Chapter 3

DRISANA

Carter was calling again.

I watched his name light up my screen and let it go dark without touching it. Seventeen missed calls since last night.

I had lain in the dark with my phone face up on the pillow, staring at that unanswered text until the light outside my window changed color. The alarm went off. I got up and got dressed like a person who had her life together.

Someone who has been watching you long enough to know that what happened tonight wasn’t an accident.

I had turned that sentence over in my head approximately four hundred times between midnight and six a.m. and I was no closer to knowing what to do with it than I had been the first time I read it.

I turned my phone face down.

Professor Smith’s voice moved through the lecture hall somewhere behind my thoughts. Groups. Project. Thirty percent of final grade. This was the one class I genuinely couldn’t afford to fail, which was the only reason I had dragged myself here with my eyes dry and my jaw tight and absolutely nothing left to give anyone today.

Someone dropped into the seat beside me.

“Is this seat taken?”

The voice was deep, spoken so low that I looked up immediately.

He was already looking somewhere slightly to the left of my face. Dark hair falling over his forehead, hood pulled up over it, almost swallowing his face entirely. Gray eyes that looked away the moment I made eye contact, dropping to the desk instead. Dark circles sit deep under his eyes. His hands were flat on the desk. He was dressed like someone trying to disappear into the furniture and almost succeeding.

I tried hard not to stare.

God. He was gorgeous. He looked like one of the Greek gods’ stone statues from the Art department had come to life. Not to mention that height. He was towering over me. Even when the hoodie swallowed his body frame, those broad shoulders were having the moment of their lives.

“It’s not,” I said.

He nodded and sat down. He opened a notebook to a blank page and stared at it as if it had personally offended him.

I looked back at the front of the room. I tried to stop myself from stealing glances at him. The last thing I want is to look like a creep over a stranger. A very hot stranger, if I may.

He smelled of musk and mint, with a faint scent of rain clinging to him. My stomach did a weird little flip. I’ve always loved the smell of earth after rain, it’s my coping mechanism in scent form.

I shifted slightly in my seat and forced my eyes back to the projector screen. The lecturer’s voice sounded far away. I pressed my thighs together and tried to sit still, but the warmth between my legs wouldn’t go away.

Focus. Just focus.

I uncrossed my legs, then crossed them the other way. My pen kept tapping against my notebook. I made myself stop.

“Stop it. Get a grip.” I thought to myself.

I leaned forward a little and pretended to write notes. My handwriting came out messy and slanted. Every time he moved, even just to scratch his arm, that rain smell drifted over again.

I bit the inside of my cheek until it hurt.

Why does he have to smell like that? Of all the days.

I glanced sideways for half a second, then forced my eyes back to the screen. My face felt hot. I hoped no one could tell.

Professor Smith was writing names on the board. I found mine and scanned the two beside it. Charlotte Adams. Rian. Just Rian, no last name, sitting there between everyone else’s full names like whoever typed it hadn’t bothered finishing.

I muttered. “Charlotte Reeves and a Rian. Out of fifty-four people.”

“That’s me.”

I turned. He was looking at the board. He looked a bit uninterested in whatever the class was about.

Before I could respond someone leaned over from the row in front of us, bright-eyed and already smiling like she had been waiting for an excuse.

“Oh my god, I’m Charlotte.” She pointed between herself and me. “Drisana, right? I saw your name on the board. This is actually so exciting, I love this module.”

I blinked. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She was already looking at the boy beside me. “And you’re Rian? Just Rian?”

He glanced at her briefly. “Just Rian.”

“Amazing.” She said, “Okay so we need to sort out the assignment. Are you both free right now? We could go somewhere and just get the outline done.”

I looked at my phone and looked back at her. There was something genuinely uncalculated about her that I didn’t know what to do with. No angle I could find. Just a girl who was happy about a group project.

“I’m free,” I shrugged.

Charlotte turned to Rian. He had gone back to staring at his notebook. She waited. He seemed to feel the waiting and looked up.

“Sure,” he said. Then added, like he’d remembered something, “I mean. Yeah. I’m free.”

Charlotte beamed. I watched him look away from her smile like it were slightly too much light.

We filed out when the lecture ended and stopped in the corridor to figure out where to go. Charlotte was already checking her phone.

“Okay I actually can’t stay.” She made a face. “I completely forgot I have a thing. Can we do Thursday? Two o’clock, library?”

“Thursday works,” I said.

“Amazing.” She grabbed my arm and typed her number into my phone before I had offered it, which I found I didn’t mind. “Text me. Okay. Bye, Rian, nice to meet you.”

Rian lifted one hand in something that might have been a wave. Charlotte rushed down the corridor mumbling she was already late.

I looked at Rian. He was looking at the space where Charlotte had been standing with the expression of someone who had just survived something.

“She seems a lot,” I said.

“Yeah.” He pulled his hood slightly further forward.

I smiled. I didn’t know why.

We started walking toward the exit together without deciding to. The corridor was loud and busy. He moved quietly among the busy crowd, letting gaps open rather than pushing through. I, on the other hand, did the opposite. I pushed through the crowds like they owed me space.

We had almost reached the main doors when I heard Carter.

“Drisana.”

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

He was coming from the side corridor, jacket on, car keys in hand, like he had been waiting. Like he had known exactly when my lecture ended.

He pushed toward me. His voice was doing the low reasonable thing. He definitely rehearsed it to sound cool.

“We need to talk.”

“No we don’t.”

“Babe. Just five minutes—”

“I said no.”

He reached out and wrapped his hand around my wrist. The grip landed hard, fingers pressing into the bone, and I went completely still.

Beside me, I felt rather than saw Rian stop walking.

“You’re being dramatic,” Carter gritted his teeth. “What you saw wasn’t what you think.”

“Let go of my arm.”

“Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”

Students moved past us. Eyes slid away. The universal performance of not getting involved.

“You’re making a scene,” Carter said, tightening his grip.

“Let go or I’ll make a bigger one.”

He laughed. “And what else? Call your father? We both know how that went.”

His thumb slowly pressed harder into my wrist bone.

I pulled my arm back and slapped him across the face with everything I had.

The sound cracked through the corridor. His head snapped sideways. His hand dropped. The hallway went silent at the same moment. Every eye was on us.

Carter turned back slowly. Cheek already going red. Eyes wide open.

“You absolute bitch.”

He grabbed my arm again, harder this time. His fingers dug in. I tried pulling back but he held on and for one second I couldn’t move from his grip. The corridor was still silent and watching.

Then Rian stepped forward.

He didn’t say anything. He moved forward until he was standing close enough that Carter had to look up at him and something in Carter’s face shifted. The grip on my arm loosened by half a degree.

That was enough for me to escape his grip. I quickly grabbed Rian’s hand.

His fingers closed around mine before I had finished the motion. His grip tightened once, just slightly, like a reflex that got ahead of him, and then we moved. The corridor was behind us and Carter’s voice started up again. Louder with each step. My name, then louder, then louder, then nothing. He stopped abruptly.

I forced myself to keep walking and not turn around to see what stopped him.

We rounded the corner. I kept walking until we reached the window at the end of the corridor. I stopped and turned around to face him.

His face was slightly flushed. He was looking at our joined hands. I looked down at our fingers tangled together and dropped his hand like it had burned me. Heat crawled straight up my cheeks.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to— I mean, I just—”

“It’s fine.” He pressed it flat against his thigh.

“Sorry,” I apologized again. “For grabbing you.”

“It’s fine.” His voice came out slightly uneven. He cleared his throat. “Are you okay?”

I looked at my wrist. The mark Carter’s fingers had left was already fading.

“I’m fine.”

I wiped my sweaty palm on my jeans and looked away. “Thanks… for back there. He wouldn’t have stopped.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. Looked at the window. Looked back at me. Opened his mouth and closed it again.

The silence that followed was so awkward. This is so embarrassing. Ugh… I hate this. I hate Carter more. How dare he appear in my school and make a scene in front of everyone. In front of HIM. There goes my chance of impressing him. I hope the next time Carter takes a shit, it will be so big it will rip his asshole apart.

Then I looked at his hand. There was a faint scar running across the thumb. It was so familiar like I’ve seen it somewhere. I didn’t know how or from where. But my body recognized it before my brain caught up and by the time I realized I had been staring too long he had already noticed.

Rian slipped his hands into his hoodie pockets. I looked up at his face. He was looking somewhere else.

Okay. I just made him uncomfortable. I hope he’s not thinking I’m a creep.

A lot of strange things had happened in the last twenty-four hours. I should have gone home. I should have opened the wine and stared at the ceiling and processed all of it like a functioning adult.

Instead, I looked at this boy I had met forty minutes ago and said the most reckless thing I had said all week.

I opened my mouth. The words came out before I could stop them.

“Will you be my boyfriend?”