Chapter 1

Nadia told herself it was just a house.

That was what she kept repeating in her head the entire drive over, watching unfamiliar streets replace the ones she had grown up on. Just a house. Four walls and a roof and a set of people she was supposed to call family now because two adults had signed a piece of paper and decided that was how life worked.

Her mother reached over from the passenger seat and squeezed her knee.

"You are going to love it there."

Nadia smiled. It did not reach her eyes.

She had nothing against Daniel Voss. He was kind in that quiet, steady way that made her mother laugh again after years of not laughing, and she was grateful for that. Truly. But gratitude and enthusiasm were different things, and Nadia had never been good at pretending they were the same.

The house came into view at the end of a tree-lined street.

It was not what she expected. She had imagined something cold — all sharp angles and expensive silence. Instead it was warm-looking. Wide windows. A front porch with actual furniture on it. The kind of house that looked lived in rather than displayed.

Daniel was already outside when they pulled up, smiling with his whole face the way he always did.

And next to him stood someone Nadia did not immediately register.

Then she did.

She did not know why her stomach did what it did. He was just a person. Tall, arms crossed loosely, watching the car pull in with an expression she could not read from this distance. Dark hair. Something about the way he stood — like the world could rearrange itself around him and he would not bother adjusting.

She got out of the car.

He looked at her.

Something passed through his expression so fast she almost missed it. Almost.

Then it was gone, and he was just a guy standing on a porch, and Daniel was already talking.

"Nadia, this is Callum."

Callum looked at her the way you look at something you are trying very hard to be neutral about.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," she said back.

That was it. That was the whole thing. And yet she had the strangest feeling, standing there on that driveway with her one suitcase and her mother beaming beside her, that something had just started that she did not have a name for yet.

---

Callum had known this day was coming for three months.

Three months since his father sat him down and said her name — Nadia Reyes — and Callum had gone completely, carefully still on the inside while nodding along on the outside like a functioning human being.

He had told himself it would be fine.

He had told himself a lot of things.

The car turned onto the street and he felt his jaw tighten before he could stop it. He uncrossed his arms. Crossed them again. His father was talking beside him but the words were not landing properly.

Then she stepped out of the car.

Two years. It had been two years and she looked exactly the same and completely different and he hated that he noticed either of those things.

She had not recognized him. He could see that immediately, the way she glanced over with nothing in her expression — no flicker, no pause. Just a girl looking at a stranger.

He had known that was probably how it would go. That night had meant nothing to her. She had been sad about something she never explained, and he had talked to her for two hours by a window at Marcus's party, and she had laughed exactly once at something he said, and then her friend had pulled her away and that had been that.

He had thought about her longer than he should have.

And now she was going to live in his house.

"Callum, this is Nadia."

He looked at her directly for the first time.

Up close she was worse. That was the only word his brain produced, which was not helpful. She was looking at him with this careful, measuring expression like she was already deciding what category to put him in.

"Hey," he said. Neutral. Easy.

"Hey," she said back.

Cool. Unbothered. Already looking past him toward the house.

He told himself that was fine. That was actually better. Easier if she was indifferent. Easier if this was just two people who happened to share an address and nothing more.

He unclenched his jaw and followed everyone inside.

By the time he reached the kitchen, Marcus had already texted him.

*so how is the new stepsister*

Callum set his phone face down on the counter.

He was not answering that.

---

Dinner that first night was the specific kind of uncomfortable that everyone was trying too hard to pretend was not uncomfortable.

Daniel made pasta. Her mother kept finding reasons to touch his arm. The conversation moved through safe topics — Nadia's course at university, Callum's job, a neighbor's dog that had apparently been an ongoing issue for months.

Nadia ate and answered questions and smiled in the right places.

Callum sat across from her and said almost nothing.

She noticed.

Not that he was rude — he was not. He answered when spoken to, he refilled the water jug without being asked, he laughed once at something Daniel said. He was perfectly pleasant.

Just not to her.

With her he was polite in that particular way that felt like a wall dressed up as a welcome mat. Every answer he gave her was just short enough to close the conversation without being obviously dismissive.

She did not know why it bothered her.

It did though.

After dinner she offered to help clear the table. Callum was already at the sink. She stacked plates beside him without asking and he glanced sideways at her, just briefly.

"You do not have to do that," he said.

"I know," she said.

She did it anyway.

He did not say anything else. Neither did she. They cleaned up in silence while their parents laughed about something in the other room, and the kitchen felt approximately the size of a shoebox, and Nadia became very focused on the task of rinsing a single glass.

She could feel him being aware of her. That was the strangest part. He was not looking at her — she could tell — but there was something in the way he moved that was slightly too deliberate, like a person making sure not to step into a space they had decided was off-limits.

She filed that away and said nothing.

When she finally went upstairs, she sat on the edge of her new bed in her new room and looked at the ceiling and thought about the way his expression had shifted for that half a second when she got out of the car.

Like he had seen something he was not expecting.

She told herself she had imagined it.

She was not entirely sure she believed that.

---

Down the hall, Callum lay on his back in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about absolutely nothing at all.

He was very focused on the nothing.

It was not working.

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