7

Harper’s POV

My phone buzzed on the desk during econ, screen lighting up before I could flip it face down.

Mason: still owe you that coffee. tomorrow?

I stared at it longer than I needed to. Blair caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and leaned across the aisle, her pen abandoned mid-note.

"Who's that?"

"Nobody."

"Harper Carter." She drew my name out like a warning. "Your ears are doing the thing."

"What thing?"

"The red thing. They only do that for embarrassment or crushes and you're not embarrassed right now."

I turned my phone over so the screen pressed flat against the desk. "It's Mason. He's just following up about coffee."

"Just following up." She repeated it back to me with a smile spreading slow across her face. "Right. Because guys text girls three days in a row about coffee that means nothing."

"It's been two days."

"Even worse."

I shot her a look and she raised both hands like she was surrendering, though the grin never left her face. The professor's voice droned on about supply curves somewhere in the background but I'd already stopped listening. My thumb hovered over the keyboard.

Me: tomorrow works. usual place?

The reply came almost instantly.

Mason: knew you'd say yes 🙂

I fought the smile threatening to break across my face and lost. Blair, of course, noticed that too.

"You're smiling at your phone."

"I'm not."

"You are. I can see your whole face doing a thing."

"We're friends, Blair."

"Sure." She didn't even bother pretending to believe me. "Friends who make your ears go red."

I nudged her with my elbow hard enough that she yelped and the professor paused mid-sentence to glare at us. We both dropped our heads and pretended to take notes until he moved on, but I could feel her still grinning beside me and I could still feel the warmth climbing up my neck no matter how much I told myself it didn't mean anything.

Declan's POV

Hayes dropped into the seat across from me with a tray stacked high enough to feed three people, Cole trailing behind him with considerably less food and considerably more interest in whatever was happening across the cafeteria.

"Dude." Cole didn't sit so much as fall into his chair, eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder. "Mason's been weird all week."

"Weird how?" Hayes asked around a mouthful of fries.

"Smiling at his phone weird. Whistling in the locker room weird." Cole shook his head like the very idea offended him personally. "I think he's actually into her."

I didn't have to ask who her was. I already knew, the same way I knew everything else I wasn't supposed to know, the same way I'd known which table she'd choose the second she walked in, third from the window, back to the wall, close enough to the door to leave without being noticed.

She wasn't looking at me. She never looked at me first. Blair was saying something that made her laugh and the sound carried further than it should have, cutting straight through the noise of two hundred other conversations until it landed somewhere behind my ribs.

"He's gonna ask her out." Hayes said it like a fact rather than a guess, already reaching for another handful of fries. "Watch. Give it a week."

"A week's generous." Cole smirked. "Guy's practically vibrating every time his phone buzzes."

I kept my eyes on my tray. Kept my jaw loose. I kept every muscle in my face doing exactly nothing, because the alternative was letting them see what I actually felt watching Mason's name sit unspoken in the middle of the conversation, watching them talk about him getting closer to her like it was some harmless bit of gossip and not a countdown I couldn't stop.

"Five bucks says he gets her number before Friday." Hayes grinned, already digging in his pocket for the bill like he was that confident.

"He already has it."

The words left me before I could decide whether I wanted them to. The kind of certainty that didn't leave room for a joke. Hayes stopped chewing. Cole's smirk faded by degrees like he was watching it get reeled back in.

"Wait." Hayes set his fries down slowly. "How would you know that?"

I didn't answer. I picked up my water and took a slow drink instead, buying myself a few seconds I didn't actually need because I already knew there was nothing I could say that wouldn't make this worse.

"Declan." Cole leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice dropping like we weren't already isolated enough at the end of it. "How do you know he has her number?"

The truth sat there ugly and obvious. I knew because I watched Mason type it into his phone after the coffee shop conversation Harper hadn't told me about. I knew because I made it my business to know, the same way I made every version of her routine my business, filed away until I couldn't remember what my head used to think about before her.

"Lucky guess." I said it flat enough that neither of them believed me for a second.

Hayes and Cole exchanged a look, the kind that used to be about other people and was now, apparently about me. Neither of them laughed.

The table went quiet in a way it never went quiet and I let it because filling that silence meant giving them something true and I had spent two years making sure nobody got that from me.

My gaze drifted back across the room. Harper had her phone face up on the table now, laughing at something Blair said and I watched the exact second the screen lit up beside her tray.

Mason Reid

The name sat there glowing under the cafeteria lights, and something in my chest went cold and sharp all at once. A blade sliding in slow enough that I almost didn't feel it until it was already too deep to pull back out.

I never wanted to hurt any of my friends but right now, I want Reid six feet down.