The Ghost Protocol

Chapter 5-Out Of Your League

Vincent stood there, blocking the only exit from his dorm room, looking down at me with the smug confidence of a guy who thought his body and his smooth baritone were enough to rewrite reality. He actually thought he had me trapped. He thought that because I had let my guard down an hour ago, he owned my self-respect.

The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. He wanted me to cry. He wanted me to argue, to scream at him about Isabelle, to prove that I was insecure so he could claim the moral high ground.

Instead, I just looked at him. Really looked at him.

The spell was completely broken. The untouchable pre-law student who had made me feel so anxious over text looked incredibly small right now. He was a nineteen-year-old boy hiding a hotel keycard behind his back, terrified of losing control of his little campus kingdom.

"Get out of my way, Vincent," I said, my voice entirely flat, devoid of any emotion.

His smirk twitched, just a fraction. He wasn't getting the frantic reaction he had rehearsed. "Harper, don't be dramatic. I told you, Isabelle is irrelevant. If you walk out that door over a misunderstanding, we're done. I'm not chasing you."

"Good," I said, stepping forward until I was inches away from his chest. I didn't flinch. "Because I don't run in your circle, and I definitely don't share a rotation with a girl who has to buy her way through classes just to keep up appearances."

His eyes widened slightly. He hadn't expected me to throw the truth about Isabelle back in his face with so much calm detachment.

"You think you're playing me?" I continued, a cold, quiet laugh escaping my lips. "You think because you bought me a matcha latte and whispered a few rehearsed lines, I was going to forget who I am? You’re so busy trying not to get trapped by girls like Isabelle that you forgot some of us actually have a future we care about. You wanted a secret option, Vincent. But the reality is, you can’t afford me."

Before he could process the blow to his massive ego, I reached down, snatched my purse from the floor, and looked him dead in the eye.

"Move," I commanded.

The sheer authority in my voice caught him off guard. Vincent stepped back, his mouth opening to say something anything to save face, but the words caught in his throat. I grabbed the door handle, twisted it open, and stepped out into the bright, sunlit hallway of the dorm building.

The heavy wooden door clicked shut behind me, and for the first time in weeks, the suffocating weight in my chest vanished completely.

As I walked across the campus quad, the afternoon sun warming my face, I pulled out my phone. I didn't open i********:. I didn't check Isabelle’s grid to see what expensive outfit she was flaunting today, and I didn't look at Vincent's contact name. I opened my settings, selected his number, and hit Block. Then I did the exact same thing on Snapchat and i********:.

Clean. Absolute. Zero loose ends.

I wasn't the second choice. I wasn't the secret option. They could keep running their frantic, exhausted games in the dark, but I was stepping into my own light. Everything I had my peace, my intelligence, my future belonged entirely to me. And no one on this campus was ever going to make me forget that again.

I was so focused on the absolute rush of freedom that I didn't notice the sleek, black car idling by the humanities curb until the window rolled down. A familiar voice called out my name, and as I turned, my jaw dropped. It was David the one guy I thought I had successfully locked out of my life weeks ago and he was holding a folder with my name printed across the front in official university ink.