Love me if you dare

Chapter One:

Everyone on campus knew Zara Cole was trouble. Ethan Blake just didn't know he was about to become hers.

The music was too loud, the room was too hot, and Zara Cole was standing on a coffee table like she owned it.

"Zara! Get down before you break your neck!" Maya shouted over the noise, but she was laughing while she said it, because she already knew it wouldn't work.

"Relax," Zara called back, raising her cup like a toast to no one in particular. "I've never fallen off anything in my life."

That wasn't exactly true. But nobody at this party knew that.

The house belonged to some guy on the soccer team, the kind of guy who threw a party every time he felt like it and never remembered whose idea it was. Zara didn't even know his name. She didn't need to. She just needed somewhere loud enough to drown out her own head for a few hours, and this would do.

She hopped down off the table, landing easily, and grabbed her drink back from Maya before her best friend could "accidentally" pour it out.

"You know people talk about you, right?" Maya said, leaning close so Zara could hear her. "Like, a lot."

"People talk about everyone," Zara said. "I just give them better material."

Maya rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. She'd heard this line before — Zara had about ten versions of it, and she pulled a different one out every time someone tried to have a real conversation with her about her reputation. It was a wall built out of jokes, and Maya was one of maybe two people on this entire campus who'd ever seen what was behind it.

Zara scanned the room the way she always did — not looking for anyone in particular, just cataloguing. Who was here. Who was watching her. Who would have a story to tell tomorrow about what Zara Cole did tonight, even if half of it wasn't true.

That was the thing about being Zara Cole. The stories didn't need to be true. They just needed to be interesting.

She was midway through deciding whether the party was worth staying for when the front door opened, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop about ten degrees, even though nothing about the air had actually changed.

"Oh no," Maya muttered.

"What?" Zara followed her gaze.

And that was the first time Zara Cole ever laid eyes on Ethan Blake.

He didn't belong here. That much was obvious in about two seconds. He was dressed like he'd come from somewhere that mattered — a clean button-down, sleeves rolled with actual care instead of carelessness, like even his casual clothes had been ironed. His hair was perfect. His posture was perfect. He looked like he'd read a pamphlet about how to attend a college party and was now executing the instructions with military precision.

"Who is that?" Zara asked, already knowing she was going to regret asking.

"Ethan Blake," Maya said. "Student council president. Pre-law. Straight A's since, like, birth. He's basically campus royalty."

"Sounds thrilling."

"He's also famously allergic to fun, if the rumors are true."

Zara watched him for a moment longer. He was scanning the room too, but not the way she did. He wasn't cataloguing people. He looked like he was calculating an exit strategy, like he'd walked into enemy territory and was already counting the steps back to the door.

"Why is he even here?" Zara asked.

Maya shrugged. "Chris Dawes is his best friend. Chris drags him to things sometimes. Ethan usually leaves in twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes," Zara repeated, and something in her — something reckless, something that had gotten her into more trouble than she could count — decided that twenty minutes was exactly enough time.

She didn't plan to talk to him. That was important to remember later, when she was trying to explain to herself how the whole night had gone so wrong. She hadn't walked over with any kind of plan. She'd just wanted to see, up close, what campus royalty looked like when it was uncomfortable.

So she walked over.

"You look like you're waiting for someone to hand you a name tag," Zara said, stepping into his space with the kind of ease that made most people flinch.

Ethan Blake did not flinch. He turned, and for the first time, Zara Cole was on the receiving end of a look that wasn't fear, wasn't curiosity, wasn't the usual mix of scandalized and fascinated that most people gave her.

It was mild irritation. Like she was a fly he hadn't decided was worth swatting yet.

"I'm fine, thanks," he said, and turned back toward the kitchen, already dismissing her.

Nobody dismissed Zara Cole.

"You're really not," she said, following. "You've been standing in this exact spot for four minutes doing math in your head about how long is socially acceptable to stay before you can leave. I've been counting."

That got his attention. He looked at her again, actually looked this time, like he was recalculating something.

"You've been counting," he repeated flatly.

"I have excellent time management skills. I just apply them differently than you do."

"I doubt that."

"Careful," Zara said, smiling the smile that made professors nervous and boys stupid. "That almost sounded like an insult. From Student Council Ethan. Didn't know you had it in you."

Something flickered across his face — not quite a smile, but the ghost of one, gone almost before it started. "You know who I am."

"Everyone knows who you are. You're basically a mascot at this point. Student Council Ethan. Class President Ethan. I heard a rumor you once returned a library book a day early just so you could feel something."

"That's not — " He stopped himself, jaw tightening, and Zara watched with real delight as Ethan Blake, campus golden boy, visibly decided whether or not it was worth defending his honor against a girl he'd met ninety seconds ago. "That's a stupid rumor."

"Most of the good ones are."

"And I suppose you'd know. About rumors."

There it was. The shift. Zara felt it happen — the exact moment he stopped being polite-uncomfortable and started being pointed. She'd heard that tone before, from plenty of people. It usually meant they'd already decided who she was before she opened her mouth.

"I would, actually," Zara said, and her voice didn't change, but something behind her eyes went very still. "I'm something of an expert."

"I've heard a few," Ethan said. He wasn't backing down, which surprised her. Most people, once they saw that flicker of ice in her, backed off immediately. He didn't. "Zara Cole, right? You're hard to miss."

"I try."

"I mean that as an observation, not a compliment."

"Careful," she said again, softer this time, dangerous this time. "I bite."

"I believe that."

For a second, neither of them said anything. The party kept happening around them — someone had turned the music up, someone was laughing too loud near the kitchen, somebody's cup had spilled onto the floor and nobody was cleaning it up — but the two of them stood in this strange little pocket of quiet, sizing each other up like two people who had just realized they were standing on opposite sides of a line neither one of them had drawn.

Up close, Zara noticed things she hadn't from across the room. His eyes weren't just serious, they were tired, in a way that had nothing to do with the late hour. Like he'd been carrying something heavy for so long he'd forgotten what it felt like to put it down. It didn't fit the golden boy image. It made her want to ask questions she had no business asking a stranger.

She didn't like that she noticed that. She didn't like it at all.

"So what's the verdict, Student Council?" she asked instead, tilting her head. "Worth the twenty minutes?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Cute. Really building suspense."

"I don't do things for suspense," Ethan said. "I do things because they're useful. This party isn't."

"Ouch." Zara pressed a hand to her chest, mock-wounded. "Careful, you almost sound like you have opinions. I was starting to think they installed you at orientation."

"And I was starting to think you talk this much to everyone, or if I'm just special."

"Depends," Zara said, leaning in slightly, close enough that she watched something in his expression flicker — not quite discomfort, not quite the opposite. "Are you special?"

"I try not to be the kind of special people talk about at parties."

"Too late," she said. "I already have three things I'm going to tell people tomorrow."

"There's nothing to tell."

"There's always something to tell. You just don't know yet what version's going to stick."

Something about that landed differently than she meant it to. She saw it land — saw the exact second Ethan Blake's easy dismissal cracked just slightly, like she'd hit something true by accident. His eyes narrowed, not in anger exactly, more like he was trying to read a page that had been written in a language he almost understood.

"Is that what happens to you?" he asked. "Different versions stick?"

Zara's smile didn't move, but something underneath it did.

"Every single time," she said lightly, like it didn't matter, like none of it had ever cost her anything. "It's kind of my whole brand."

"Sounds exhausting."

"You'd be surprised what you get used to."

He studied her for a second too long, like he was about to say something else, something that might have actually mattered, and Zara felt an unfamiliar flicker of nerves — because for the first time in longer than she could remember, she genuinely didn't know what someone was going to say to her next.

"Ethan!" Chris's voice cut through the moment, loud and grinning, an arm slung over Ethan's shoulder before either of them could finish whatever this was. "There you are. Was starting to think you actually left without telling me, you coward."

"I was thinking about it," Ethan said, and just like that, the moment folded itself up and disappeared, tucked away behind his usual composed expression like it had never happened at all.

Chris looked between the two of them, and Zara watched the exact moment recognition hit him. "Wait. Zara Cole?" He grinned wider. "Ethan, my man, you couldn't have picked a more interesting person to talk to if you'd tried."

"We weren't talking," Ethan said.

"Sounded like talking to me," Zara said sweetly, mostly because she enjoyed watching his jaw tighten again.

"It's a party," Chris said, delighted, clearly sensing a story he was going to tell for weeks. "Everyone talks at parties. That's the whole point of them, which you would know if you came to more than one a semester."

"I came to this one."

"For twenty minutes," Zara said. "I counted."

Ethan looked at her, and for just a second — one single second, brief enough that she could almost convince herself later she'd imagined it — something almost like amusement crossed his face. Almost.

"Goodnight, Zara Cole," he said, and there was something in the way he said her full name, like he was testing the shape of it, filing it away somewhere he hadn't meant to make room for.

"Goodnight, Student Council," she said back, and watched him go, Chris still talking a mile a minute beside him, until the two of them disappeared out the front door into the night.

Maya reappeared at Zara's elbow almost instantly, eyebrows raised so high they nearly vanished into her hairline.

"Okay," Maya said. "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"That." Maya gestured vaguely at the space where Ethan had just been standing. "You were talking to Ethan Blake for, like, ten straight minutes. You don't talk to anyone for ten minutes unless you're about to either kiss them or ruin their life."

"Maybe I like variety," Zara said, but her eyes were still on the front door, like some part of her expected him to walk back through it.

"Zara."

"It was nothing, Maya. He's boring. Rules and schedules and library books returned a day early. Not exactly my type."

"Uh-huh." Maya didn't look convinced, and honestly, neither did Zara sound convinced, even to herself. "You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The one you get right before you do something you're going to pretend you didn't plan."

Zara laughed, and it was a real laugh, surprised out of her. "I don't have a look, Maya."

"You have a look," Maya said. "I've known you three years. I've seen the look before every terrible decision you've ever made. It's showing up right now."

Zara opened her mouth to argue, and then closed it again, because the truth was, something about the whole conversation had rattled something loose in her chest that she couldn't quite explain. Ethan Blake hadn't looked at her the way everyone else did — not with fear, not with fascination, not with that hungry, judgmental curiosity she'd gotten so used to that she barely noticed it anymore.

He'd looked at her like she was a puzzle he hadn't decided was worth solving yet.

Nobody looked at Zara Cole like that. Nobody got to.

It bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

"I need another drink," she said, mostly to have something to say, and turned toward the kitchen, ignoring the way Maya was still watching her with that knowing look on her face.

She didn't think about Ethan Blake again for the rest of the night. That was what she told herself, anyway, every time his tired eyes crossed her mind uninvited, every time she caught herself replaying the exact way his jaw had tightened when she'd said there's always something to tell.

It wasn't until two days later, standing outside Professor Dawson's classroom with a printed class roster in her hand and her stomach sinking through the floor, that Zara understood exactly how wrong she'd been.

Because there, halfway down the list of names for the semester's biggest group project — the one worth forty percent of the final grade, the one that could make or break her chances of keeping her scholarship — right below her own name, in small, unbothered black print, was his.

Ethan Blake.

Zara stared at the page for a long moment, waiting for it to say something different. It didn't.

"You have got to be kidding me," she said out loud, to no one.

Behind her, close enough that she felt her whole body go still, a familiar voice said, "I was about to say the same thing."

She turned around slowly.

Ethan Blake was standing there, arms crossed, staring at the same list with an expression that looked exactly the way she felt — like the universe had made a joke at both their expense, and neither of them was laughing yet.

"Looks like we're partners," he said.

Zara Cole smiled, slow and dangerous, even though her heart was doing something strange and fast in her chest.

"Looks like it, Student Council," she said. "Try to keep up."

She had absolutely no idea, standing there in that hallway, that she'd just met the one person on this entire campus who was about to become impossible to walk away from.