Chapter 2: Rules for Shared Space

By noon, the post had spread past Northbridge Whisper and onto three student group chats, two meme accounts, and the private Discord server for people who believed the university’s real purpose was ruining their lives in public.

I knew because I checked every single one.

“Stop doing that,” Rowan said.

He was standing in the kitchen with his arms crossed while I sat at the table pretending to work. The laptop in front of me displayed an unfinished video assignment. The phone beside it displayed a stranger calling me a gold-digger with unusually inventive punctuation.

“I’m documenting it.”

“You’re doom-scrolling.”

“Those can both be true.”

Miles placed a paper bag of bagels on the counter. “He’s right.”

“Traitor.”

“I brought your favorite.”

“Manipulative traitor.”

His mouth tilted. He looked exhausted. I had noticed it only when he came back from class: loosened tie, untouched coffee, the kind of silence he wore when something was wrong at home.

“I contacted the party organizer,” I said. “They have a hallway camera by the side exit. If the photo was taken outside, there may be footage.”

Rowan’s expression shifted from disapproval to approval. “Good.”

“I’m going to ask for it.”

“I’ll come.”

“I’ll come,” Miles said at the same time.

Neither of them looked at the other.

“I can walk across campus without an escort,” I said.

“You nearly fell into traffic last night,” Rowan replied.

“I did not.”

“You apologized to a parking meter.”

“It was in my way.”

Miles hid a smile behind his coffee cup. Rowan did not smile, which somehow made it worse.

I stood and grabbed my coat. “I’m going alone.”

The silence that followed was immediate and unpleasant.

Rowan’s jaw tightened. “Evan—”

“No. You don’t get to decide where I go because someone took a picture of me.”

He looked like I had slapped him.

Miles stepped in before either of us could make it worse. “Then text when you get there.”

“That I can do.”

The party organizer agreed to send the hallway footage after a campus safety officer reviewed it. That should have made me feel better. Instead, I spent the next hour at the media lab refreshing my inbox and pretending I wasn’t watching the front door.

Jace found me there.

“I brought coffee,” he announced. “And a gift.”

The gift was a printed screenshot of the Whisper post with the word

BORING

written across it in thick red marker.

I laughed despite myself. “You’re an artist.”

“I contain multitudes.” He sat on the edge of the desk. “I also might know something useful. Sloane Mercer was at the party.”

The name landed badly.

Sloane was a senior in the business school, a donor-family favorite, and the kind of person who could make a compliment feel like being charged a fee. She had been circling HavenLink since the project qualified for the Hart Foundation’s student innovation fund.

“Why would she care about me?” I asked.

Jace’s eyes flicked toward the doorway. “Because she cares about Miles. And because Rowan wouldn’t sell her access to the prototype.”

I opened my mouth to ask more, but my phone rang.

Rowan.

“What?” I answered.

“Where are you?”

“Media lab.”

“Stay there.”

“That is not a normal response.”

“The clinic called. They ran the blood panel from last night.”

My throat tightened. “And?”

“There was a sedative in your system. Low dose.”

Jace stopped moving.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Rowan’s voice changed, turned dangerously flat. “I’m coming to get you.”

“I’m not a package.”

“I know.” A pause. “I’m still coming.”

When he arrived, Miles was with him. They stood on either side of the lab entrance like they had planned it, which they definitely had not.

I walked between them toward the parking lot. “The three of us need rules.”

“Fine,” Rowan said.

“Rule one: no lying.”

Miles nodded.

“Rule two: nobody makes decisions for me.”

Rowan looked at the wet pavement. “Fine.”

“Rule three: we don’t turn this into a competition.”

That one made both of them look at me.

“What competition?” Miles asked.

“Exactly.”

We moved to a small hotel near campus after Jace spotted someone photographing our apartment building from across the street. It was supposed to be one night. The front desk had one room left.

One bed. One narrow sofa. One terrible floral armchair.

“I’ll take the chair,” I said.

“No,” Rowan said.

“Absolutely not,” Miles said.

I stared at them. “Do you rehearse this?”

Rowan took the sofa. Miles insisted I take the bed. At two in the morning, I woke from a dream of camera flashes and hands I couldn’t identify.

Miles was crouched beside the bed, tucking the blanket back over my shoulder.

Across the room, Rowan sat awake on the sofa, watching the locked door.

“You’re both creepy,” I whispered.

Miles’s smile was tired. “You were cold.”

“You could sleep.”

Rowan’s gaze met mine. “Not yet.”

For one breath, neither of them moved. The room felt too small for the things nobody had said.

Then my phone lit up on the nightstand.

Northbridge Whisper had posted again.

This time the photo showed Miles slipping his coat around my shoulders outside the hotel.

The caption was worse:

Cole knows exactly which Hart to lean on.

Below it, someone had added a screenshot of my scholarship profile.

I stared until the letters blurred. The scholarship had bought me this life: the classes, the equipment loans, the impossible rent I covered with editing jobs. Whisper hadn’t just posted a bad photo. It had found the one place I couldn’t afford to be careless.

Miles took the phone from my hand only after I gave it to him. “We’ll preserve this,” he said. “Every version.”

“We?” I asked.

His gaze lifted to mine. “If you still want us involved.”

Rowan said nothing. He was waiting for my answer, which was new.

I swallowed. “I want help. I don’t want to be handled.”

“Understood,” Rowan said.

Miles handed the phone back. “Understood.”

The promise sat between us, fragile and serious. Outside, tires hissed over wet pavement. Inside, the room felt hotter than it had any right to.

I lay back down but did not sleep for a long time. I could hear Rowan shift once on the sofa. I could hear Miles breathe beside the bed. Their silences were different, but both of them stayed.