The desk beside mine jolted. Hard enough that half the row looked up.
Slowly turning, I met a pair of deep green eyes from my past.
My stomach dropped. All the air whooshed out of my lungs.
For a second, neither of us spoke. Four years of silence stretched between us.
“Lexi...?” That voice. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
My lungs forgot how to work. The last time I saw him he’d looked at me like I was a stranger.
My former best friend looked different now. Harder. Like the boy I knew had been replaced by something sharper.
His hand tightened around his notebook until the pages crumpled.
The lecture faded into meaningless noise. The only thing in the room was Killian.
Holy shit, I hadn’t imagined him the first day on campus. He was really here.
I gaped, unable to string together an entire sentence. Fuck my life, Killian Briggs—no, Killian Davenport, attended Stonewall University. How had I not known that?
Which meant all of this... wastheDavenport from my dark past.
My gut twisted and that damned darkness rolled in. Killian and I hadn’t spoken in nearly four years, and I was pretty sure he’d blocked me from his social media, but this was an incredibly important fact I’d missed.
“Lexi!” He snapped his fingers an inch from my nose.
Just like that, the anger roared back to life. Four years and he still thought he had the right to demand answers.
“What?” I snarled.
The violence in his eyes had my own fiery temper igniting. He’d abandoned me. Called me a liar. Completely disregarded me when I’d needed him most.
“What are you doing here?” he gritted out again.
“I guess the same as you, asshole, trying to get an education.”
“No. Absolutely not.” He smashed his fist into the desk, and the entire row vibrated.
The girl a few seats down shot a narrowed glare in our direction, until her gaze settled on my former friend’s face. Her lips curled into a flirty smile.
“Sorry,” she mouthed. “I didn’t realize it was you, Killian.”
Well, that made fucking two of us.
I hazarded a peek through the corner of my eye. Killian had always been attractive, in a boy next door kind of way, but now? His cheekbones had sharpened, his sculpted jaw had grown wider, and that sexy stubble... He was hot as sin. And there was something about the dark glitter in his gaze that confirmed he knew it too.
“You can’t be here, Lexi,” he whisper-hissed. Something laced his tone, not just anger... fear?
“At this school or in this seat?” I shot back, ignoring the wayward thought. “Because last I heard, I had every right to both. Just because I didn’t inherit some fancy shmancy new last name, doesn’t mean I don’t belong here.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” His jaw was clenched so tight the tendon fluttered beneath his five o’clock shadow. He dragged his hand through his hair and the sleeve of his shirt rode up, revealing a hint of dark ink.
Well, that was new. The old Killian hated tattoos. Apparently, the old Killian was gone.
He caught my curious stare and tugged the errant sleeve down past his wrist. The scowl carved into his jaw deepened with every passing second of silence.
I averted my gaze and attempted to focus on the professor’s lecture, but my blood boiled. I was so worked up, I couldn’t sit still. Reaching for my pen, I jotted down a few notes from the smartboard. My pen marks were nothing more than dark slashes across the page.
