Chapter 4

Tsking her tongue, Harmony walked away and was back minutes later, sliding a glass of coke toward me before leaning both elbows onto the counter.

“Start talking,” she demanded.

I took a long drink first, mostly to buy myself a second to think, because trying to explain Takoda Blackwell out loud suddenly sounded insane.

“He’s in my Ancient Spells class,” I started carefully.

Harmony immediately wiggled her brows. “Of course he is. Mysterious hot guy in creepy mythology class. Very on brand for you.”

I ignored that. “He sits in the back and barely talks to anybody,” I continued. “And he watches everything.”

“Meaning?” she asked.

I frowned slightly, trying to explain it correctly. “Meaning he notices things before everyone else does,” I answered slowly. “Like he’s constantly waiting for something bad to happen.”

Her expression shifted a little at that, her playful look gone. “You think he’s dangerous?”

The question settled strangely in my chest. Dangerous wasn’t exactly the right word, or at least not in the way people usually meant it.

Takoda didn’t feel reckless, he felt controlled, tightly leashed.

“I think,” I admitted carefully, “he’s the kind of person who’s had to survive things.”

Harmony stayed quiet for a second. “Well that’s significantly less fun than my original theory that he was secretly in a murder cult,” she muttered.

I laughed despite myself. “There’s still time.”

She tossed me a grin. “That’s the spirit.” Afterward, she pointed toward the kitchen window just as a plate slid through. “Eat before you spiral into another emotionally unhealthy fixation.”

“Too late,” I laughed.

I grabbed the slice of pepperoni pizza, heat warming my fingertips instantly. The first bite grounded me a little; the taste of grease, salt, melted cheese, simple, not confusing. Not dark eyes, tension, and a voice that lived in my head hours later for absolutely no reason.

Harmony rested her chin in her palm while watching me. “So how bad is it?”

I nearly choked. “How bad is what?”

“The attraction,” she clarified. “Obviously.”

I looked away immediately, which answered the question for me.

Harmony cackled. “Oh no.”

“Please stop sounding delighted about my suffering,” I reprimanded.

“You’re attracted to emotionally unavailable men with unresolved trauma,” she informed me. “This is the most predictable thing you’ve ever done.”

“First of all, rude,” I declared. “Second of all accurate.”

Unfortunately.

I took another bite while trying very hard not to think about the way Takoda had looked at me when I asked too many questions, almost as if he already knew I wouldn’t stop asking them.

“So what exactly happened?” Harmony pressed.

I exhaled slowly. “I introduced myself after class.”

Her eyebrows shot upward. “You approached him first?”

I shrugged. “I make terrible decisions.”

“That’s incredibly brave of you considering your usual flirting strategy is pretending attractive men don’t exist,” she commented.

I pointed my pizza at her threateningly. “He basically warned me away from him.”

Harmony blinked. “What does that even mean?”

I gave another lift of a shoulder. “He said people get hurt chasing things they don’t understand.”

She stared at me for a beat. “Okay, that’s hot.”

“Harmony,” I warned.

“What? Brooding mysterious men have been ruining women’s lives since the beginning of time,” she protested.

I rubbed at my forehead lightly. “The weird part is…” I hesitated.

Her expression sharpened immediately. “What?”

“I don’t think he was trying to impress me,” I admitted quietly. “I think he genuinely meant it.”

That sobered her a little. “Maybe he’s just messed up,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” I agreed, but it didn’t fully explain the constant awareness in him. Or the way his body reacted to movement near the door before his expression even changed. Nor the fact my own instincts kept reacting to him before my brain caught up. I hated how aware I’d become of that already.

Harmony watched me carefully for another second before speaking again. “Just be careful,” she said finally.

The teasing remained in her voice, but softer now. “Heavy people pull heavy things into your life.”

The words settled deeper than I wanted them to, because somehow, despite knowing almost nothing about Takoda Blackwell, I already understood one thing instinctively…nothing about him felt light.

Conversation drifted after that toward easier things. Stan’s newest disaster attempt at social media advertising. A customer last week who’d tried paying with Canadian money.

Harmony’s failed decision to quit caffeine.

I laughed, relaxed, and mostly stopped replaying Takoda’s face every thirty seconds. Mostly.

By the time I finally left Papa Stan’s, the town had gone quieter beneath the cold. Streetlights glowed, and the snow continued to threat in thick heavy clouds.

I shoved my hands deeper into my hoodie pockets as I walked back toward campus. The cold should’ve cleared my head, instead, my thoughts drifted right back toward him again.

Students passed around me in laughing groups while I crossed the quad.

Normal life continued everywhere, but beneath that normalcy, a strange restless feeling kept pressing at me.

By the time I reached my dorm room, Jenna still wasn’t back.

I dropped my keys into the ceramic dish on my desk and kicked my boots off near the chair.

The room hummed quietly with heater noise and distant music through the walls.

Routine settled around me automatically. Eventually I crawled beneath the blankets and shut the lamp off. Darkness folded softly around the room.

For a while, I just listened to the sound of the heater clicking on and off while faint campus light slipped through the blinds.

Sleep should have come easily. I rolled onto my side with an annoyed sigh. “You don’t even know him,” I whispered into the darkness. Which honestly made it worse, because my body seemed determined to react to him anyway.

Above me, the water stain on the ceiling still vaguely resembled a wolf beneath the low light filtering through the blinds, and I stared at it longer than necessary.

Finally I laughed softly at myself. “This is how women end up in documentaries.”

That earned exactly zero response from the ceiling.

Rude.

Eventually exhaustion dragged me under, but sometime deep in the middle of the night, I jerked awake suddenly, heart hammering hard against my ribs. For one disoriented second, I didn’t know why, then the fading remains of the dream slid through my head.

Running, dark woods. Something massive moving between trees, and eyes…dark eyes fixed on me through the shadows.

My breathing slowed gradually while I stared into the darkness of the dorm room.

The dream should have scared me, yet it hadn’t, and the worst part was realizing one thing very clearly as I lay there wide awake. Some part of me would follow Takoda Blackwell straight into danger if he looked at me the right way, and that felt like the real problem.