Chapter 1: The Spare Key

I woke up with my cheek pressed against somebody’s chest and a fistful of black cotton trapped beneath my fingers.

For three perfectly stupid seconds, I didn’t move.

The apartment was gray with early morning, the kind of November light that made every object look guilty. A radiator hissed beneath the window. Somewhere in the hall, a kettle clicked off.

Then the chest under my face rose once, slowly.

I looked up.

Rowan Vale was awake.

He was lying on his back in a T-shirt and sweatpants, one arm bent beneath his head. His dark hair was falling over one eye. He didn’t look surprised to find me in his bed. That was possibly the worst part.

“Morning,” he said, voice low and rough.

I let go of his shirt so fast that my elbow hit the wall. “Why am I here?”

“You asked for the spare key.”

“That explains nothing.”

“You were freezing.”

I sat up too quickly. The room tipped sideways. Rowan’s hand closed around my wrist before I could fall backward.

His thumb rested against the pulse there. Warm. Steady. Entirely too familiar.

“Easy,” he said.

The door opened before I could decide whether to pull away.

Miles Hart stood in the doorway holding two mugs. He took in the scene—Rowan’s hand around my wrist, my knees tangled in Rowan’s blanket, my hair apparently trying to declare war on me—and smiled with a calm that felt sharpened at the edges.

“Good,” Miles said. “You’re alive.”

Rowan released me. “He had one drink that wasn’t his.”

“Two,” I corrected automatically.

Miles set a mug on the bedside table. Hot chocolate. He always made it with cinnamon when I was stressed, which was irritating because I had never told him cinnamon helped.

“You had one drink that wasn’t yours,” Rowan said. “Then you tried to unlock the elevator with your student ID.”

“A reasonable mistake.”

“You also told the security guard he had beautiful hands,” Miles added.

I dragged both palms over my face. “I’m transferring schools.”

“No, you aren’t.” Miles leaned against the doorframe. “You have a scholarship review in three weeks, three freelance edits due by Friday, and you still owe me twenty dollars from the disastrous ramen experiment.”

“It was not disastrous.”

“The fire alarm disagreed.”

Rowan looked down at the bruised skin near my wrist. “Do you remember who gave you the drink?”

The humor went out of the room.

I searched my memory: the Student Media party at a converted warehouse, bass shaking loose dust from the ceiling, Jace yelling that the networking was “professionally irresponsible.” A blond girl in a red dress had pressed a plastic cup into my hand after I said I was thirsty. I remembered a flash of silver rings.

“No,” I admitted.

Miles crossed the room and passed me the mug. His fingers brushed mine. The touch was ordinary enough to be accidental, except Miles was never careless with his hands.

“Then we find out,” he said.

“We?”

Rowan gave him a look. “Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything.”

“You always say that right before you do.”

I climbed out of bed, taking the mug with me because it gave my hands a job. “I’m fine. It was probably just cheap party alcohol.”

Rowan’s expression didn’t change, but something in his shoulders did. “Evan.”

The way he said my name made me pause.

“You weren’t fine,” he continued. “You couldn’t stand. You kept saying you needed to go home, then you forgot which building we live in.”

“I was tired.”

“You were scared.”

I hated that he was right. I hated more that Miles was watching me with that soft, careful attention that made me feel like a cracked thing on a shelf.

“I’m going to shower,” I said.

In the hallway, Jace was sprawled on the couch in yesterday’s jeans, editing photos on his laptop. He looked up and whistled.

“Well. Look who survived Rowan’s murder basement.”

“He has a room,” I said.

“Barely. It’s one black curtain away from a true-crime podcast.”

Miles appeared behind me with my backpack. “You left this in the kitchen.”

Jace glanced from Miles to Rowan, who had followed us into the hall, and grinned. “I leave you three alone for one party and suddenly it’s a whole romance-cover situation.”

“It’s not,” I said too fast.

The grin vanished from Jace’s face for half a second. Miles’s eyes lowered. Rowan looked past me toward the kitchen window.

I wished I could pull the words back. Not because they weren’t true. Because I didn’t know why they had come out like a door slamming.

“Right,” Jace said lightly. “My bad.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Then it buzzed again. And again.

I expected messages from my editor. Instead, I opened Northbridge Whisper, the anonymous campus account everyone pretended to hate and secretly checked between classes.

At the top of the page was a photo taken through the warehouse’s side window.

Rowan sat on a bench outside the party, his coat around my shoulders. I was folded against him, asleep or close to it, my face hidden at his neck. His arm was around my waist.

The caption read:

NEW CAMPUS TRIANGLE? Scholarship boy Cole collecting Hart money and Vale attention.

For a moment, the room went completely silent.

Then I looked at the number of shares climbing beneath it.

“No,” I said.

Rowan stepped closer. “Evan.”

I took a screenshot before the post could disappear.

“No,” I said again, steadier this time. “We’re finding out who did this.”

Miles looked at the screen, then at me. “You don’t have to read the comments.”

“I know.”

“But you will.”

“Probably.”

Rowan stepped between me and the couch, not blocking me, exactly. Making a barrier out of his body without touching me. “Then we start with the original photo.”

I nodded. The three of us stood in the cramped living room, close enough that I could feel their attention without looking at either of them. For once, I didn’t step away from it.