All Chapters of Love me if you dare: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter One: Everyone on campus knew Zara Cole was trouble. Ethan Blake just didn't know he was about to become hers.The music was too loud, the room was too hot, and Zara Cole was standing on a coffee table like she owned it."Zara! Get down before you break your neck!" Maya shouted over the noise, but she was laughing while she said it, because she already knew it wouldn't work."Relax," Zara called back, raising her cup like a toast to no one in particular. "I've never fallen off anything in my life."That wasn't exactly true. But nobody at this party knew that.The house belonged to some guy on the soccer team, the kind of guy who threw a party every time he felt like it and never remembered whose idea it was. Zara didn't even know his name. She didn't need to. She just needed somewhere loud enough to drown out her own head for a few hours, and this would do.She hopped down off the table, landing easily, and grabbed her drink back from Maya before her best friend could "acciden

Chapter Three: By the time Zara made it back to her dorm, her hands still hadn't stopped shaking.She told herself it was anger. That was the easier thing to call it. Anger she understood — anger had a shape, a use, a place to put itself. Anger she could work with. The other thing, the thing underneath it that felt a lot more like hurt, she didn't have any interest in looking at too closely.Maya was on the couch when she came in, laptop balanced on her knees, and took one look at Zara's face before closing it immediately."Okay," Maya said. "What happened.""Ethan Blake made a bet with his friends that he could get me to take the project seriously." Zara dropped her bag by the door with more force than necessary. "Like I'm some kind of experiment. Some kind of — project within the project."Maya's eyebrows shot up. "Wait, what?""A hundred bucks, Maya. A hundred bucks says the campus disaster can act like a normal person for one semester." Zara paced the length of the small living r

Chapter Five: Zara didn't remember walking home.One second she was standing in the middle of the quad staring at a photo she'd thought was gone forever, and the next she was sitting on her bathroom floor with her back against the tub, phone clutched so tight in her hand that her knuckles had gone white, and she genuinely couldn't account for the twenty minutes in between.Maya found her there an hour later."Zara?" The bathroom door creaked open. "Hey — hey, what happened, what's wrong—""They have the photos," Zara said. Her voice came out strange, flat, like it belonged to someone else. "They said they still have all of them."Maya didn't need to ask which photos. Her face went pale, and she sank down onto the bathroom floor next to Zara without a word, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all."I deleted everything," Zara finally whispered. "Every copy. I made sure. I checked three times.""I know you did.""So how does some

Chapter Seven: Ethan was out of his chair and through the study room door before Zara could stop him."Bree." His voice cut through the library hallway, sharper than Zara had ever heard it, all the careful, practiced politeness stripped clean away. "What did you just send her?"Bree's eyes widened, genuine surprise flickering across her face before she smoothed it back into something more careful. "Excuse me?""Don't." Ethan stopped a few feet from her, and Zara, following close behind, had never seen him look like this before — jaw tight, hands clenched at his sides, every ounce of the composed student council president burned away by something close to fury. "Zara just got an email that said 'I already told him myself.' You're standing right outside the door with your phone in your hand. Don't play games with me right now.""I don't know what you're talking about." Bree's voice wavered, just slightly, and Zara, watching closely despite the panic still roaring in her ears, caught so

Chapter Nine: Zara didn't sleep. Not after sleep well, Zara sat glowing on her phone screen at nine-forty at night, not after Maya double- and triple-checked every lock in the apartment, not after the two of them sat up on the couch with all the lights on until almost two in the morning, jumping at every sound the old building made settling into the cold.She texted Ethan around midnight, unable to stop herself.Zara: He was outside our door tonight. While we were sitting inside talking. I don't think I can sleep.His response came back almost instantly, like he'd been staring at his phone waiting for exactly this.Ethan: I'm coming over.Zara: You don't have to do that.Ethan: I know. I'm coming anyway. Fifteen minutes.He was there in twelve. Zara opened the door to find him standing in the hallway in a hoodie clearly thrown on in a hurry, hair messy, eyes sharp with worry, and something in her chest loosened at the sight of him in a way she didn't have the energy to be embarrassed