"I still can't believe you actually did it."
Mia was sprawled across her bed, staring at Sera like she'd just confessed to something criminal.
Which,honestly, wasn't too far off.
"You threw a rock at Zade Calloway's car.
Do you understand what that means?
Do you have any concept of what you have done?"
Sera groaned and buried her face in her pillow.
"I didn't throw it.
I tossed it.
There's a difference."
"There is absolutely no difference!"
Mia sat up,flinging her hands out.
"Sera,that car costs more than both of our lives combined.
Combined.
The boy treats it like it's a living family member.
You basically walked up and slapped him across the face in front of half the school."
"He crushed my phone."
Sera sat up, pulling her knees to her chest.
"Stomped on it like it was nothing.
What was I supposed to do,curtsy?
Thank him for the privilege?"
Mia opened her mouth,closed it, then dropped back against the mattress with a long suffering groan.
"You were supposed to survive your first semester.
Not declare open war on the king of the entire campus."
"He's not a king," Sera muttered.
"He's a spoiled brat who's never had anyone push back because everyone around him is too afraid.
I'm not afraid."
Mia stared at her for a long moment.
Then,very quietly, she said, "You should be."
Silence sat between them for a beat.
Sera chewed the inside of her cheek.
"He cornered me in the library today."
Mia's head lifted so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash.
"He what?"
So Sera told her everything. The way he'd materialized between the stacks like he lived there.
The way he'd moved toward her,unhurried, deliberate, like there was no version of this where she got away.
The shelf at her back.
His voice dropping low enough to feel like something private.
The way he'd called her angel like it was already a name he'd decided belonged to her,some private claim she hadn't agreed to.
By the time she finished,Mia looked like she needed to sit down, despite already lying flat.
"Oh my God."
Mia pressed both hands over her face.
"Sera. He's not just angry. He's interested.
Do you understand how much worse that is?"
Sera's chest tightened.
She thought about his eyes across the cafeteria.
"She thought about they way he'd said now we play"and the way his voice had wrapped around those words like a promise he had every intention of keeping.
"I don't care what he wants," she said firmly.
Mia shook her head slowly.
"Girl. You are either going to end up in his bed or in an early grave.
Possibly both."
Sera rolled her eyes.
But her heart was already doing something she couldn't quite explain,something fast and unsteady and completely inconvenient.
* * *
★ZADE POV★
The girl beneath him moaned his name like it meant something.
Her nails dragged down his back, her legs locked around his waist, her breath coming in short, desperate bursts against his ear.
She said his name again,louder this time, like she wanted the walls to hear it.
Zade didn't hear her.
He didn't see her either.
All he could see was her.
That dark-eyed girl with the stone in her hand and the nerve to look at him like he was nothing to be afraid of.
Like he was the one who should be stepping back.
Sera.
The name moved through his mind like a bruise,tender in a way that made him want to press harder.
He drove deeper,rougher,until the girl beneath him whimpered something about slowing down.
He didn't.
Rage moved through him like a current, tangled with something darker underneath, a hunger he didn't have a clean name for.
Her face kept surfacing.
The way she'd stood there in the library, spine against the shelf,chin lifted,eyes blazing.
No fear.
No submission.
No performance of weakness meant to soften him.
Just fire.
Nobody looked at him that way.
Nobody dared.
When it was over, the girl collapsed against his chest with a satisfied sigh,her fingers tracing idle patterns across his skin.
Zade was already gone.
He reached past her, took a cigarette from the nightstand,and lit it without a word.
She said something.
He didn't catch it.
He moved, swinging his legs off the bed, putting his back to her, smoke curling slow and thin from between his lips as he stared out at the city below.
Lights.
Distance.
The whole sprawling world that had never once managed to get under his skin the way one girl had managed to in a single afternoon.
He ground his jaw.
"She scratched my car."
It wasn't even the scratch.
It was everything behind it,the deliberateness of it, the way she'd looked him dead in the eye afterward and smiled, the way she'd thrown his own words back at him without missing a single beat.
The way she'd stood her ground when every other person in that courtyard had taken a step away from him.
It was infuriating.
It was intoxicating.
It was the most interested he'd been in anything in longer than he cared to admit.
He pressed the cigarette between his teeth and crossed to the window, the city lights doing nothing to cut through the image of her still burning behind his eyes.
That stubborn jaw.
Those furious eyes.
That mouth, which had said oops with the kind of calm that made him want to crack it open and find out what lived underneath the composure.
And the thought of breaking her,not physically,not fully,mentally, sensually, ruthlessly,made his blood surge.
He wanted to push her to the edge, make her scream his name while hating him for it, make her crave the chaos he brought.
Wanted to strip every careful layer of control from her piece by piece until the only thing left was the real storm she was hiding.
Wanted to hear his name in her voice when she had no choice left but to say it.
Zade stood at the window for a long time, jaw tight, smoke fading into the dark.
Then the corner of his mouth curved,slow, sharp, and nothing like a smile.
"Angel," he said quietly to the glass,to the city,to no one at all.
"You have absolutely no idea what you just started."