I FELL FOR THE WRONG GIRL

Chapter 5: What she saw

Ivy’s POV

I couldn’t stop thinking about the wall.

The way Ava’s hand had fisted in my jacket. The heat of her body when she pinned me there. The anger in her eyes mixed with something I didn’t want to name.

I needed something familiar. Just before I could finally breathe, my boyfriend texted me just after four.

“Where are you? I feel like I haven’t seen you properly since you got here.” He said

“Near the library. Coming?” I replied smiling

“Already walking.”

I sat on the steps outside the library and tried to shake off the leftover tension from earlier. When I looked up and saw him coming toward me in a black shirt, something in my chest finally loosened.

He smiled when he reached me and pulled me straight into a hug. “There you are,” he murmured against my hair. “I missed you.”

“I saw you yesterday.”

“Not like this.” He pulled back just enough to look at my face. “You okay? You look tired.”

“Long day.” I said.

He didn’t push it.

Instead he took my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world and took me toward the open grass near the main walkway. We sat under one of the bigger trees.

Students passed by in groups, laughing, talking, living their normal first weeks. For a few minutes, I let myself pretend I was one of them.

Adrian kept my hand in his lap, thumb slowly brushing over my knuckles.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“Just adjusting.”

He studied me for a second, then reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. The gesture was soft and gentle, I loved it.

The kind of touch that used to settle me completely. Today it only half worked.

“I heard some things,” he said carefully. “About you and Ava Hart.”

My stomach tightened. “People talk too much.”

“Did something happen?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to explain the courtyard. Or the panic attack. Or the way she had me against the wall a few hours ago.

“I just don’t like how she treats people,” I said finally. “I said something. That’s all.”

Adrian’s jaw flexed. “Be careful with her, Ivy. She’s not someone you want as an enemy.”

“I’m not scared of her.”

He gave me a small, worried smile. “I know. That’s what worries me.”

He leaned in and pressed a slow kiss to my forehead, then lower, near the corner of my mouth.

It was gentle and soft.

I closed my eyes and tried to sink into it, into him, into the life I was supposed to want but for the first time, I didn’t feel it.

That was strange.

I didn’t see Ava at first.

She was standing across the walkway, partially hidden by a group of students, but her eyes were locked on us.

On me.

On Adrian’s hand still holding mine and the way he had just kissed my face like he had every right to.

Something in her expression changed.

It wasn’t just anger this time.

It was sharper and darker.

She didn’t look away when I noticed her. She held my gaze for a long, heavy second, then looked at Adrian again. Her mouth pressed into a thin line.

Nina appeared beside her and said something. Ava didn’t answer, she just kept staring at the two of us and just then, she turned and walked away without another glance.

But the look she left behind stayed with me.

Adrian noticed me staring.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just thought I saw someone.”

He squeezed my hand. “Come on. Let me buy you food before you disappear into your dorm again.”

I let him pull me up and I smirked.

But as we walked toward the cafeteria, my mind kept replaying the way Ava had looked at us.

Not just jealous.

Not just angry.

Something closer to claim.

Like she had decided, in that exact moment, that she didn’t like seeing me belong to someone else.

And even though I still disliked her, even though I still thought she was arrogant and cruel, a part of me had noticed the change in her eyes.

And hadn’t looked away fast enough.

The cafeteria was loud in the way first week places always were with trays clattering, people shouting across tables. Adrian found us a quiet corner near the windows.

He got my usual without asking, the same sandwich and iced tea I’d ordered a hundred times over the last year of long distance video calls. He set the tray down and smiled like everything was normal.

I tried to match it.

We talked about classes and the football team’s early practices abd how my roommate Tessa was already trying to drag me to some party this weekend.

His voice was steady, familiar, the same voice that used to make the distance between us feel smaller. Today it only made the space inside my chest feel wider.

Every few minutes my eyes drifted toward the entrance. I told myself I was just scanning the room and I told myself it had nothing to do with short buzzed hair and sharp blue eyes. But the memory of the wall kept sliding back in “the heat of her body, the press of her thigh and the way her fingers had twisted in my jacket.

Adrian reached across the table and laced our fingers together again. His thumb brushed the back of my hand in slow circles.

“You’re somewhere else,” he said.

“I’m here.”

“You keep looking at the door.”

I forced a small laugh. “Just people watching. It’s weird seeing so many new faces.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he let it go. We finished eating. He walked me halfway back to the residence hall, kissed the top of my head, and promised to text later. The second he turned the corner, the smile I’d been holding slipped.

I didn’t go straight to my room.

I took the longer path that cut behind the academic buildings, the same quiet stretch where I’d found Ava on the ground the day before. I told myself I was just walking off the restlessness. I told myself I wasn’t hoping to run into anyone.

My phone buzzed once in my pocket. An unknown number.

I already knew who it was before I looked.

“You looked comfortable.”

Three words.

No explanation.

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. I stopped walking and stared at the screen. Part of me wanted to delete it. A larger part of me typed back before I could stop myself.

“You looked like you had something to say.

The reply came almost immediately.”

“I did.” She said

Then say it.

There was a longer pause this time. Long enough for me to start walking again. When the next message arrived, it was shorter than the first.

Not over text.

Tomorrow.

After your last class.

The old library steps.

I stopped again as student passed me, laughing, completely unaware that the most dangerous girl on campus had just decided we weren’t finished.

My thumb hovered over the keyboard. Every sensible part of me screamed to ignore it, to block the number, to go back to the safe, simple life waiting in my dorm with Tessa and Chloe and the boyfriend who still thought he knew me.

Instead I typed one word.

“Fine”

I locked the phone and shoved it deep into my pocket like that would keep the conversation from following me. It didn’t.

The entire walk back to Residence Hall B, I could still feel the weight of Ava’s stare from the walkway. The way her mouth had tightened when Adrian kissed me. The silent, sharp decision that had settled behind her eyes.

She had looked at me like I already belonged to her.

And the worst part is the part I couldn’t admit that some traitorous corner of my body had liked it.

I reached my floor, swiped the keycard, and stepped into the room. Tessa was carried away on her bed with headphones on. Chloe was half buried under a textbook.

Neither of them looked up right away so I dropped my bag, sat on the edge of my mattress, and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

Now I couldn’t stop replaying the heat of Ava’s body against mine, the sound of her voice when she told me to stay away, the dark, claiming look she had given me across the grass.

I didn’t know what she wanted from me tomorrow on those library steps.

I only knew I was going to show up and that scared me more than any threat she had ever made.