“You failed your own test,” he said.
I pressed my lips together, fighting a smile. He was lethal.
Bennet kept going. “Averages reveal trends. Standard deviations reveal consistency. Significance tests reveal whether any difference is meaningful or random. You need all three if you want results that matter.”
“That’s a lot,” I said.
“You want to start with the basics.”
“That was the basics?”
“Yes,” he said.
I sat in silence for a long moment, trying to keep up with the shape of the words if not the content. Bennet looked back at the book, and something about the way his hair fell near his eyes made it impossible to stay annoyed. He looked careful. He looked focused. He looked like he lived in a world where everything stayed neat as long as you categorized it correctly.
“So if I want to pass,” I said, “I need to think in columns.”
“You need to think in goals,” Bennet said. “If your goal is to pass, then we reverse engineer the steps.”
“So you’re like my personal GPS.”
He blinked. “I’m a tutor.”
“Tutors can be GPS.”
“I am not a GPS.”
“That sounded GPS-like,” I said.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Jason, we need to stay on topic.”
“Right,” I said, lifting my hands in surrender. “Columns. Goals. Stars. Rookie numbers.”
He gave me a long, flat look. “If you took any of that seriously, the universe would collapse.”
I grinned at him, hoping to catch the hint of a smile again. It almost appeared. Almost. His lips twitched once before he hid the expression behind another turn of the page.
“Okay,” Bennet said. “We start with random variables.”
I groaned before he even finished the sentence.
Bennet ignored the groan and pushed a notebook toward me. “Write down what I say. Trust the process.”
“That sounds intimate,” I muttered.
“It’s math,” he said in that same careful voice. “Nothing intimate about it.”
I leaned over the notebook anyway. My pen hovered over the paper, and Bennet guided me through the first steps. His voice settled into a steady rhythm, and I tried to follow the words instead of the quiet way he breathed between them.
I wanted to make him laugh. I wanted it more than I expected. It bugged me.
But for now, I copied the numbers, because the room felt warm and close, and his focus pulled at me in a way that made everything else fade a little.
CHAPTER FOUR
bennet
I stoodin front of the Bel House for a little longer than I had to. It was much like my own house, but there was an air of masculinity that was impossible to miss. Beer cans lined one of the windowsills. A pair of worn shoes was tumbled upside down by the entrance door. An old hoodie hung over the porch banister. And even if it was only in my imagination, I would have sworn that there was a low-key scent of sweat hanging around the house.