The gesture was enough to warm the ice crystallizing over my heart.

“Who’s a dick?” Jake asked.

Hannah gave him a quick duh glare.

“Ohhh,” he said, nodding. His brow knitted in the middle. “Did something happen again? I’ll fuck him up. Just say the word.”

“No,” I said, mustering a genuine smile. “Thank you.” I shrugged. “I’m going to have fun giving Winters hell over this new club.”

Hannah clapped her hands together. “Yay! Okay,” she said, wrapping me in a fast hug. “Text me later with all the details. I’ll want to know everything.”

“It’ll be coding talk. That’s all that will happen.”

“Sure, sure.” She waggled her eyebrows and interlocked her fingers with Jake’s. “And we’re going to go study.”

“You two are disgusting.”

“Love you!” she called over her shoulder as they walked down the hallway toward the school’s exit.

“Love!” I hollered back, already turning toward the coding room.

My heart sped as I neared the entryway, the door wide open but the interior quiet. Such a contrast from the normal school day. Nearly everyone on campus was already in or headed toward the parking lot, ready to put this day behind them.

I turned the corner, pausing a few steps in, my breath catching.

Dean had picked a desk in the far corner of the room, his custom laptop out, his headphones on and over his ears. They made his shaggy hair ruffle even more, and his sharp eyes were locked on the screen.

I wetted my lips, stepping farther into the room.

He continued to click away, fast and sure and steady.

Locked in.

Not about to interrupt, I sank into a desk a few away from him, and set up my own gear. Before I opened a capture the flag pwn challenge, I scanned the empty room. It wasn’t a total shock that no one from coding class had shown up, but I assumed Mr. Griffin at least would be here.

They don’t know what they’re missing.

I slipped on my custom Loki emblem headphones, cranking my electronic list on Spotify, and set my fingers on the keys. The sweet repetitive beats pulsed and thrummed in my ears, each thump taking me further away from the room and deeper into the task.

An hour later, I’d captured the flag by exploiting the program to gain remote coding execution. I rolled my neck, sighing with the release of a completed challenge. The angle locked me onto a pair of blue-gray eyes and I jolted.

Hi. Dean mouthed the word despite sitting in a chair an arm’s length away.

I furrowed my brow. “Hi!” The second the loud word left my lips, I realized my playlist still blared in my head. I yanked off my headphones, laying them on the desk next to my laptop. “Sorry,” I said much quieter.

“How long have you been here?”