Chapter 2: The Daytime Freeze

I scrambled to the opposite end of the couch so fast my knee caught the edge of the coffee table. The sharp pain didn't even register. I jammed my laptop screen down, my chest heaving as I stared at the front door.

Leo didn't blink. The heavy, suffocating heat that had been pressing against my neck vanished instantly. His expression went totally blank, stripping away every single trace of that intense, teasing look from a second ago.

The front door swung open. Liya walked in, dropping her car keys into the ceramic bowl by the entryway. "Oh my god, Ivy, I am so sorry! The traffic on Route 4 was an absolute nightmare. Tell me you didn't die of boredom."

Before I could force a single word out of my throat, Leo stood up. The couch shifted as his weight left the cushion. He looked down at me, his eyes cold and completely unbothered, as if I were nothing but a piece of 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 pages bent underneath the cover.

"Your friend is a drag, Liya," Leo said, his voice flat and cutting. He didn't 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 vibe completely."

"Hey! Watch it, Leo!" Liya yelled after him, slamming the front door shut behind her. "Don't talk to her like that!"

A heavy bedroom door slammed shut at the end of the hall, cutting off her voice.

My face burned. The heat rushed up my neck and into my cheeks, so hot it practically stung. I dropped to my knees on the floor immediately, my hands trembling as I began grabbing the loose sheets of paper that had slipped out of the notebook binder. My chest felt tight, my heart still thumping like a hammer against my ribs. I couldn't let Liya see my face right now. I couldn't let her see how rattled I was.

"Are you okay?" Liya dropped her backpack onto the floor and immediately knelt beside me, helping me gather the stray pages. "Seriously, ignore him. He is in the worst mood today."

"I'm fine," I choked out, keeping my head down, staring at the messy ink lines Leo had drawn over my original title. The Psychology of Forbidden Attraction. I quickly flipped the page over, hiding 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 girls 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. "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 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 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. "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 stupid faceslapping reminder that he could mess with me whenever he felt like it, just because he was the king 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 asleep, the curtains drawn around her bed. I didn't turn on the overhead light. I just clicked on the small desk lamp, dropping my heavy backpack onto the chair.

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

I unzipped the main pocket, 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 out from the middle chapters.

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

I froze.

It was a small, torn piece of lined paper. It hadn't been there when I left my room this afternoon. I hadn't 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.

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

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