Chapter 291: 291 | The View From Behind [CASTLE BONUS]
Steele’s whistle cut through the morning air, signaling the end of partner resistance training. Students separated from their partners with varying degrees of relief, sweat dripping onto the grass as bodies that had been pushed to their limits finally got permission to stop.
"Cool down stretches," Steele announced, her voice carrying across the field without effort. "Find a partner. Different from your resistance partner. Assisted stretching for the next fifteen minutes. Anyone who cramps during afternoon practicals because they skipped this will run extra miles tomorrow."
The field dissolved into movement as students shuffled toward new partners. Camille took exactly one step away from me before pivoting toward Petra with an expression that suggested she was choosing her next target for psychological warfare rather than stretching assistance. Petra met her approach with glacial composure, and something about the way they positioned themselves suggested the cool down was about to become significantly more competitive than Steele intended.
I scanned the field for someone who looked equally exhausted and equally disinclined to make the stretching session a performance.
Felicity had already partnered with Lyra, both of them folding into assisted stretches with the practiced coordination of people who had done this enough times to have a rhythm. Caden had grabbed Marco, the two of them laughing about something completely unrelated to actual muscle recovery. Percy stood near the equipment rack with his notebook tucked under one arm, visibly hoping someone would approach him while simultaneously radiating the energy of someone who would rather document the stretching than participate in it.
I took a step toward Percy.
A hand closed around my bicep.
The grip was warm, firm, and immediately recognizable. The scent hit a second later—vanilla shampoo and whatever expensive lotion she had switched to after I made the mistake of saying I liked it. The combination was specific enough that my brain had apparently filed it under Critical Information before I could stop it.
I already knew who it was before I turned.
"Hey, stranger."
Sloane Fitzgerald stood beside me with her hand wrapped around my bicep and her signature smirk playing across her lips. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a high ponytail that left her neck exposed, and her Halloran gym uniform fit her body in ways that made the standardized outfit look anything but standard. The white compression shirt stretched across her chest with every breath, and her navy shorts sat high enough on her thighs to make the simple act of standing next to her feel like a test of concentration.
She looked good.
She looked really good.
She looked like someone who had spent the morning doing physical conditioning and had somehow emerged more beautiful rather than less, which was unfair to everyone else on the field and particularly unfair to my ability to form coherent thoughts.
"Sloane."
Her smirk widened into a genuine smile. "Miss me?"
"You’ve been gone for approximately sixteen hours."
"That doesn’t answer my question."
I let my eyes travel down her body slowly enough that she noticed, taking in the curve of her waist and the shape of her legs and the way she held herself with the confident ease of someone who knew exactly how good she looked and enjoyed being reminded.
"Yeah," I admitted. "I missed you."
The words came out honest because they were honest. The Devotion’s Echo bond pulsed warm between us, carrying the emotional subtext that the words themselves couldn’t fully capture. She felt my sincerity through the connection. I felt her satisfaction at hearing it.
"Good answer." She released my arm and positioned herself for stretching, her back to me as she bent forward at the waist. "You can assist me first."
The position put her ass directly in my line of sight.
The navy shorts rode up as she stretched, revealing more of her thighs and the curve of her glutes in a way that was definitely intentional and definitely designed to remind me what I had been missing during our sixteen hours apart. Her ponytail fell over one shoulder, exposing the graceful line of her neck, and she looked back at me with an expression that was pure challenge.
"Well? Are you going to help or are you going to stare?"
"Can’t I do both?"
"Multitasking." She laughed, the sound bright and genuine. "I respect it."
I moved behind her and placed my hands on her lower back, applying gentle pressure to deepen the stretch. Her body was warm under my palms, her muscles tight from the morning’s exertion. The position brought us close enough that I could smell her shampoo, close enough that the heat radiating from her skin felt like a physical thing against my chest.
Around us, other students stretched with their partners in various configurations of physical contact. Nobody paid particular attention to us, too focused on their own exhaustion to notice that Sloane Fitzgerald from Class 1-A had crossed the field specifically to claim me as her stretching partner.
Well.
Almost nobody.
I caught Camille watching from across the field, her brown eyes tracking the placement of my hands on Sloane’s body with an intensity that had nothing to do with competitive analysis of stretching technique. Petra stood beside her, equally observant, her emerald gaze fixed on the space between my palms and Sloane’s lower back.
Felicity noticed too, her blue eyes finding mine over Lyra’s shoulder with an expression that promised questions I was going to have to answer later.
"How was your morning?" Sloane asked, her voice carrying only to me.
"Eventful."
"Eventful how?"
"The usual. Conditioning. Obstacle courses. Partner exercises with Camille."
Sloane’s body tensed slightly under my hands. "Camille Ortega?"
"Unless there’s another Camille in the cohort I don’t know about."
"There isn’t." She straightened from the stretch and turned to face me, her expression shifting from playful to something sharper. "How was that?"
"Intense."
"Intense how?"
"She’s strong. Good at resistance training. Very committed to the exercise."
Sloane studied my face with the attention of someone looking for information I wasn’t volunteering. The bond between us carried a thread of something that wasn’t quite jealousy but wasn’t quite not jealousy either. Curiosity, maybe. Wariness.
"You’re being vague."
"I’m being accurate."
"Those aren’t mutually exclusive."
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