She’s watching. Not the way people watch when rumors start—curiosity dressed as distance, sympathy that keeps itself clean. Just assessment. Like she’s tracking variables, not people.
It puts me on edge faster than the whispers did.
I move with the crowd, cutting a straight line through it. Pace stays even. If she’s going to look, I’m not giving her anything extra to read.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away. Doesn’t step in.
And other people notice.
A couple of girls near the counter glance at her, then at me. One lifts her eyebrows like she’s waiting for Zoë to do what everyone assumes Zoë does—cut in, cut through, cut someone down. Or defend. Or pile on. Anything.
Zoë gives them nothing.
I pass close enough to register the choice she’s making.
Silence. Deliberate. Controlled.
A test.
And she hasn’t decided the outcome yet.
I don’t want her concern. I don’t want her protection. I don’t want her weighing in at all.
I want her to break the quiet.
My body reacts like it hates me for it—heat low in my gut, pulse sharpening, stupid awareness of her mouth like I can feel it even when she hasn’t spoken.
It’s jurisdiction. It’s wanting to know where I stand in her head because if I’m in there, it matters.
She doesn’t give tells. She gives absence.
When our eyes meet, it’s brief and flat.
No reaction. No soften.
Just confirmation that she’s aware—and opting out.
That irritates me more than noise ever could.
Fuck, seriously.
I keep walking. Behind me, the sound swells back into place like the moment never happened.
But it did. And she knows it did. That’s why she didn’t touch it.
I hate that I want her to say something. Hate that her silence reads intentional instead of passive.
I don’t look back. I don’t slow down. I don’t give the hallway the satisfaction of a reaction.
But the pressure stays.
She chose silence on purpose.
By lunch, the student center is a different kind of crowded—lines, trays, loud conversations performing normalcy. This is where teams and their orbit overlap; it’s why people linger. It’s why stories get oxygen.
The dining hall is loud in the way places get when everyone’s pretending not to listen. Trays slide. Chairs scrape. Laughter hits in uneven bursts.
I clock my teammates before they clock me—Adrian at the long table near the windows, Declan across from him, Dante and Cole shoulder to shoulder with food they’re barely touching. Normal setup.
