Novels by joyagodi23

POV: RayDerek lived on the second floor of Crestwood Hall. I'd been there to return a charger I'd borrowed after practice, which took approximately forty-five seconds, and I was already back in the stairwell heading down when I heard it.Breathing that wasn't right. I stopped on the landing. She was sitting four steps below me with her back against the wall and her knees pulled up to her chest. Her scarf was across her lap. Her hands were pressed flat against her knees and her head was slightly down and she was pulling air in short, shallow pulls that weren't reaching anywhere deep enough to do any good.Not crying. Not hurt, not physically. Just fighting her own lungs in a battle she was clearly losing. I knew what it was immediately.I came down the four steps quietly and sat beside her on the cold concrete floor without hesitation, without asking, without making anything out of it. I left a few inches of space between us. No touching. No crowding.She hadn't registered me yet. He

POV: RileyPractice ran forty minutes longer than scheduled. Coach Farrow had us working on a synchronized sequence for the upcoming showcase, and the timing between the three lead skaters kept breaking down at the same transition point. We ran it seven times. By the eighth it was clean enough to move on from, but my legs were heavy and my mind had been somewhere else for most of it.I was unlacing my skates on the bench when Naomi sat down beside me. She had her phone in her hand and her expression had none of its usual sharpness. It was careful in a way I hadn't seen from her before. Measured. Like she'd been preparing what she wanted to say."I need to show you something," she said. "And I need you to let me finish before you say anything."I looked at her. "Okay."She turned her phone toward me. It was Sienna Voss's Instagram. I recognized it immediately, the same profile I'd found myself two nights ago. But Naomi had gone further than I had. She'd screenshot a series of posts and

POV: RayI walked home in the cold with my hands deep in my pockets and my mind somewhere I couldn't pull it back from.Who are you, actually?The question followed me down every empty path back to my apartment. It wasn't aggressive when she asked it. It wasn't a trap. She'd asked it the way someone asks a question they've been turning over quietly for a while, like she'd already decided she wanted a real answer and was giving me the space to find one.And I'd almost given it to her. That was what unsettled me most. Not that she'd asked. Not that I'd wanted to answer. But how close it had been. One more second in that dim cold rink with her looking at me like that and everything would have come out.I pushed open my apartment door and stood in the dark for a moment before turning on the lamp.The room looked the same as I'd left it. Bowl in the sink. Textbook on the table. Jacket on the chair. I went to the drawer under my desk.The file was where I always kept it, tucked under a copy

POV: RayI couldn't stop hearing the voice. That person is still watching. I'd played it back forty times since the call ended. The woman's voice, calm and precise, like she was delivering information rather than a warning. I didn't recognize it. I had no way to trace the number. I'd sat at my kitchen table for an hour afterward, turning it over and over, trying to find an angle that made it less unsettling, and came up with nothing.So I walked.I did that sometimes when my head got too loud. Campus at night was different from campus during the day, quieter and more honest somehow, just the path lights and the wind and the occasional lit window where someone else was also awake for reasons they probably couldn't explain. I walked the perimeter of the athletics complex, past the main arena, past the training facility, not going anywhere specific.That was what I told myself. I ended up at the skating rink at two in the morning and noticed the dim glow coming through the small window b

POV: RileyHe called that evening. I almost didn't pick up. I sat on my bed watching his name light up my screen and thought about what I wanted from the conversation and came up with nothing useful. But I picked up anyway because avoiding it felt like a choice I'd regret, and I'd made enough of those recently."Can we talk?" he said. "Properly. Not in a hallway.""Sure," I said. "Come over."He arrived twenty minutes later with takeout containers that neither of us ate much of. We sat on opposite ends of my small couch with the food on the coffee table between us and we talked. Or we tried to.It started carefully. Marvel apologized for the comment about Declan, said he'd been stressed and reactive, said he knew he had no right to tell me who to spend time with. He was measured about it. Thoughtful, even. The kind of apology that had clearly been constructed on the walk over.I accepted it because the alternative was starting a conversation I wasn't ready to finish."Things have been

POV: MarvelI hadn't slept properly in six days. I knew the exact number because the last good night of sleep I'd had was the night before the Falcons game, when everything still felt manageable. Before the loss. Before the look on Riley's face at the bar. Before Sienna started texting again like the summer had never ended.I sat on the edge of my bed at eight in the morning staring at my sneakers on the floor and made a decision.I was going to fix this.Sienna lived off campus in a small apartment above a laundromat on Greer Street. I'd been there four times over the summer. I stood outside the door for two minutes before knocking, my hands in my pockets, my jaw tight, rehearsing nothing because there was nothing to rehearse. What I had to say was simple.She opened the door in a sweatshirt and socks, coffee mug in hand, and when she saw me her expression moved through three things quickly before settling on carefully."Marvel.""Can I come in for a minute?"She stepped back. I went