Chapter 2: The Daytime Freeze

 I scrambled to the opposite end of the couch so fast my knee caught the edge of the wooden coffee table. The sharp pain did not even register in my mind. I jammed my laptop screen down fast, my chest heaving up and down as I stared right at the front door.

Leo did not blink. The sudden heat that had been pressing against my neck vanished in a second. His face went totally blank, stripping away every single trace of that teasing look from a second ago.

The front door swung open wide. Liya walked right in, dropping her car keys into the ceramic bowl by the entryway.

"Oh my god, Ivy, I am so sorry!" Liya called out, shutting the door behind her. "The traffic on Route 4 was a total nightmare. Tell me you didn't die of pure boredom while waiting."

Before I could force a single word out of my dry lips, Leo stood up. The couch shifted as his weight left the cushion. He looked down at me with cold, unbothered eyes, treating me like I was nothing more than dust on the fabric.

With a loud scoff, he flicked his wrist. My notebook went flying off his lap, hitting the hardwood floor with a sharp smack. The paper pages bent underneath the cardboard cover.

"Your friend is such a drag, Liya," Leo said, his voice flat and cutting. He did not even look back as he kicked the corner of the rug and headed straight for the hallway. "Get her out of the house before she ruins the whole vibe."

"Hey! Watch it, Leo!" Liya yelled after him, slamming her backpack down. "Don't talk to her like that!"

He shut his bedroom door at the end of the hall with a loud bang, cutting off her voice completely.

My face burned. The heat rushed up my neck and into my cheeks so fast it practically stung. I dropped straight to my knees on the floor, my hands trembling as I began grabbing the loose sheets of paper that had slipped out of the binder rings. My chest felt so tight, and my heart was still thumping like a hammer against my ribs. I could not let Liya see my face right now. I could not let her see how rattled I was by what had just happened.

"Are you okay?" Liya knelt right beside me, helping me gather the stray pages. "Seriously, ignore him. He is not always in his best mood today."

"I'm fine," I choked out, keeping my head down low. I stared at the messy ink lines Leo had drawn right over my original title: The Psychology of Forbidden Attraction. I quickly flipped the paper over to hide the dark handwriting from her view. "It’s fine. Let's just... let's just get to work."

"No, it's not fine. He’s being a total jerk." Liya grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into a sudden, tight hug. She squeezed me hard, completely blind to the fact that my entire body was stiff as a board and my breath was trapped in my lungs. She pulled back, looking at me with dead-serious eyes. "I mean it, Ivy. You have to stay away from him."

"I do stay away from him," I muttered, fixing the papers in my hand.

"Good. Keep it that way," Liya said, her voice dropping into a firm, warning tone. "He treats people like absolute trash. He plays these weird mind games on campus, gets whatever he wants, and then walks away like they never existed. He’s toxic, Ivy. Seriously. Just don't even look at him."

"I don't," I lied, the warmth still stinging my cheeks. "We don't talk at all."

"Perfect. Let's just focus on the project then," she said, pulling her own laptop out onto the coffee table. "Did you finish the outline for the trade routes?"

"Yeah," I said, clearing my throat and forcing myself to sit back on the couch, far away from where Leo had been sitting. "Yeah, I have the slides ready. Let's just go through them."

We spent the next three hours staring at data and piecing together bullet points. Every single time a floorboard creaked in the hallway, my eyes darted straight up, waiting for the door to open, waiting for him to walk back out and say something cruel in front of his sister. But the hallway stayed completely dark. Leo never came back out. By the time we finally finished, my brain was totally fried, and my nerves were completely shot.

"Thanks for staying so late, Ivy," Liya said, yawning as she walked me to the front door around ten o'clock at night. "See you in class tomorrow morning?"

"Yeah. See you tomorrow," I said, pulling my jacket tight around my front to block out the crisp night air.

The walk back to my dorm campus was a total blur. The cold wind bit at my ears, but all I could think about was the sound of Leo’s voice right against my earlobe, asking me that stupid, infuriating question. What do you think makes people want what they can't have? It was just a game to him. A reminder that he could mess with my head whenever he felt like it, just because he was the star of the campus and I was just his sister's quiet friend.

When I finally unlocked my dorm room door, the silence of the small space felt like a relief. My roommate was already fast asleep, the curtains drawn tight around her bed. I did not turn on the overhead light. I just clicked on the small desk lamp, dropping my backpack onto the wooden chair.

I needed to review the notes one last time before going to sleep, just to make sure I had not missed any typos Liya and I had made during our rush.

I unzipped the main pocket of my bag, reached inside, and pulled out the thick macroeconomics textbook we used for reference. As I lifted the heavy book over the desk, the pages fanned open slightly.

Something small and white slipped right out from the middle chapters.

It fluttered softly through the air, landing flat on the dark wood of the desk right under the warm light of the lamp.

I froze completely.

It was a small, torn piece of lined paper. It had not been there when I left my room this afternoon. I had not opened this textbook while I was at Liya's house either. It had been sitting right in the open pocket of my bag the whole time I was working on the couch.

My heart did a violent flip against my ribs.

I reached out, my fingers shaking slightly as I picked up the scrap of paper. I turned it over in my hand.

Written in the exact same rough, dark ink that had crossed out my presentation title were six short words:

Gym basement storage. Midnight. Don't make me wait.