Chapter 4
756 Words
POV: Chloe Lopez
I knocked my chair back so fast it scraped against the floor.
The sound cut through the library like a blade. Three people at the nearest table looked up. I didn't care. I grabbed my notebook and pressed it against my chest like a shield.
"I—I need to get home." The words came out in pieces. "I just remembered. There's a thing."
Liam watched me from his chair. He hadn't moved. His expression was unhurried, patient, like he was prepared to wait out whatever this was.
"A thing," he repeated.
"Yes. A thing." I was already reaching for my bag. "Thanks for the physics help."
I made it to the exit. Cool air. Hallway lights. The sound of my own heartbeat louder than it had any right to be.
It's not real. I pushed through the main doors into the afternoon. He said something that felt real but none of it is and you need to get a grip.
I avoided his texts all weekend. He sent two—both about homework, both politely worded, both completely impossible to read anything into. I replied with single words. Yes. Thanks. Hit send before I could second-guess the punctuation.
By Monday morning I'd constructed a very reasonable internal argument for why the library thing was nothing and I was going to walk into school and be a normal person about all of this.
I'd also deliberately taken the back stairwell to avoid my locker until second period.
Which is why I didn't see Zack coming.
He materialized from the alcove by the science labs like he'd been waiting there specifically. Maybe he had.
"Been hiding?" He fell into step beside me, and the casual smile on his face was worse than the aggressive version. "You and your 'boyfriend' skip the weekend together?"
"Leave me alone, Zack." I kept walking.
"I did some asking around." He stepped in front of me, forcing me to stop. "Funny thing—nobody saw the two of you hang out at all Saturday or Sunday. No posts, no sightings. Kind of weird for a couple that supposedly can't keep their hands off each other."
My pulse ticked up. Don't let him see it.
"What we do on weekends is our business." I tried to step around him.
His hand closed around my wrist.
"Let. Go." The words came out flat, but my heart was slamming.
"You really think he's going to protect you?" Zack's grip tightened, pulling me toward the dead-end angle of the stairwell. "Let's see how fast he—"
A hand landed on Zack's shoulder from behind.
The grip wasn't rough. It didn't need to be. The pressure alone made Zack's face go slack.
"She said let go."
The voice was ice-cold and completely even. Nothing in it that sounded like anger. That was somehow worse.
Zack turned.
Liam stood without his glasses—he must have pocketed them on the way—and the person looking back at Zack through those amber eyes was nobody's debate champion. His tie was still knotted perfectly. His blazer didn't have a wrinkle. Everything neat, everything still, and the stillness itself was the threat.
"You deaf?" Zack tried to front it out and swung.
Liam caught his fist.
The move took maybe a second and a half—a redirect, a downward lock, leverage applied with the precision of someone who'd been drilled in it since before he had opinions about things. Zack went down on one knee with a short, sharp sound of pain.
Liam crouched down to Zack's level. His voice dropped so low I could barely hear it from three feet away.
"I've always preferred words, Miller. But I'm flexible." He held the lock steady. "Touch her again and I'll make sure you're out for the season. That's not a threat. That's physics." A beat. "You understand physics, don't you?"
Zack's face had gone gray. He nodded once, fast.
Liam released him and stood.
He pulled a folded handkerchief from his breast pocket, pressed it once over his palm—the gesture of someone removing something contaminating—and tucked it away. Then he put his glasses back on.
He turned to me. His voice returned to its usual register, warm and unhurried, like he'd just helped me pick up dropped books.
"You okay?"
I looked at him. At the perfectly knotted tie. At the hand that had just executed a textbook joint lock on the school's starting quarterback.
"Who are you?" I asked.
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- Writer
