Episode 2

Ahead of me, the balcony door waited.

For one second, I considered turning back.

Then the room behind me roared, and the choice vanished.

I pushed through the door.

Cold air slapped the heat from my face. The balcony ran narrow along the side of The Riverbend, strung with small white lights and damp from the October mist. Below, the river moved black between the old mill buildings. For half a breath, I could hear myself think.

Then the door opened again.

Austin Coleman stepped out first, Annika Hale still holding his hand.

I froze behind a tall heater near the corner, half-hidden by its metal frame and the angle of the wall. It was stupid. I had come out for air, not to spy. But if I moved now, I would have to pass them, and the whole room would see the girl in the borrowed black dress trying to escape a dare she had no right to care about.

Annika laughed softly. "Thirty seconds, Coleman. Try not to look so tragic."

"This is a bad idea," he said.

"You used to like bad ideas."

His expression shifted. Not anger exactly. Something tighter.

Through the glass, faces crowded near the balcony doors. Phones rose. Gary Flynn cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted something I could not hear. Creed looked less amused than everyone else, but he did not stop it.

Austin turned his head slightly, as if checking the crowd.

For one dangerous heartbeat, his eyes passed over the corner where I stood.

They did not catch.

Annika stepped closer, both hands sliding up the front of his shirt. She was beautiful in a way that seemed impossible to embarrass. Her confidence filled the thin space between them and made me feel like the intruder, though I had been there first.

"Old rules," she said.

Austin's jaw flexed. "Thirty seconds."

Then Annika rose on her toes and kissed him.

The cheer from inside hit the glass hard enough to make it tremble.

It should not have hurt.

I did not know him. He did not know me. He was a campus legend with an ex-girlfriend and a jacket that girls treated like a trophy. I was a transfer student with a pending housing charge and a wristband already starting to itch.

But the image still went through me.

His hand braced on the railing beside her. Her fingers curled against his chest. The lights caught the angle of his cheek, the line of his shoulders, the easy violence of everyone watching and deciding what it meant.

This was the world Maggie had brought me into.

I did not belong in it.

I stepped back.

The heel of Maggie's borrowed shoe scraped the damp balcony floor.

Austin's eyes opened.

The kiss stopped before the room's counting did.

He lifted his head. His gaze found mine in the narrow space beside the heater, and something changed in his face so quickly I could not name it. Surprise first. Then recognition, though he had no reason to recognize me. Then a flash of something almost like regret.

Annika turned to see what had taken him away.

That was enough.

I yanked the door open and went inside.

"Ava?" Maggie's voice cut through the noise.

I kept moving.

The upstairs room blurred into heat and bodies. Someone laughed. Someone said, "Did he stop early?" Another voice said Annika's name with a pleased little gasp, like the clip had already become a story.

I reached the stairs too fast and nearly missed the first step.

A hand caught the rail above mine.

Not my wrist. Not my arm.

The rail.

Austin stood two steps behind me, breathing like he had crossed the room at a run.

"Wait," he said.

The word was quiet. That made it worse.

I looked at his hand on the rail instead of his mouth. "The dare is upstairs."

"It was a dare."

"I heard."

"Then you know it was not--"

"My business?" I finished.

He went still.

I finally looked up. Up close, his eyes were not banner-blue. They were stranger than that, gray at the edges, sharp with attention. Too much attention for a girl he did not know.

"You are blocking the stairs," I said.

He moved immediately.

No argument. No smirk. Just one step aside, giving me the exit I had asked for.

That almost made me angrier.

Outside, the cold bit through the thin dress. I texted Maggie before she could start a search party.

I'm downstairs. Going home.

Her reply came fast.

Maggie: Alone?

Me: Rideshare. I'm fine.

Maggie: You are using the word fine like a crime scene.

Me: Please stay with Creed.

She did not obey, of course.

By the time the rideshare pulled up, Maggie burst through the Riverbend doors with her coat half-on and Creed behind her carrying her purse. She took one look at my face and stopped making jokes.

"We're going," she said.

"You do not have to--"

"I know. I'm still going."

Creed glanced between us and the bar door. "I'll make sure the team doesn't do anything stupid."

Maggie kissed his cheek. "Ambitious."

In the car, she did not ask until we were halfway back to the dorm.

"You saw it?"

I watched streetlights slide over the window. "Everyone saw it."

"That doesn't mean everyone felt it."

My throat tightened, which was ridiculous. "I did not feel anything."

"Okay."

She said it softly, and that was worse than arguing.

Back in our room, I kicked off her heels and set them neatly by her closet because if I was going to fall apart, I could at least be respectful to borrowed property.

Maggie sat on her bed and opened her phone.

I pretended not to watch.

The first clip had already hit a private campus story. It showed Annika pulling Austin toward the balcony, the room chanting, then the glass door closing behind them. The second clip was shorter, shakier. It caught the cheer, the kiss, and Austin lifting his head too early.

Someone had captioned it:

QB1 and Annika? Old habits die hard.

Maggie swore under her breath and locked the screen.

"Delete it from your brain," she said.

"Sure. I keep a trash folder there."

"Ava."

"I'm tired."

She looked like she wanted to hug me and knew I would turn into stone if she tried. "Then sleep. We can hate everyone tomorrow."

I crawled into bed still wearing the dress and stared at the dark shape of the scholarship portal on my closed laptop.

I did not know that back at The Riverbend, in the upstairs room I had left behind, Austin was still watching the staircase.

I did not know Gary Flynn had come up beside him and asked, "You good?"

And I definitely did not know Austin had answered with a question of his own.