Novels by Xerox

POV: Blended (Ave + Blake)Ave — The Announcement RoomThe walls of the auditorium felt like they were pressing inward as the screen lit up. Her hands were cold. Her heart wasn’t.All four remaining teams stood at the front, shoulder to shoulder like chess pieces. Judges on one side. Audience on the other. Pressure everywhere.Her fingers brushed Blake’s by accident.He didn’t move.Neither did she.Not when the projector blinked to life, not when the first finalist name was called. It wasn’t them. It was Raven’s team.Predictable.She looked to her left and saw the smirk on Raven’s face. Arrogant. Inevitable.> Don’t look at her. Look forward.And she did—just as the second finalist team name appeared.Not them.Only two slots left.Then—> “Third finalist: Team Halcyon—Ave Santiago and Blake Monroe.”The room didn’t explode. It didn’t need to.Just one loud gasp from Nia in the back.One quiet, sharp inhale from Blake beside her.One pulse racing through Ave’s ribs like it wanted to

POV: Blended (Blake + Ave) --- Blake – Friday Night, Robotics Lab (Again) The lab wasn’t quiet anymore. Not after that kiss. The hum of the prototype. The click of Ave’s fingers brushing the metal frame. The chaos inside his chest. Blake hadn’t planned it — the kiss. But he didn’t regret it. Not one bit. Ave was sitting three feet away from him now, legs folded under her, eyes on the circuitry like nothing had happened. But her posture was all wrong — too still. Too aware. “I’m not going to apologize,” he said. Her hands paused. “For what?” “You know what.” Ave didn’t look at him. “You should.” Blake blinked. “Wait—what?” She finally met his gaze. Not cold. Not angry. Just… shaking slightly beneath the surface. “You should apologize,” she said slowly. “Because now we can’t go back.” Blake’s chest tightened. “I don’t want to go back.” “That’s not the point.” He sat up straighter. “Then what is the point?” Ave’s voice lowered to a whisper. “We were fine. We had a

POV: Blended (Ave + Blake) --- Ave — Friday Night, Robotics Lab The clock read 11:42 PM. The rest of the school was long dark, long quiet, but the tech lab pulsed with low fluorescent light and hums from the soldering iron. Ave sat cross-legged on the floor, her hair pulled into a messy bun, fingers steady as she aligned the final moisture sensor. Blake sat beside her, legs stretched out, coding tablet on his lap. He was focused, mouth slightly parted, brows furrowed in concentration. They hadn’t said much in the last hour. Not because they were avoiding anything. Because this… was them now. Tethered. Uncomplicated. At least for tonight. > Final qualifier in two days. One prototype. One pitch. One chance. But right now, Ave wasn’t thinking about the judges. She was thinking about how Blake kept passing her tools without her asking. How their rhythm hadn’t broken all night. How being near him no longer made her skin crawl with memory, but glow with something warmer.

POV: Blended (Ave + Blake) --- Ave — Saturday Morning, School Makerspace The lab felt unfamiliar, even though she knew every corner of it. Ave stood at the door, her eyes flicking to the memory boards pinned on the walls — circuit drafts, competition snapshots, student notes in crooked handwriting. She used to walk in here fueled by fire. By pressure. By spite, sometimes. Now? She wasn’t sure. What she did know was this: they had three days until the final qualifier. And she couldn’t do it without Blake. Not because she needed his code or build skills. But because the project — their design, their rhythm — had been made by both of them. Pulled together from their stubborn pride and late-night troubleshooting and, whether she liked it or not, the strange gravity between them. She spotted him near the soldering station, hunched over a board, earbuds dangling. Blake turned when she walked in. There was a beat of silence. Neither of them moved. Then he reached into his bag

POV: Ave --- Ave didn't expect anything when she opened her email that night. She certainly didn’t expect to see a single-line message from Blake with a subject line that read: > For the girl who never stops solving. No “hey.” No signature. No emojis. Just a string of letters and numbers: > 01101000 01100101 01100001 01110010 01110100 Binary. Of course it was binary. Her brows furrowed. She copied and pasted it into a translator without hesitation. The result made her freeze. "heart" That was it. One word. No explanation. Ave stared at the screen. She’d expected Blake to maybe apologize for the last few awkward encounters. Or tease her about how she still double-checked his code. Or pretend like nothing had happened between them at all. But this? This was Blake being... sincere. Quiet. Vulnerable. And it scared her more than anything. --- The next morning at school, Ave couldn’t stop thinking about the message. It played on repeat in her head like a radio stuck on the

POV: Blake---Monday Morning — School HallwayBlake Monroe had never cared much about reputation.Not until he saw what losing Ave had done to his.Not in the public way — not the gossip, not the ship edits or the muttered “remember when they kissed?” rumors still bouncing around the halls.It was deeper.He felt like a fraud walking around the robotics lab. Like a stranger sitting in class. Like everything he touched lately carried the weight of what he didn’t say, what he didn’t fix.So he made a list.Names. Faces. Apologies.People he had to face before he could even think about winning Ave back.---Stop 1: Jamie RiversJamie was Ave’s friend, the one who always had a camera in her hand and sarcasm in her mouth. She also happened to be the person who caught Blake staring at Ave one too many times before everything fell apart.He found her near the art wing.“I come in peace,” Blake said, holding up his hands.Jamie raised a brow. “And I come with pepper spray. State your purpose