As Thorne pulled into the public library's parking lot, butterflies began to flutter around in the pit of his stomach. He had received a total of three text messages from Cress the night before, making arrangements to meet that morning, and they had filled him with so much elation that even facing his parents to tell them about his suspension and his fractured fingers couldn't keep him down. In the end, he thought he had actually gotten off rather easily, maybe too easily.

He was sure they were going to ground him for the entire week and take away his car, but when he had finished telling them about the fight, the suspension, and the trip to Dr. Darnel's office, Elena Thorne pushed herself away from the kitchen table and walked around to cup her son's face into her hands. His mom searched his eyes and instead of anger and disappointment like he was expecting, Thorne only saw concern.

Finally satisfied, she brushed Thorne's hair away from his face and started muttering in Spanish as she began to busy herself making pozole. It was his grandmother's secret recipe and he had always felt better after eating it, but when he tried to tell his mom he wasn't actually sick, she batted him away and muttered some more things in Spanish and more rapidly.

His dad remained silent through the whole ordeal and when he suggested that he take Thorne over to the school to pick up his car while the soup was being made, a dread began to fill Thorne's stomach. He wasn't prepared for a one-on-one talk with his dad about what transpired that morning, but mostly he was afraid his dad would tell him he was disappointed in Thorne and that would hurt more than any physical injuries he had sustained.

The silence was almost unbearable, but Thorne didn't dare reach for the radio controls. He wasn't sure if he was expected to say something. When he opened his mouth to apologize and offer up some sort of self-inflicted punishment, his dad finally spoke up.

"Did you do this over a girl?"

Thorne hesitated, but he knew he simply couldn't keep quiet like he had at Dr. Darnel's office. Thorne looked over to his dad. "Yes, sir."

"Do you like this girl?"

Thorne let out an unexpected snort of laughter, but when his dad's expression stayed motionless, Thorne looked down at his splint. "She's smart and she's funny. She's the most popular girl in school and she's nice to me." He sighed. "She's the most beautiful girl in the world and I … I …" He sighed again, unable to say the words out loud.

Feeling embarrassed at his confession, Thorne kept his eyes down on his fidgeting fingers. He was startled when a firm hand came down on his shoulder and he looked up to see Kingsley Thorne, eyes still on the road, but with a smirk spread across his face.

Now, Thorne was sitting in his Jeep, staring at himself in the mirror of his sun visor. He was inspecting his eye, which had turned to a blue and purple mess. It didn't hurt so much anymore, but he still winced when he caught his reflection, more out of surprise than anything. To his complete and utter shock, the pozole did make him feel better, but he wondered if it wasn't just his elation that he would be spending the better part of the day with Cress.

The phone in the passenger seat buzzed, startling him. His face lit up uncontrollably when he saw that it was Cress. When he entered her name into his contact list the evening before, he had to resist the urge to type in little pink heart emojis around it. If she ever saw it, he would probably die from embarrassment and since Cress had a knack for showing up when he least expected it, he didn't want to run the risk.

Be there in five minutes. Stay in your car.

He leaned his head back onto his headrest, closed his eyes and wondered what reason she could possibly have for him not going inside. She hadn't changed her mind. Maybe she wanted her scarf back. Thorne groaned. That must have been it, and he, being the the idiot that he was, hadn't brought it with him. He had every intention of returning it to her, but he had brought it inside the house with him after dinner with her friends and simply forgotten about it. If he was being honest with himself, he liked how the faint hint of roses tickled his nose whenever he walked by the scarf which had ended up draped over the back of his desk chair.

He chewed on his bottom lip. Maybe he could invite her over later so she could pick it up. No, his mom would be home and he definitely did not need his mom giving Cress meaningful glances. He was sure his dad had filled her in on their conversation in the car. Maybe he could suggest that they study again tomorrow, but he was getting ahead of himself. What if Cress found out that he was just a boring nerd and regretted being nice to him? The thought hadn't occurred to him until then. He had been too busy switching between anxiety and jubilation at the thought of spending all day with the girl of his dreams. He hadn't even consider what he should do—needed to do—to impress her.

A tap on his window jerked him from his thoughts and he looked over to see Cress staring at him, her lips pressed into a half-grin that highlighted the dimple in her right cheek. Thorne rolled down the window.

"Did you get enough sleep last night?" she asked, still smirking.

Thorne looked bashfully at her. "I was just thinking."

She nodded, holding up two paper cups. "No matter, I got us coffee anyways. Cinnamon latte or peppermint mocha?"

"Cinnamon latte."

"Good. I didn't get us peppermint mochas. It was a test and you passed." Cress grinned, handing Thorne one of the paper cups.

He laughed, taking the coffee. He saw that her eyes lingered on his face, probably examining his black eye. He shrugged. "It looks much worst that it feels."

Cress nodded. "I'm really sorry about what happened. I don't know why Julian—I—I'm so—"

"It's not your fault," Thorne interrupted.

She nodded again, although he could tell she wanted to say more. He was about to get out of the car when her voice stopped him.

"It's such a nice day today. I thought we could go to the park instead of being cooped up in the library. What do you think?"

Thorne hesitated. While he would like nothing more than to spend the day at the park with Cress, they were suspended, and they had come to the library to get schoolwork done. He didn't think it felt right that he should be enjoying a beautiful day outside.

Cress laughed. "I promise we'll get our work done. I even have your assignments typed up." She pulled out a sheet of paper from the bag slung across her shoulder and sure enough, Carswell Thorne was typed in bold letters at the top of the well organized list. She laughed again at the look on his face. "Cinder has terrible handwriting. I was doing you a favor."

"Okay," Thorne conceded.

Satisfied, Cress rocked back onto her heels. "I can drive or—"

"It's okay. I can do it."

Cress bit back a laugh and raised an eyebrow at him, but made her way over to his passenger side seat. Thorne felt slightly bad for cutting her off, but there were hot beverages involved and he didn't think they would have survived a ride in her car, although, he did recognize that they seemed to have made it to the library unscathed.

Cress looked around while she buckled herself in. "Is this your car?"

"Yeah, why?"

She smiled smugly. "I didn't know you had a Male Lead car."

"A what?"

"A Male Lead car." When Thorne looked at her, baffled, she pressed on. "You know, in all those high school movies, the cool male character always has a Jeep."

"He does?"

Cress nodded, taking a sip of her coffee. "Either that or a retro muscle car."

"Like a blue Mustang?"

She wiggled her eyebrows at him. "Exactly."

Thorne laughed. He wondered if she knew how adorable she was being right now. "I don't know. I don't think I would make a very good male lead. No one would want to watch that movie."

Cress scoffed. "Of course they would."

Thorne simply shook his head as he started up the car.

"It's true," she insisted. "I'm an expert in these things."

She sipped on her coffee as Thorne laughed and pulled out of the library's parking lot.


Thorne was absolutely right about being distracted at the park, but he suspected it was more from sitting directly across from Cress, rather than being outdoors—although, being outside undoubtedly added to his dilemma. The sunshine lit Cress's hair, turning it into a golden halo. She had pulled it into a fishtail braid and draped it over her shoulder. Thorne liked how she fiddled with the tail end while she read. Every now and then a breeze would pick up and send loose tresses dancing across her cheeks and she'd bite her lip while tucking them back behind her ear.

When the late morning sun rose above their heads and the temperature climbed, Cress removed her cardigan, revealing a white, cotton, eyelet tank top and Thorne couldn't keep his eyes from flickering to her bare shoulders dusted with freckles. He must have re-read the same paragraph in his history book for the fifth time before giving up completely. Cress must have given up on her homework too because she threw her hands up into the air in exasperation.

"This is so frustrating." Cress growled as she threw her pencil down on the weathered table and bench the two of them had claimed at the park.

Thorne watched as the pencil rolled past him and snatched it when it tumbled off the edge. He handed it back to her tentatively. She sighed before taking it from him.

"Thanks."

"What's wrong?"

"Math."

Thorne chuckled at her directness, but bit his lip when she scowled at him.

"I hate math, but my dad is making me take calculus." She made a face that looked more like Dr. Darnel was making her wander alone in the desert. "Joke's on him when I fail this class."

Thorne reached over and pulled the textbook towards him. His brow furrowed in concentration as his eyes shifted from the assignment to Cress's notebook.

"I can help you if you want."

"Really?" Cress hopped out of her seat eagerly and slid onto the bench beside him.

Thorne felt his skin break into goosebumps at her proximity and the smell of roses. He shook his head to concentrate. "Okay. Derivatives are instantaneous rates of change. In algebra, you learned that the rate of change from one point to another is the rise over run, or change in Y over change in X."

Cress nodded.

"Now, for derivatives, you want the change in X, or what we'll call variable h, to become infinitely small. That's why you take the limit, as h goes to zero, or f(a+h) - f(a) all over h." Thorne wrote the equation out for her and when she leaned in close to see, he felt much more confident. "The numerator part of the fraction is the change in Y. The denominator is the change in X. And you take the limit because you want the change in X to be infinitely small. Get it?"

Cress bit her lip. "No."

Thorne let out a soft chuckle, but stopped when he realized Cress might have thought he was laughing at her. "Here, lets do one together." He walked her through the formula one more time and then walked her through the problem she was having such a hard time with, pointing out exactly where each variable of the equation needed to go. "Get it now?"

She scrunched up her face for a long time, but then nodded her head. Taking the notebook from him, she worked out the next problem.

"Exactly!" Thorne exclaimed.

Cress smiled and dipped her head down to finish up her homework. He checked on her progress every now and then and made corrections when needed, which wasn't very often.

"How are you so good at this?" Cress asked as she finished up the last equation.

"I like math."

Cress snorted, giving Thorne a pointed look.

"I do. Plus, I have to be good at it if I want to be an astronaut."

"You want to be an astronaut?" Cress's eyes were wide and bright.

Thorne rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. "Eventually, but first I want to be an air force pilot."

Cress looked at him, speechless.

"My dad is in the Air Force. That's why we moved around so much. I don't know … I just never wanted to be anything else and I want to see the world. There's still so much of it that I haven't seen. But I figured, after that I could actually see the world."

Cress tapped her pencil against her mouth and Thorne watched as the eraser bounced against her soft, pink lips. He assumed they were soft. They looked very soft. Then they broke into a smile.

"No wonder Kai was talking about Cambodia and tarantulas." Her laugh was like a tickle in Thorne's ear. "I think it's great that you know what you want to do with your life. I have a mountain of college applications and no direction. Maybe you can teach me some of those constellations so I can navigate myself."

Thorne smiled at the thought of taking Cress stargazing. "Anytime." He hesitated for only a beat. "I think you can do anything you want to do."

Cress smiled appreciatively at him. "If only I knew what that was."

Thorne wished he had something to say to that. He had always wanted to be an Air Force pilot like his father. He had never been so sure of anything in his entire life, except maybe his feelings for Cress. He couldn't imagine what it must feel like to not have a plan, but he thought some people preferred it that way. Up until then, he thought Cress was one of those people.

"Hey, I'm getting hungry. Wanna get lunch?" Cress asked, packing up her books.

"Sure," Thorne replied, standing up to stuff his books into his backpack.

They walked to a nearby shop to pick up sandwiches and ginger ales. Thorne laughed when Cress set down two clementines and a bar of chocolate on the counter. She simply smiled and shrugged. They made the quick trip back to the park, circling around to the lake and Thorne was happy to see that Cress led them to his bench. He supposed it was her bench too, and he wondered why he never ran into her before the day of The Rampion.

As they ate their lunch, Thorne couldn't help but notice Cress throwing glances his way.

"Do I have something on my face?"

"Yes, a big black eye."

"It's really okay," Thorne insisted.

"Did you get in a lot of trouble?"

"Surprisingly, none. What about you? Was your mom upset?"

Cress looked down at her half-eaten sandwich. "It's just me and my dad. My mom left when I was twelve."

"Oh." Thorne looked down at his hands and fiddled with the plastic label on his bottle of ginger ale.

Cress placed a hand on his and he stopped. "It's okay. It was a long time ago."

She squeezed his hand and he felt himself ease. He was half tempted to turn his palm so that he could hold her hand, but before he could muster up the courage to do so, she pulled away and finished up her sandwich. Thorne cleared his throat and looked out onto the lake.

"We should sail The Rampion sometime soon."

Thorne whipped his head around to look at Cress. "Really?"

She smiled. "Yeah! I feel like I've been a pretty bad first mate."

She handed him one of the clementines that she had peeled and he couldn't help but laugh as he took it from her.

"Are you bribing me?"

"With fruit? Of course not." Cress smiled devilishly. "That's what the chocolate is for."


AN: Thanks always to my amazing beta, lettered. I also have to thank my cousin and YouTube for the help on the calculus and everyone who wrote in on Tumblr to try and help me with math. Reviews are also welcomed!