him too now. "What if he actually likes you?"

"He does not like me," I said it too fast, and I knew it the second it left my mouth.

"He stares at you in the hallway. He gave you that face this morning, the one you described to me in way too much detail for someone who claims not to care."

"He stares at everyone. It's a personality disorder."

"Uh huh." Maddy popped a grape into her mouth. "And if I told you Amber said Dylan told the guys he was going to, and I quote, finally crack the ice queen, would that change your theory?"

Everything in me went still.

"Where did you hear that?"

"Amber. Who heard it from Vanessa. Who heard it from someone on the team, so, you know, filtered through Stephanie's personal news network, take it with a grain of salt. But apparently there's a bet. Something about him getting you to go out with him before winter formal."

I put my fork down slowly, because my hands had started doing something I didn't like, this small, humiliating tremor I couldn't seem to shut off.

"A bet," I said.

"That's what she said."

I looked across the cafeteria at him again, and this time, like he could feel it, he looked back. Held it a beat too long, same as this morning, and something in my chest that had been embarrassingly warm all day turned instantly, mercifully cold.

Of course. Of course it was a bet. Dylan Kingston didn't look at girls like they were people, he looked at them like scoreboards, exactly like I'd told Ryan a hundred times, exactly like every single girl before me had learned the hard way. I'd almost been stupid enough to forget that for one hallway, one look, one stolen half smile that meant nothing at all except that I was apparently his next target.

I stood up so fast my chair scraped against the floor.

"Where are you going?" Maddy said.

"To fix my ears."

I didn't fix my ears. I walked straight across the cafeteria, ignoring the way conversations quieted as I passed, because everyone at Cedarfield had an instinct for drama the way sharks had one for blood, and stopped directly in front of Dylan's table.

"Hayes," he said, and had the audacity to smile like this was a pleasant surprise.

"I heard about the bet."

Something flickered across his face, fast, there and gone, but I saw it. Guilt. Actual guilt, which almost made it worse, because it meant it was true.

"It's not what it sounds like," he said.

"It sounds like you told your friends you're going to, what was it, crack the ice queen. Did I get that right?"

His jaw tightened. Behind him, his teammates had become very interested in their food. "Ginny…"

"Don't." My voice came out steadier than I felt, which I counted as a small victory. "You don't get to call me that. You don't get to call me anything. I'm not a bet, and I'm definitely not a game, and you can go tell whoever you made that bet with that it's officially off, because I wouldn't go out with you if you were the last…"

"It's not a bet with them," he said, standing up now, low enough that only I could hear it. "It's a bet with myself."

I stopped.

"What?"

"There's no bet, Ginny. I made that up to shut them up because they wouldn't stop asking why I keep ending up wherever you are." He ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time since I'd known him, Dylan Kingston looked like he didn't know what to do with his own mouth. "I told them it was a bet because it sounded better than the truth."

"And what's the truth?"

He looked at me the way he had that morning by the trophy case, except there was nowhere to hide from it now, no crowded hallway, no easy exit, just his eyes on mine and the whole cafeteria pretending not to watch, forks paused halfway to mouths, conversations gone strangely thin.

"The truth," he said quietly, "is that I don't know what I'm doing yet. But it's not a bet."

Behind him, weaving through the tables with Amber and Vanessa flanking her like bodyguards, Stephanie Colton was already walking straight toward us, chin up, smile sharpening with every step, and the look on her face told me whatever this was between Dylan and me, she'd just decided it was about to become her problem too.