Chapter two
559 Words
There’s a certain kind of silence that follows you after you speak up in a room full of people who didn’t expect you to exist.
I felt it long after I left the psychology hall.
People didn’t look at me. They glanced—just long enough to whisper. The girl who challenged Dante Valtieri. I didn’t know why that name carried so much weight yet. But I could feel it.
I had barely made it to the courtyard when a hand hooked into my elbow.
“You either have a death wish or a god complex,” a girl with violet braids said, tugging me off the path. “I like you.”
I blinked.
“Thanks… I think?”
“I’m Kiana. Your new roommate.” She smiled, mischief in her eyes. “And apparently your social bodyguard now.”
I smiled for the first time since I stepped into this school.
Our dorm room was small but clean, with posters of anime and 90s R&B singers on her side, and my side… mostly just books, folded clothes, and silence.
“You really didn’t know who Dante was?” Kiana asked, plopping on her bed.
“No. Should I?”
“He’s third year law. Brilliant. Terrifying. Rumor says he rejected every girl who ever tried.” She looked at me like I was news. “He doesn’t even party for fun. He parties to disappear.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“Sounds hot,” she corrected with a grin.
I looked away, grabbing my headphones.
Music. That was always my way out.
Tonight it was Cigarettes After s*x. Their voices whispered what I couldn’t say aloud.
I didn’t want to think about Dante.
But my mind betrayed me.
The way he’d looked at me. Not like I was a threat—but like I was interesting. And that was somehow worse.
Three Days Later
I didn’t expect to see him again so soon. I had signed up for a campus library assistant shift—quiet, peace, anonymity. I had just reshelved a psych textbook when I turned around… and he was there.
Leaning against the shelf like he’d been waiting.
“So you are real,” he said, voice low.
“Did you think I was imaginary?”
“I thought maybe I dreamed you. But then again, my dreams don’t insult me.”
I crossed my arms.
“Do you always stalk girls in libraries?”
“Only the interesting ones.”
I hated the flutter in my chest at that.
“You look uncomfortable,” he said.
“Because I don’t like being followed.”
“It’s not following if I was here first.” He held up a book. The Psychology of Power and Obsession. “Looks like I found something that reminded me of you.”
“That’s not flattering.”
He stepped closer.
Too close.
“You intrigue me, Emily.”
My heart stumbled.
“You don’t know me.”
“Not yet.”
He smiled again—that same sharp, knowing smile. “But I will.”
And then, like a shadow, he was gone. Again.
But the air he left behind stayed charged.
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
Not because I was afraid.
But because for the first time in a long time… I wanted to see what happened next.
- Writer
