I tried not to think about him.
I really did.
I tried not to think about the way his voice had sounded last night in the dark.
Tried not to think about how close he had stood.
Tried not to think about the way he had looked at me like I was something he was still trying to understand — and somehow already failing to ignore.
Most of all, I tried not to think about this morning.
About how cold he had been.
Not cruel. Not distant enough to hurt on purpose. Just... controlled. Like whatever had happened in the quiet of his room last night had been folded away and locked up somewhere I wasn't allowed to touch in daylight.
I told myself it was fine.
That men like Malakai Blackwood were not built for softness in the morning.
That maybe I had imagined half of it anyway — the warmth, the stillness, the strange way the room had felt like it belonged to only the two of us for a few stolen hours.
So by the time the car rolled to a stop in front of the school gates, I had already made up my mind.
I was going to focus.
On class.
On school.
On getting through the day without letting his name become a pulse inside my throat every time I let my mind wander too far.
The school grounds looked exactly the same as they always did and entirely different at once.
That was the thing about places after something inside you changed — the walls stayed standing, the hallways kept their shape, people laughed in the same corners and dragged chairs across the same polished floors, but you never quite returned as the same person who had left.
And yet it was still school.
Still whispers.
Still eyes.
Still people who watched too much and understood too little.
I adjusted the strap of my bag over my shoulder and stepped inside.
At first, nobody said anything.
That was almost worse.
A few people looked at me too long. Some gave me that familiar, careful once-over — dress, hair, shoes, posture — as if trying to compare the version of me in front of them with the one they had last spoken about behind my back. A few girls from my literature class paused mid-conversation and then resumed in voices a shade too soft to be innocent. Two boys near the notice board looked at me, looked at each other, and then immediately pretended they had not been looking at all.
I kept walking.
That was something I was getting better at.
Just walking.
Not shrinking. Not hunching into myself. Not offering my discomfort to people who had done nothing to deserve the privilege of seeing it.
The hallway to my first class was already getting crowded, lockers opening and shutting, bags shifting, perfume and paper and the cold bite of morning air still clinging faintly to everyone's clothes.
I reached my locker and started pulling out the books I needed for first period, trying to focus on simple things.
Notebook.
Textbook.
Pen case.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Do not think about Malakai standing in the doorway of his room with his shirt half-buttoned and his hair still damp.
Do not think about that low, impossible voice.
Do not think about the way he had looked at me when he wasn't speaking. Those eyes....
God I'm screwed.
My fingers paused on the edge of a notebook.
I forced them to keep moving.
A burst of laughter echoed somewhere down the corridor.
Sharp. Familiar.
My spine tightened before my brain even caught up.
I turned.
And there she was.
Alyssa.
Surrounded, as always, by the kind of people who orbited cruelty because they mistook it for power. She stood near the far end of the corridor with three girls I recognized vaguely and a boy from one of the business-track classes. Her hair was perfect. Her face was composed into that practiced expression of bored superiority she wore like second skin. Everything about her screamed untouched, unbothered, expensive.
She spotted me at almost the exact same second I spotted her.
And just like that, time slowed.
I waited for it.
The smirk.
The walk toward me.
The poison dressed up as conversation.
Something loud enough for the hallway to hear.
Something designed to peel me open in public and make everyone watch.
That was Alyssa's favorite sport.
My shoulders went rigid without my permission.
I could feel it already — that old, awful instinct, the one that prepared for attack by trying to become smaller before it landed.
But Alyssa didn't move.
She looked at me.
Held my gaze for one long, unreadable second.
Then rolled her eyes.
And walked away.
Just like that.
No words.
No shove.
No fake smile sharpened into a blade.
Nothing.
The group around her moved with her, still laughing about something else, and within seconds she was gone down the opposite end of the hall like I had never been worth the performance.
I stood there staring after her, book half out of my locker, my pulse suddenly loud for an entirely different reason.
What the hell was that?
For a second, I actually wondered if I had imagined it. If my mind had prepared so aggressively for impact that when none came, it couldn't process the absence.
But no.
That had happened.
Alyssa had seen me and walked away.
And somehow, that was more unsettling than if she had come at me with her usual venom.
Because silence from people like her was never empty.
It meant something.
The question was whether I would understand what before it was too late.
"Kiara?"
I turned at the sound of my name.
Kaylie. A girls from my chemistry class — chic outfit too-perfect braid, the kind of face that always looked politely curious even when it had no business being either. We have had littet conversations about classrs and assignments but that was it. She glanced down the hallway where Alyssa had disappeared, then back at me.
"You okay?"
The question caught me off guard.
Not because no one had ever asked it.
Because no one here usually meant it.
I gave a quick nod. "Yeah. Fine."
She looked like she wanted to say something else, then thought better of it. "Class starts in like three minutes."
"Right." I nodded again. "Thanks."
She drifted away.
I shut the locker and started walking.
But the unease stayed.
Through first period.
Through second.
Through the cold hum of air conditioning and the scrape of chair legs and the drone of teachers talking about things that usually would have held my full attention.
Even as I took notes, even as I answered one question in biology correctly enough for the teacher to nod in approval, part of me stayed fixed on that hallway and that look and the way Alisa had chosen not to strike.
That wasn't mercy.
Alyssa didn't have mercy in her.
It was strategy. I think.
And if there was one thing I had learned from people like her — from Tina, from the whole ugly ecosystem of my old life — it was that quiet people could be dangerous, but quiet cruel people were worse.
By lunch, the feeling had only deepened. I felt preyed on. Anxious because I don't know what might happen next.
I ate half of what was on my tray and barely tasted it.
At one point I caught myself staring out the window with my fork in my hand, thinking about dark eyes and damp hair and the strange line of tension in Malakai's jaw when he listened too closely.
I lowered the fork immediately and muttered under my breath, "Stop it."
A girl at the next table looked over.
I pretended I had coughed.
The rest of the afternoon dragged in that same strange state — not exactly fear, not exactly distraction, something between the two. Enough that when the final bell finally rang, I felt relief hit me harder than it should have.
I packed my bag and left the classroom with the rest of them, letting the crowd carry me into the hall.
And then I saw her again.
Alyssa stood near the staircase landing with one of her friends, talking low. She looked up as people passed between us, and for one split second our eyes met.
This time there was no eye-roll.
No mockery either.
Just a look.
Flat. Cool. Measuring.
Then she turned away.
Again.
Something cold slid down my spine.
I didn't stop walking.
Whatever game she was playing now, I wanted no part of it.
Outside, the late afternoon air felt cooler than I expected. The sky had started turning the pale grey-gold of a day about to fold into evening, and the school grounds buzzed with dismissal noise — cars pulling up, voices rising, shoes on stone, bags slung over shoulders.
I found the car and got in.
David greeted me politely, and I returned it, settling into the seat and finally allowing myself to exhale.
"How was school, miss?" he asked as he pulled away from the curb.
"Fine," I said automatically.
Then, after a second, "Strange."
He didn't ask more.
I appreciated that.
The city moved past the windows in a blur of glass and traffic and dimming light, and my head dropped back against the seat.
Strange.
That was one word for it.
But not the real one.
The real word was unsettling.
Because Alyssa's cruelty I understood. Her hatred had always been obvious. Loud. Ugly. Predictable in its own exhausting way.
This silence?
This distance?
This refusal to act?
Something must have happened.
That felt like the space between lightning and thunder — the moment you know something is coming, you just don't know how close it is yet.
And against all reason, all logic, all common sense, my mind drifted again to Malakai.
To the way he had looked this morning.
To the coldness in it. The restraint.
To the version of him I had seen last night, quieter and somehow more dangerous because of it.
I wondered if he had done it on purpose.
Pulled back, I mean.
I wondered if he had felt the shift too and decided daylight required a wall.
That thought should not have bothered me.
It did anyway.
I turned my face toward the window and watched the last of the sun catch on the city glass.
Bridget was still in school. Said her friends will drop her off.
By the time we reached the house, I had said almost nothing for the rest of the drive.
The mansion rose up ahead of us exactly as it always did — grand, still, too beautiful to trust fully. The gates opened. The driveway curved. The fountain caught the dying light in cold silver arcs.
Home. Or what felt like it to some point.
The word still felt borrowed, but less than it had before.
I stepped out of the car and thanked David, then headed inside.
The house was quiet.
Not empty. Just settled.
A kind of expensive hush clung to the walls, and for once I didn't mind it. After the noise of school and the sharper noise of my own thoughts, silence felt like something I could lean on.
I went upstairs slowly, one hand trailing along the banister as I climbed.
Halfway up, I stopped.
Not because I heard anything.
Because I felt something.
That strange awareness again.
The kind that had become more frequent lately — as if part of me had learned to sense him before I actually saw him.
I turned my head toward the far end of the upper corridor.
Nothing.
No one.
Just shadows stretching long across polished floors and the closed doors of rooms that held more secrets than I wanted to think about after the kind of day I'd had.
I looked away first.
Then kept walking to my room.
When I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, the first thing I did was lean back against it and close my eyes.
School was over.
Alyssa had looked at me like she knew something.
Malakai had looked at me like he was trying not to.
Was he mad that I left early?
I don't know honestly.
And somehow, between the two of them, I had no idea which one was more dangerous to think about.
I opened my eyes slowly.
The room was dim.
Calm.
Mine, at least for now.
I crossed to the bed and sat on the edge, fingertips brushing lightly over the blanket as my thoughts finally slowed enough for me to hear one of them clearly.
It wasn't about Alyssa.
It should have been.
But it wasn't.
It was him.
Again.
And that alone told me exactly how deep I was already falling.