Iran across the Riverside campus, through the parking lot, over the bridge. The river was black underneath me, the streetlights throwing long reflections on the surface. Cold air biting my face and my lungs.
Just come. Please. Not good.
Alex didn't say please. Not like that. Not without context, not without the careful framing he put on everything.Pleasefrom Alex meant something had broken past the part of him that never asked for anything.
Kingswell's campus opened up ahead. Stone buildings silver in the moonlight. I took the path toward Langford Hall, counting windows the way I had the first time I'd come here — the night I'd told myself I was just coming to talk and ended up in his bed instead.
I was supposed to be finishing reading for my anatomy class but that wasn't happening. This was way more important
Third floor. Room 221. I knocked.
The door opened immediately. He'd been waiting right behind it.
I opened my mouth to ask what happened.
He grabbed my shirt and pulled me inside and kissed me.
Hard. Both hands fisted in my jacket. His mouth on mine before the door was even closed—I heard it swing shut behind me, the lock clicking under his hand. His teeth caught my bottom lip. His hand found the back of my neck and pulled me in and I stopped thinking aboutpleaseandnot goodand whatever emergency had made Alex Harrington ask for help.
I kissed him back. My hands on his waist, his jaw. The heat of him through his t-shirt. His heartbeat hammering against my chest.
When he finally pulled back, I was breathing hard and grinning like an idiot.
"What the hell was that for?" I said.
He didn't smile back.
"Alex. Hey." I put my hand on his face. Tilted it toward me. His eyes were bright. Not soft bright. Something harder. "What's going on? You said not good. You saidplease.And then you kiss me like—"
"Like what?"
"Like you're trying to prove something."
His jaw tightened. He stepped back. The distance between us filling with something cold.
"Look at my phone. On the bed."
His voice was wrecked. Not the polished Alex voice, not the measured Harrington composure. Something underneath all of that. Raw and shaking and holding itself together by force. Something was seriously wrong.
The phone was on the bed. Screen cracked in one corner. I picked it up.
"Your screen is cracked, what—"
"Just look at the text, Liam"
A photo of us kissing at the mixer.
I read the text aloud. "Congrats on the time today. You two really do have chemistry."
My stomach folded in half.
I sat on the bed. Stared at the screen. That moment was something private to us. Something that belonged in the dark between two people and nowhere else.
Someone had been standing outside with their phone out.
"When," I said.
"Twenty minutes ago."
