Chapter 1

SOREL

~•~

“You actually thought I was serious about you?”

Dax said it loud. Not loud like an accident. Loud like he wanted the whole courtyard to hear, and they did, because everybody by the fountain went quiet and turned to look at me.

I stood there holding the coffee I’d bought him. Two coffees. One in each hand, because he’d texted me he was tired and I’d walked all the way across campus to bring them.

“Dax.” My voice came out small. I hated that it came out small. “What are you doing?”

“Me? I’m being honest.” He smiled at his friends, those guys he always stood with, and one of them was already laughing. “Sorel. Come on. Look at you. The free art. The little drawings. It was cute for a while.”

“You said you loved the drawings.”

“I said a lot of stuff.” He shrugged like it cost him nothing. “Girls like you eat that up. You’re easy, that’s the thing. You’re so grateful somebody even looked at you.”

My face went hot. Not embarrassed hot. The other kind, where your whole body turns into a stove and you can’t think.

“I made you a portfolio,” I said. “For your dad’s company. I spent three weeks on it.”

“Yeah, and it was great, thanks.” He actually laughed. “Real professional. You should charge people. Oh wait. You do. That’s kind of sad, right? Charging for that.”

Somebody filmed it. I saw the phone go up. Of course somebody filmed it.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked him. “In front of everyone? You could’ve just texted me.”

“Because texting you doesn’t get me this.” He spread his arms out at all of them, the crowd, his audience, like he was thanking them for coming. “Brennan bet me I wouldn’t say it to your face. So.” He looked at the guy next to him. “Pay up.”

The guy named Brennan pulled out his wallet. Pulled out actual money. Counted it into Dax’s hand while I stood there holding two coffees I was never going to give anybody.

“A bet,” I said.

“Don’t make it a thing.”

“You dated me for a bet.”

“I didn’t date you, Sorel, God.” He rolled his eyes so hard his whole head moved. “I hung out with you a few times. Don’t put a tag on it. It’s embarrassing. You’re embarrassing.”

And the worst part, the part that made my throat close up, was that some of them laughed. Not all of them. But enough. Enough that the sound of it filled up the whole courtyard and there was nowhere to put my eyes that wasn’t a person enjoying this.

I should’ve thrown the coffee at him. Later I’d think of a hundred things I should’ve done. But right then my hands wouldn’t work and my legs wouldn’t work and I just stood there being looked at, being a thing people were watching, while my eyes started to burn and I thought, don’t, do not, do not cry in front of him, do not give him that too.

“Aw.” Dax tilted his head at me. “You gonna cry?”

“No,” I said.

“You kind of look like you’re gonna cry.”

“I’m not.”

“It’s fine if you cry. Honestly it’d be perfect.” He grinned. “Somebody’s still filming, right?”

That was when it happened.

I don’t know how to say it so it sounds like anything real. One second I was drowning in all those eyes, every single one of them pointed at me, the laughing, the phone, Dax’s stupid grinning mouth. And then the air changed.

It went heavy. Like right before it rains, that thick feeling, except it wasn’t in the sky, it was on my skin. The back of my neck went cold and then hot and the noise of the courtyard pulled back like somebody turned a dial.

And I knew, somehow, I knew somebody was looking at me past all of them. I’d never felt so strange in my entire life

I turned my head.

He was standing by himself at the edge of it all. Tall, in a dark coat that probably cost more than my whole semester, the kind of still that isn’t calm. I’d seen him before. Everybody had seen him. You didn’t talk to him. Ramiel Stahl didn’t come down to the fountain and he didn’t watch fights over coffee and he definitely didn’t look at people like me.

Except now, he was, he was looking at me.

I felt it more than I saw it, this thing in him that had gone completely, perfectly still.

I didn’t even know from what.

“Sorel.” Dax snapped his fingers in my face. “Hello? I’m breaking up with you. Try to keep up.”

I looked back at Dax. I genuinely forgot he was talking. For one whole second this guy who’d just gutted me in front of two hundred people went small and stupid and far away, and I forgot he was there.

“What?” Dax followed where I’d been looking. Found Stahl standing there. Something crossed his face, fast, that I’d think about later. Not laughing anymore. “What’re you looking at? You know him?”

“No,” I said.

“Then why’s he staring over here like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, weird.” Dax turned back to me, but it was off now, the rhythm of his cruelty was off, he’d lost the room a little and he knew it. “Whatever. We’re done. Don’t text me. Don’t draw me anything. And take your sad little coffees, I don’t want them.”

He knocked one out of my hand.

It hit the ground between us and burst open and went everywhere, all over my shoes, this brown splash spreading across the stones, and somebody went “ohhh” like it was a game, and Dax smiled because he’d gotten his ending after all.

And under all of it, the laughing and the coffee soaking into my socks and my eyes finally, finally letting go and going wet, I could still feel him back there. Stahl. That weight on the side of my face like a hand that hadn’t touched me yet.

I heard footsteps coming across the stones coming straight for us.

Everybody by the fountain went quiet again, but a different quiet this time, and Dax’s smile started to come apart at the edges as the footsteps got closer. I wiped my face fast and turned, and he was already halfway to me.

He didn’t even look at me. He looked at Dax.

“Step away from the girl.”

His voice was low and even and it carried anyway, all the way across the courtyard, and I swear I felt it in my chest before I understood the words. Somebody behind me made a sound. Then a bunch of them did, this gasp going around the fountain, because nobody talked to Dax like that, and Ramiel Stahl didn’t talk to anybody at all.

Dax laughed, but it came out wrong. “I’m sorry, who—”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

And he was close now, close enough that I could see them, those eyes everybody whispered about, this pale blue that didn’t look like it belonged on a person, fixed on Dax like he was nothing. Like he was already gone.

My heart was slamming so hard I could hear it.