He Called Me His

Chapter Two: The Rules We Can't Follow.

I should have known walking into Ridgemont High beside Xavier — even just because our lockers happened to be assigned three doors apart — was a mistake the moment the hallway went quiet.

Not fully quiet. Just quiet enough. The particular quiet of dozens of people simultaneously deciding you were now worth gossiping about.

"That's her," I heard someone whisper, not bothering to be subtle about it. "The new stepsister. Xavier's stepsister."

By second period, it had already twisted into something else entirely — a rumor, breathless and completely fabricated, that Xavier had personally walked me to class because he was "already interested." By lunch, a girl named Brianna, who I quickly learned occupied the top of Ridgemont's social hierarchy alongside Xavier himself, cornered me by the vending machines with a smile sharp enough to cut glass.

"So you're living with him now," she said, not really a question. "Under the same roof. That must be... interesting."

"It's not like that," I said, my face heating despite myself. "We're stepsiblings. Nothing's happening."

"Mm," she said, unconvinced, her eyes flicking over me with the particular assessment of someone deciding whether you're a threat worth destroying. "Just so you know — Xavier doesn't do serious. Whatever you're imagining happening between you two, it won't. He gets bored. Always has."

I wanted to tell her I wasn't imagining anything, that the very idea was ridiculous, that I'd known him for exactly one day and the last thing I needed in my new, carefully rebuilt life was whatever chaos apparently followed Xavier Cole everywhere he went.

I didn't get the chance. Xavier appeared behind me before I could respond, sliding an arm loosely around my shoulders with an ease that made my whole body go rigid.

"Brianna," he said pleasantly, though something colder moved behind his eyes. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere terrorizing freshmen?"

Brianna's smile faltered, just slightly, before she recovered it. "Just welcoming your stepsister to Ridgemont," she said sweetly. "Someone should warn her what she's living with."

"Someone should mind their own business," Xavier said, still pleasant, still smiling, though the warning underneath it was unmistakable. Brianna left without another word, throwing me one last unreadable look over her shoulder.

I shrugged out from under his arm the moment she was gone. "I didn't need saving," I said.

"I know," he said. "I wasn't saving you. I was reminding her whose house she was talking about."

"That's not better, Xavier."

Something flickered across his face — not quite an apology, but close to one. "You're right," he admitted. "Sorry. I'm used to handling things a certain way here. I forget not everyone wants to be handled."

It was, I realized, the second unexpectedly honest thing he'd said to me since I'd arrived. I was starting to understand that Xavier Cole existed as two entirely different people — the performance everyone else saw, and something quieter underneath it that he apparently only let slip by accident.

The rumors didn't die down over the following days. If anything, they grew — half the school now convinced something scandalous was brewing at home, the other half simply enjoying the drama of it regardless of the truth. My mother, mercifully, remained oblivious, too wrapped up in newlywed happiness to notice her daughter had accidentally become Ridgemont's newest gossip subject within a week of enrolling.

Richard, Xavier's father, seemed to find the whole thing amusing rather than alarming. "Kids will talk," he said one evening at dinner, entirely missing the tension radiating between his son and me across the table. "As long as you two are getting along, that's what matters to your mother and me."

Getting along. I nearly laughed at the phrase, sitting there trying not to notice the way Xavier's knee occasionally brushed mine under the table, apparently by accident, though I was starting to doubt anything Xavier Cole did was truly accidental.

That night, cornered again by a group of girls in the school bathroom demanding to know "what it was really like" living with him, I finally snapped, storming out mid-conversation and colliding almost directly into Xavier himself, waiting by the lockers.

"They won't stop asking," I said, exhausted, before he could even ask what was wrong. "Every single person in this school wants to know if something's happening between us, and the worst part is I don't even know how to answer that anymore, because nothing IS happening, except apparently everyone's decided it already has."

Xavier was quiet for a moment, something serious replacing his usual easy performance. "Do you want it to stop?" he asked. "The rumors, I mean. I could shut it down publicly if you wanted. Tell everyone the truth — that we barely know each other, that it's nothing."

I hesitated, and in that hesitation, something passed between us that neither of us fully acknowledged yet — the uncomfortable, undeniable truth that "nothing" didn't feel entirely accurate anymore, even if neither of us was ready to admit what it actually was instead.

"Do that," I said finally, forcing the words out. "Please. Make it stop."

He nodded, something unreadable in his expression, and true to his word, addressed the rumors publicly within days, dismissive and casual, exactly as I'd asked.

I told myself I was relieved.

I didn't expect how much it would actually hurt to hear him call whatever this was "nothing" out loud, in front of everyone, like it cost him absolutely nothing to say it — or that within a week, an accident at home would make it impossible for either of us to keep pretending that word was true.