Four Of A Kind

Chapter 66: [2.39] The Blue Chip of Damocles

They worked for an hour.

The pattern was brutal.

She’d get one right and feel a flash of triumph, a brief moment where the universe made sense. Then she’d get the next three wrong and watch her chip stack shrink like ice cream in July.

Isaiah didn’t gloat. He didn’t say anything mean. He just kept explaining, kept walking her through the steps, kept taking her chips with that same calm, neutral expression.

But the visuals told the story.

His pile grew. Red chips stacked into towers. Organized in neat little rows like a general surveying his conquered territory.

Her pile shrank. Pathetic. Lonely. Like the last survivors of a massacre.

This is humiliating.

Worse, he started playing with them.

He’d clack his chips together while waiting for her to work through a problem. Stack them into patterns. Roll them across his knuckles like some kind of casino dealer from a heist movie.

“Another one for the house.” He flicked a chip from her side to his after her fourth consecutive wrong answer. The chip spun across the oak surface before settling into his pile.

Cassidy’s grip on her pencil tightened until the plastic creaked.

I will not let this happen.

I will NOT let this stupid, handsome, well-dressed scholarship boy beat me at this stupid chip game.

Wait. Did she just think handsome?

No. No I did not. That was a typo. A brain typo. Those exist.

“Focus,” Isaiah said. “You’re getting lost in your head.”

“I’m FINE.”

“You’ve been staring at that problem for two minutes without writing anything.”

“Maybe I’m thinking!”

“About what? Because it’s definitely not algebra.”

Her face burned. She looked down at the worksheet. The numbers blurred together. Mocked her. Danced around like little demons specifically designed to ruin her life.

Why can’t I DO this? Everyone else can do this. Vivienne can do this. Sabrina can do this. Even Harlow can do this, and she gets distracted by CLOUDS.

What’s wrong with me?

“Hey. Look at me.”

She didn’t want to look at him. Looking at him meant seeing those dark eyes and that infuriatingly patient face and those forearms that had no business being that distracting.

“Cassidy.”

She looked up.

“Stop trying to see the whole problem at once,” he said. “You’re overwhelming yourself. Just look at the first step. Nothing else exists except the first step.”

“That’s stupid advice.”

“It’s stupid advice that works.” He tapped the paper. “First step. What do you do?”

She stared at the equation. 4(x – 3) = 20.

First step. Distribute the four.

“Multiply four by both things inside the parentheses.”

“Good. Do it.”

Her pencil scratched across the paper. 4x minus 12 equals 20.

“What’s next?”

“Add twelve to both sides.” Her voice came out smaller than she intended. “4x equals 32.”

“And then?”

“Divide by four.” The answer materialized on her paper. “x equals 8.”

Isaiah checked his key. His eyebrow rose slightly.

“Correct.” He pushed a chip toward her.

Cassidy stared at it.

Just a red chip. Worth one measly point. Barely a drop in the bucket compared to the mountain he’d accumulated.

I earned it.

They kept going. Problem after problem. Her chip stack remained pathetically small, but it stopped shrinking. She got one right. Then another. Then wrong. Then right again.

The pattern wasn’t perfect. Wasn’t even close to good. But it was something.

The last problem of the night sat on the worksheet in front of her. A multi-step equation with fractions and variables and everything she hated about math condensed into a single line of mathematical torture.

She’d seen this type three times tonight. Failed it three times tonight.

Okay. Think. First step. Don’t look at the whole thing. Just the first step.

Her pencil moved.

Multiply both sides by the common denominator. Clear the fractions first. That’s what Isaiah said. Fractions are just division. Get rid of them.

The numbers stopped swimming. Stayed put long enough for her to wrangle them into submission.

Isolate the variable. Combine like terms. Check your signs.

Check your signs. That’s where you keep messing up. The negatives.

She went back. Found the error before she made it. Fixed it.

Her pencil scratched out the final answer.

Please be right. Please be right. Please be right.

“Twelve,” she said. Her voice came out steadier than she expected.

Isaiah looked at the answer key.

Looked at her paper.

Looked at her.

The silence stretched. Cassidy’s heart hammered against her ribs.

“Correct.” He reached for something new. A blue chip from a separate pile. “This one’s worth five reds.”

He pushed it across the table.

Cassidy caught it before it could spin off the edge. The chip was heavier than the red ones. More substantial. It sat in her palm like a tiny trophy.

She looked up at Isaiah.

His expression hadn’t changed much. Still calm. Still unreadable. But his eyes…

His eyes were warm. Just a little. Like embers in a fireplace she hadn’t noticed before.

Did he… actually want me to get that right?

“Same time tomorrow,” Isaiah said, gathering the worksheets. “We’ll work on quadratics.”

“I hate quadratics.”

“I know. That’s why we’re doing them.” He paused, one hand on his poker chips. “You did good tonight.”

Cassidy’s brain short-circuited.

What?

“I mean, you’re still losing,” he continued, gesturing at his massive chip pile versus her pathetic handful. “Badly. Embarrassingly, even. But you’re losing less badly than you were an hour ago. That’s progress.”

Okay. There it is. The backhanded compliment. That’s more like him.

But she couldn’t quite summon the usual anger. Not when she was still holding a blue chip she’d actually earned.

“Whatever.” She pocketed the chip. “Tomorrow I’m taking all of yours.”

“Bold statement from someone with six points.”

“Shut up.”

Isaiah stood, tucking the velvet bag into his blazer pocket. The movement made the fabric shift across his shoulders in a way that Cassidy definitely didn’t notice.

“By the way,” he said, pausing at the library doors. “The glasses look good on you.”

And then he was gone.

Cassidy sat alone in the cavernous library, her face burning hot enough to start fires.

That doesn’t count as a compliment. That was just. An observation. A neutral observation that anyone would make. About glasses. That I hate.

She pulled the blue chip from her pocket and held it up to the lamplight.

Just a piece of plastic. Worth five imaginary points in a game that ultimately meant nothing.

But she’d earned it.

Tomorrow I’m going to destroy him.