OUT OF HIS LEAGUE

MAYA

I stood at the towering iron gates of St. Jude Academy, my hand gripping the strap of my backpack so tightly my knuckles turned white.

I used to think my family was comfortable. My dad worked long hours as a plant manager at a manufacturing company, my mom managed a small local bakery, and my younger brother and I never went to sleep hungry. We had a roof over our heads and plenty of love, but looking around me now, I was so wrong.

St. Jude didn't look like a high school. It looked like a European castle carved out of smooth, ancient stone, surrounded by rolling green manicured lawns that seemed to stretch into forever. A steady line of matte-black Mercedes-Maybachs, custom Porsche 911s, glossy Range Rovers, and low-slung Lamborghinis crawled up the private drive, dropping off teenagers dressed in pristine, tailor-made blue and beige blazers.

"Still feels like a fever dream, doesn't it?"

I turned to see Chloe stepping up beside me, flanked by Julian and Marcus. The four of us had spent the last six months practically living in our public school’s library, surviving on cold coffee and energy drinks to win the State Mathematics Competition. The prize? A full-ride scholarship to finish our senior year boarding at St. Jude Academy the most prestigious, untouchable school in the country.

"It feels like we walked into a movie set," Julian muttered, adjusting his glasses. "And we're definitely the extra characters who get cut in the first scene."

"We earned our spot here," I said, mostly to convince myself. I pulled my heavy stack of advanced mathematics textbooks tighter against my chest. "We just need to keep our heads down, get the grades, and survive until graduation."

Just as we took our first step toward the arched main entrance, a deep, rhythmic thrum echoed from above, shaking the air in our chests.

The student body instantly came to a halt. Heads tilted toward the sky as a sleek, private dark-grey helicopter lowered onto the academy’s private helipad just beyond the quad. The rotors kicked up a violent gust of wind, but no one moved. Everyone just watched.

The bay doors slid open, and three boys stepped out, walking off the pad as if arriving by air was just an average Tuesday morning.

I quickly turned away, my heart doing an annoying, involuntary flutter as they walked toward the main doors. Rich elite kids. Not my world. Focus.

We made our way inside, but the hallway was an absolute bottleneck. Students were clustered around the tall blue lockers, clearing a wide path as the three boys from the helicopter approached their row.

"Excuse me," I mumbled, trying to maneuver through the crowd with my heavy armful of books.

As I passed one of the open lockers, someone pushed back into the aisle, forcing me to snap my head up. The boy in the center of the group was right there.

He was mixed, ridiculously handsome, and moved with a lazy, dangerous sort of confidence. He lowered his phone, his thumb freezing on the glass.

Our eyes locked.

The hall seemed to instantly mute. It wasn't a quick glance it lasted a beat too long, a heavy, suffocating second where the air rushed out of my lungs. Up close, his eyes were a piercing, warm amber, framed by dark lashes. There was an instant, electric spark of heat that shot straight to my chest, making my skin flush.

I expected him to look right through me like everyone else did. But he didn't. He looked at me.

My practical brain slammed the emergency brake. I had no idea who he was, and I didn't care to find out. I clamped my jaws shut, shifted my heavy math books higher on my chest, and broke the eye contact first, walking briskly toward my classroom without looking back.

NOAH

"Tell me we’re hitting the beach house this weekend," Jax said, throwing an arm around Carter's shoulder as we walked into the hallway.

"If my dad’s yacht is actually prepped this time, sure," Carter replied with a grin, tossing his designer bag over his shoulder. "I'm just saying, the midterm exams are literally optional if your last name is on the library."

"Must be nice," Jax scoffed, tapping his silver water bottle against his locker. "Some of us actually have mothers who track our GPAs like the stock market."

I tuned them out, resting one shoulder against the metal locker while I cleared through a stack of unread texts on my phone. Same nonsense, different morning. Prom committee invites, party location drops, girls asking where I was sitting at lunch. It was all predictable. It was all boring.

A quiet thud of heavy paper echoed near my elbow.

I casually lowered my phone, expecting another girl from the senior class trying to catch my eye.

Instead, I looked straight into a pair of dark eyes framed by black glasses.

She was shorter than me, with soft curves, deep brown skin, and wild, gorgeous dark curls falling around her shoulders. She was wearing the standard school blazer, but her arms were wrapped tightly around a massive, dog-eared copy of an advanced college mathematics textbook.

She wasn't wearing makeup. She wasn't holding an iPhone. And she definitely wasn't looking at me like I was a prize.

My gaze held hers. For a split second, the noise in the crowded hallway faded completely. I saw a flash of something pass through her eyes a quick, involuntary pulse of raw awareness that mirrored the sudden, strange jolt in my own chest.

She was stunning.

I waited for the faint blush, the nervous giggle, or the awkward attempt at small talk that always followed.

Instead, her lips set into a firm line. She gave me a sharp, unimpressed look, tightened her grip on her heavy books, and turned on her heel, walking straight past me into the AP Calculus room.

I stood there, my thumb still hovering over my phone screen, staring at the empty space where she had just been standing.

"Yo, Noah," Jax nudged my shoulder. "You coming or what?"

I didn't answer right away. A slow, unfamiliar smirk pulled at the corner of my mouth as I shoved my phone into my pocket.

Who was that?