All Chapters of He Wants Me Dead Or Alive : Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

110 Chapters

He Seemed To Know

Kylie's POVThe campus café was crowded for a Tuesday afternoon. I was sitting at a table near the window with Rosa and two other girls from my forensics program, Chloe and Maya. We had just finished a lab and we were decompressing the way forensic students decompressed, which meant complaining about the lab supervisor and drinking overpriced coffee.I was in the middle of a story about the evidence chain assignment when I felt something shift in the room. I did not know what it was at first. Just a change, a small one, the way the air felt different before a storm.Then I saw him.Luca walked in with two other men from the law program. They were talking about something and he was listening more than he was speaking, the way he always did. He did not look at me. He did not look around the room. He just walked to a table across from us and sat down with his back partially to me and ordered coffee and started talking to his friends.I had been aware of him since he walked through the do

The Rain

Luca's POVThe rain started at 2:15I knew it would. I had checked the weather at seven in the morning, before my first class, before the sun was fully up. The forecast said scattered showers in the afternoon, heaviest between two and three. I had been watching the sky all day, tracking the clouds, feeling the air pressure change.At one thirty I left the law faculty and walked across campus to the forensics building. There was no meeting. There was no appointment. There was nothing in my schedule that required me to be on that side of campus. I went because I knew she had a lab until two and because I knew she never carried an umbrella.I stood inside the entrance of the forensics building and waited.She came out at two twenty. The rain was coming down hard, the kind of rain that soaked you through in seconds, the kind that made umbrellas useless if you did not open them fast enough. She had her bag over her head and she was standing under the small awning and she was clearly debati

Asking Rosa

Kylie's POVI met Rosa at the coffee cart the next morning. The rain had stopped overnight and the sky was clear and the pavement was still wet and everything smelled like water and coffee and the city waking up. I had not slept well. I had been thinking about the umbrella and his hand on mine and the way he said yes when I asked if he came for me.Rosa was already there when I arrived. She had her coffee and her arms were crossed and she was looking at me with that expression she wore when she was waiting for me to say something. She always knew when something had happened."Luca showed up at the forensics building yesterday with an umbrella," I said.Rosa did not react. She just stood there with her coffee and her crossed arms and her patient face."It was raining. Hard. I didn't have an umbrella. I was standing under the awning trying to decide if I should run for it and he just appeared beside me with one.""He appeared beside you.""Yes.""With an umbrella.""Yes."Rosa took a si

Dinner

Luca's POVThe invitation took three conversations over two days.It started with a man named Dev, who was in my criminal law tutorial and who also happened to be in a study group with a woman named Priya, who was in Kylie's forensics cohort and who had mentioned a group dinner at a campus restaurant on Friday night. I asked Dev about his weekend plans. He mentioned the dinner. I asked who else was going. He listed names. Kylie's name was among them.Two conversations later I mentioned to a different friend that I had been meaning to try that restaurant. He said he had heard about the dinner. He said he might go. I said I might go too.The third conversation was with Priya herself, who I happened to run into outside the library. She mentioned the dinner. I mentioned that I had heard about it. She said I should come. I said I would think about it.I went.The restaurant was crowded and loud and smelled like garlic and bread. There were twelve of us at a long table, a mix of forensics s

How You Say My Name

Luca's POVAfter dinner the group moved outside.The restaurant was warm and crowded and the night air was cold and sharp and everyone spread out on the sidewalk, pairing off into smaller conversations, the group redistributing naturally around the steps and the streetlights. I stood near the edge of the group, watching, not participating, the way I always did.Kylie ended up beside me.It was not an accident. I had positioned myself where I knew she would exit, where the flow of people would push her toward me. But she did not know that. To her, it was natural. The group shifted and suddenly she was next to me, close enough that I could smell her shampoo, something soft and clean and faintly sweet."Luca," she said.She said my name. Just my name. Just Luca. But something about the way she said it had shifted. It was not the careful politeness of the first few weeks, when she was still trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted. It was easy. Comfortable. Like she was used to sa

Booked

Kylie's POVEnd of term exams were approaching and the library was full.Every table was taken and every corner had someone hunched over notes and every quiet space was filled with the sound of typing and highlighting and stressed breathing. I had been walking through the building for twenty minutes, checking every floor, every hallway, every hidden nook I had discovered in my first year. Nothing. No space. No room. No corner quiet enough to think.I went to the front desk.The woman behind the counter looked up at me with the tired expression of someone who had been asked the same question a hundred times that day."Any study rooms available?" I asked.She clicked something on her computer. She scrolled. She frowned."There's one," she said. "But it's booked under a Navarro booking.""What does that mean?""It means a student with that surname has a standing reservation for the same room every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. They get priority. You can go up and knock, but if they're

Admit It

Kylie's POVI met Rosa at the coffee cart the next morning. The sky was gray and the air was cold and I had not slept well because I had been thinking about Luca's face when he said I'm not trying to be subtle anymore. I needed to talk to someone who would not tell me I was overthinking. I needed to talk to Rosa.She was already there when I arrived. She had her coffee and her arms were crossed and she was looking at me with that expression she wore when she knew something had happened and she was waiting for me to tell her."He booked a study room for me," I said.Rosa did not react. She just stood there with her coffee and her crossed arms and her patient face."Yesterday. I was looking for a place to study and the library was full and the front desk said there was one room available under a Navarro booking. I went up and he was there. He had coffee waiting for me. My order. One sugar, oat milk."Rosa took a sip of her coffee. "He booked it in advance.""Yes.""Knowing you'd need it

She Catches Up

Luca's POVI started meeting her outside her forensics lectures.Not every time. That would have been too much. Too obvious. Too easy for her to dismiss as routine. Every third time, approximately. Irregular enough that she could not predict it. Irregular enough that she would think about it before every lecture, wondering if I would be there, wondering what it meant when I was and what it meant when I was not.When I was there, I fell into step beside her and we walked and talked. When I was not there, she noticed the absence.That was the point.Today I was there. I stood against the wall outside the lecture hall with my hands in my pockets and my eyes on the door. Students filed out in groups, talking and laughing and checking their phones. I waited. I was good at waiting.She came out. She was looking down at her phone, scrolling through something, not paying attention to where she was going. Then she looked up and saw me against the wall.Her face did something.It was small. Hal

What He Knows

Kylie's POVWe were studying in the library on a Thursday night. The same corner table. The same lamp. The same two coffees, because he always brought me one now and I had stopped pretending I did not expect it. The project was almost finished and exams were approaching and we had fallen into a rhythm that felt less like working together and more like something I did not have a name for.He was reading from his textbook. I was reviewing my toxicology notes. The library was quiet and the city was dark outside the windows and everything was normal.Then he spoke without looking up from his book."How's your mother?"I looked up. My pen stopped moving. I stared at him across the table."What?" I said.He turned a page. Still did not look up."Your mother. You mentioned she had a hospital appointment this week. I was wondering how it went."I stared at him. My heart was doing something I did not invite it to do."I didn't mention that to you," I said.He looked up then. He held my gaze ac

The Party

Kylie's POVThe end of first term party was in a venue off campus, a rented space with low lights and loud music and too many people from the forensics and law faculties packed into one room. I came with Rosa and my other friends and I told myself I was not looking for him. I told myself I was here to celebrate the end of exams and to drink cheap wine and to dance with my friends and to not think about Luca for one night.I spent the first twenty minutes looking for him.I scanned the room while I talked to Priya. I looked over Rosa's shoulder while she told me about her criminal procedure paper. I glanced at the door every time someone new walked in. I was not looking for him. I was just aware of the room. I was just paying attention to who was here. I was just—There he was.He was across the room talking to someone I did not recognize, a man from the law faculty, someone tall with dark hair who was gesturing while he talked. Luca was listening. His back was partially to me and he w

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