Chapter three

Ashford State's quad was loud with the first-week energy of a new semester, tables set up for club recruitment, music drifting from someone's speaker, the smell of coffee carts working overtime. Ivy cut through the middle of it with her bag strap cutting into her shoulder, already running through her schedule in her head.

"You look like someone who needs caffeine and a distraction," Priya said, falling into step beside her out of nowhere, the way she always did. "In that order."

"I look that bad?"

"You look like you spent your whole winter break somewhere your body was but your brain wasn't." Priya squinted at her. "Also you're doing the thing where you chew your lip when you're thinking hard about something you don't want to talk about."

Ivy stopped chewing her lip immediately, which only made Priya grin.

"It's nothing," Ivy said.

"Sure. Nothing. Great. Coffee's on you then, since nothing's bothering you and you clearly have room in your budget for guilt spending."

They got in line at the cart near the library steps, and Ivy let herself relax a little, the campus noise settling into something familiar instead of overwhelming. Priya had been her roommate since freshman orientation, assigned at random and somehow exactly right, sharp-tongued in a way that had scared Ivy a little at first and then turned out to be the most honest thing in her life.

"Fine," Ivy said, once they had their coffees and were walking again. "My mom's getting remarried in May."

"Okay, that's good news, right? You like the guy."

"I like the guy." Ivy hesitated. "His son is in his last year here. Undergrad. Business, I think."

Priya raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"And I know him. Knew him. From high school." Ivy took a sip of her coffee just to have something to do with her mouth. "We're going to be living in the same house in May."

Priya stopped walking entirely, coffee halfway to her lips. "Okay, I need a name, and I need to know if this is a good problem or a bad problem, because your face is doing something I can't read."

"Callum Reyes."

Priya's mouth opened, then closed. She started walking again, faster. "Callum Reyes. The Callum Reyes you used to stare at during AP History and then deny staring at when I called you out?"

"I never stared."

"You absolutely stared. I have three years of evidence." Priya shook her head slowly, like she was recalculating something. "And now he's going to be your stepbrother."

"Please don't say it like that."

"I'm just repeating the facts back to you, Ivy, this is what facts sound like." Priya's grin had gone a little wicked. "This is either a disaster or the best thing that's ever happened to you, and I genuinely cannot tell which."

"It's neither. It's just weird. We're going to be family. That's it."

"Uh huh." Priya didn't sound remotely convinced, and Ivy decided not to push the point, because she wasn't sure she believed herself either.

They rounded the corner toward the science building, and that was when the noise around them shifted, just slightly, the kind of change in a room's energy that told you someone important had walked in.

Ivy looked up in time to see her.

Reagan Cole moved through the quad the way some people moved through rooms they owned, trailed by two girls in matching Delta Row sweatshirts, everyone around her adjusting slightly, straightening up, lowering voices, the way a current shifts around a rock in a river. She was laughing at something one of the girls said, head tipped back, sunglasses pushed up into hair that looked expensively effortless.

"Who's that?" Ivy asked, before she could stop herself.

Priya followed her gaze and made a face like she'd bitten something sour. "Reagan Cole. President of Delta Row. Basically runs half the social scene on this campus, scholarships, invitations, who sits where at every mixer that matters. You do not want to be on her radar."

"Why would I be on her radar?"

Priya didn't answer right away. She was watching Reagan's group get closer, and something in her expression had gone careful.

"No reason," Priya said. "Just, generally. Good policy. Stay off it."

They kept walking, angling to pass Reagan's group with plenty of room, the kind of wide berth Ivy had learned to give certain people without ever being told why. It almost worked. They were three steps past when a voice, light and pleasant and utterly deliberate, called out behind them.

"Wait, is that Callum's stepsister?"

Ivy's stomach dropped.

She turned, slow, and found Reagan looking directly at her, sunglasses pushed all the way up now, expression pleasant in a way that didn't reach her eyes at all.

"I heard about the wedding," Reagan said, stepping closer, her two friends flanking her like they'd rehearsed it. "Small town. Everyone heard about the wedding. Marcus Reyes marrying some single mom he met at, what was it, a hospital fundraiser?" She tilted her head. "That's sweet. Very Cinderella."

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Ivy kept her voice level, though her pulse had picked up.

"Not yet." Reagan smiled, slow and precise. "But you will. Everyone does, eventually." Her eyes flicked over Ivy once, top to bottom, cataloguing something, the coat, the bag, the scholarship-kid shoes Ivy had bought on clearance two years ago. "I dated Callum. For a long time. Just so you know, since you're about to be living with him."

Ivy felt Priya go rigid beside her.

"That's nice," Ivy said carefully. "I don't really see how that's relevant."

Something shifted behind Reagan's eyes, quick and cold, there and gone. "It's relevant," Reagan said, still smiling, "because I know exactly what it looks like when someone gets handed something they didn't earn. New house. New family. New last name. Must be nice."

"Reagan." One of the friends said it low, a warning, glancing around at the growing pocket of students who'd started to notice.

Reagan ignored her, eyes still fixed on Ivy. "I just think it's important you understand how things work around here before you get too comfortable. This campus has a way of finding out exactly who people really are underneath all the new furniture." She reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Ivy's ear, a gesture so casually cruel, so performed for the small crowd now watching, that Ivy's whole body went hot with humiliation before she could stop it. "Welcome to the family, sweetie. I mean that."

She turned and walked away, her friends falling in step behind her, laughter already starting somewhere in the group like the whole thing had been a joke everyone else was in on.

Ivy stood frozen on the path, face burning, coffee cup crushed slightly in her grip.

"Okay," Priya said quietly, once Reagan's group was far enough away. "So that's the thing I didn't tell you."

"What thing."

Priya winced. "Reagan and Callum. They dated for almost two years. Broke up right before he left for his last year abroad program last spring." She glanced at Ivy sideways. "Word is, she never really got over it."

Ivy stared at the space where Reagan had disappeared into the crowd, that pleasant, precise smile still burned into her mind, the way it had promised something without ever quite saying what.

"Great," Ivy said, voice thin. "That's great."

She had six months before the wedding. Six months before she moved into a house with the boy she'd loved quietly for years, and now, apparently, six months to figure out how to survive the girl who still considered him hers.