LOGINARIA'S POVMarcus and Diana left at seven.I watched their car disappear through the gate from my bedroom window. His hand on her back. Her nice dress. Gone.I picked up the papers from my desk and walked downstairs.I'd used Marcus's good printer. Heavy cream paper that felt serious in your hands. I placed one copy at each seat on the far side of the dining table, walked to the head — Marcus's spot — and stood next to his chair.Then I texted all four of them from the group chat.Dining room. Now.Nothing else.My hands were completely still. Which was honestly surprising. After everything — the paint, the letter, Reed's voice turning my most honest words into a joke in front of half the school — I'd expected to feel terrified right now.Instead I felt like ice.Cold and clear and completely done playing small.Reed came first.He strolled in with his hands in his pockets, eyes doing a slow lazy sweep before landing on me standing at the head of the table. He looked at the papers. He
ARIA’S POVThe cold floor bit through my jeans. I started gathering pages with shaking hands, trying to sort them, trying to keep them in order, while the bell rang and students started flooding out — stepping around me, stepping over my papers, some laughing, most just looking and moving on.Through the open classroom door I saw them.Of course I did.Cole first, turning away from the doorway, his broad back like a wall going up. Reed just behind him, pausing to look in — that familiar faint curious smile — before following Cole. Kai further down the hall, eyes on his phone, not even turning to look.And Jasper, closest to the door.He saw me. I watched it happen — his eyes taking in the scene, me on my knees on the floor surrounded by scattered paper, face burning. Something moved in his expression. He took one step forward into the doorway.My breath caught.Stupid, wild, embarrassing hope.Then Reed's hand shot out. Grabbed Jasper's arm just above the elbow, firm and deliberate. S
ARIA'S POVI didn't go home.The thought of walking into that big quiet mansion, with its polished floors and cold air and four boys who didn't care — I couldn't do it. Not tonight. Not with my words still ringing in my ears in Reed's mocking voice.I went to Maya's.Her apartment was small and messy and smelled like incense and burnt popcorn and it was the most comforting place I knew. She took one look at my face when she opened the door and immediately started pulling on her shoes."I'm going to find him," she said. "I'm going to find Reed and shove that letter so far up his—""No." The word came out flat. Final. I walked past her and dropped onto her lumpy couch. "You can't.""The hell I can't! He humiliated you, Aria. In front of the whole school. Again.""And if you go after him, tomorrow's story is 'Maya and Aria attack Steel Boy over secret love letter.'" I looked at her. The cold logic of it sat heavy in my chest. "It becomes more material for them. More proof we're emotional
ARIA’S POV"Not a love note," she said firmly. "Something real. Something that sounds like a whole, actual person. Something that makes him wonder who wrote it and want to find out." She pointed at me. "You put it in his locker. He reads it. He sees the mind behind the girl who tripped. He comes looking."It was terrifying. It was also the only idea either of us had.I spent two nights on it. I sat in the middle of my enormous, silent bedroom with the occasional thump of bass drifting from down the hall — Kai's room, I'd figured out — and I wrote drafts until they stopped sounding desperate and started sounding like me. Not trying too hard. Not begging. Just honest in a way that had its own kind of confidence.The letter went through seven versions before I kept one.Zane,There's something about you I can't stop thinking about. Maybe it's the way you move — so easy and sure, like you own every room you walk into. Or maybe it's your eyes. Deep and focused and the kind that could take
Aria's POVThe house was too quiet in the morning.Cold sunlight pushed through my curtains and hit the outfit I'd laid out the night before — soft sweater, jeans that hugged my legs exactly the way Maya said they should. I stood at my door and just listened.Footsteps in the hall. A door slamming. The low roll of male voices, getting quieter and quieter until they were gone.Then the garage door. Opening. Closing.Silence.I counted to thirty before I came out.The kitchen was spotless. No coffee rings on the counter, no cereal bowls in the sink, no signs of life at all. They had left — all four of them — without a knock on my door, without a see you at school, without even a glance in my direction as they passed.I was a ghost. Furniture. A girl-shaped thing they'd agreed without speaking to simply not acknowledge.Fine, I thought, grabbing my bag. Not yet.The walk to campus was long. The autumn air was sharp and cold and it cut right through my sweater, and each step felt a little
ARIA’S POVThe next day, the air felt different. It wasn’t just the lingering smell of cheap soap on my skin or the new contacts making my vision crisp. It was a weight, like a storm waiting to break. I walked through the college gates with Maya’s plan in my head and the cold, hard thing in my chest. I was looking for Zane. Instead, I found them.They stood by the main fountain, a solid wall of male energy that seemed to warp the space around them. Reed, leaning against the stone, smirking at something on his phone. Cole, towering and silent, his gaze fixed on nothing. Kai, arms crossed, watching the students pass like a bored king. Jasper, his posture tight, scanning the crowd with sharp eyes.My steps faltered. The courtyard. The pink paint. The torn shirt. Their collective stare that felt like a physical touch. It all slammed back into me, hotter and sharper than before. My new clothes—a simple black skirt and a fitted gray top Maya had picked—suddenly felt like a costume, thin and







