Lana’s pov:

Calm isn’t natural, it’s crafted. Being calm doesn’t come easy to me. It’s not something I’m born with, it’s something I’ve had to build. When things around me get loud or messy, I force myself to breathe slower, to think before I react. I’ve learned to hold my expression still, even when I’m falling apart inside. To me, calm isn’t peace; it’s control and discipline. It’s how I stay standing when everything else is falling apart. People think I don’t care, but the truth is, I care too much. I just refuse to let anyone see me break. 

Why am I thinking about this while brushing my teeth? No idea. 

It’s monday, and jumping off a bridge sounds better than going to school right now. The only reason I go is because of my girls, and because I can’t afford to fail. Grades are one of the things I can control about myself, and I refuse to let them slip. 

I shower until the hot water calms me, scrubbing my body roughly until my skin is red, but clean. I brush my teeth, and dry my hair, brushing it into soft waves. I style my naturally wavy hair into a ponytail, I liked to look in control even if I didn’t always feel it. 

Then I stand in front of the mirror and put a face on the person I am expected to be, polished, effortless, unbothered. I curl my eyelashes, putting on mascara that makes my eyes look more awake than I am. I dab red gloss on my lips, loving the way it feels to choose something simple and pretty. 

   My mother is already in the kitchen when I come down, the smell of coffee filling our house. For a moment I let myself loose, hugging her. Her arms close around me and I let out a sigh, her presence and sweet scent comforts me more than anything. 

   “You're up early,” she says, slight concern present in her tone like she could read me if she tried.

   “Yeah. Quiz day,” I say, and it’s not a lie. I do have a quiz. I also have the kind of dread that doesn’t care about grammar or equations. 

I don’t want to tell her about the nightmares that have started again, that I wake up covered in sweat, crying, and scared. Just like the little girl in me once was. I’m used to it now, but it doesn’t make it any better. Therapy helped once, in the way bandages help a small cut. It covered something I couldn’t leave exposed, it soothed for a little while, only when I was still a child, but it didn’t make the scars disappear. It helped me enough that I can deal with it on my own.

My mother would make a fuss if I told her the full truth, would call the doctor and schedule another session that would become a month of polite interruptions and small talk to my life. So I smile, because she needs to believe I’m fine.

   “I’ll make a sandwich, do you want an egg?” she asks, already reaching for the frying pan. 

   “Thanks, I’ll grab something at school,” I answered. It’s easier. It’s cleaner. She kisses the top of my head anyway as if the motion alone could stitch up the old wounds. 

   I run because the motion helps regulate the panic better than anything else. The path around the park is a loop I’ve memorized for years; it’s the only place that makes my mornings better. I lap the circuit until my lungs burn, until I can hear my heartbeat over the wind. Eventually I sit on a bench, breathing in the cool autumn air and watching leaves tumbling like my life. For a beat I let the quiet sit on me, letting myself feel the ache in my chest. 

Then there’s a shadow across the path and the air changes.

   “What the hell?!” The words slip out before my brain catches up. I did not want to see Aiden’s face this morning. I didn’t want him anywhere near my day.

   He is impossibly there, tall, sure, like he could stake his claim on the sky. He smirks the way people smirk when they know they have the advantage. “You ignored my texts,” he says, like it’s an accusation or an invitation. I can never tell which with him. 

   My phone in my jacket says exactly what I suspected. The screen lights up and reads 17 unread messages from Satan, attached with strings of possessive sentences and missed calls as if he expected my immediate submission. “Not everyone’s always awake like you, you know? I was sleeping,” I say, because of course I had been. Up late finishing notes, waking to memories that taste like copper.

   He leans in without permission until the space between us is a pressure I can taste. “I saw,” he says. The way he says it makes my hair stand up on my arms. “Remember to close your blinds next time, sweetheart.” His face is bored and everything about him is meant to be a warning. He doesn’t bluff, I’ve known that for years. 

   “Asshole,” I mutter under my breath. He doesn’t pretend not to hear. He steps closer so his hand lifts and, before I know it, his fingers are on my chin, tipping my face up like I’m an object to be inspected. I can feel the strength in his grip, I can feel the way his presence shrinks the space between us to the lines of his jaw and broad shoulders. It shouldn’t matter that I am used to his intimidation, yet it still does.

   “You looked peaceful sleeping,” he says, thumb ghosting across my lower lip. “Beautiful.” His words are slow as honey and just as dangerous.

   “I don’t want to be the project you fix,” I say. My voice wavers but my spine doesn’t, and that’s what’s important to me. “And you didn’t break into my room. Don’t even—”

   He smiles, like a man who deals in consequences. “You hugged Parker yesterday,” he says, as if he’s collecting evidence. “Bad move.”

   My jaw tightens. Parker. Mild, annoying Parker, captain of the baseball team and absolute soft-serve, had been my lab partner for chemistry. Yesterday, after a stupid, loud joke in the hallway, he’d pulled me into a hug. It had been a reflex, a public “I like spending time with you” kind of hug, but apparently whatever Parker felt was a problem Aiden decided to correct.

   “How would you even know?” I ask.

   “I know when you’re being weak, and I’m always watching.” he says simply. He digs his thumbnail unnervingly against the lower edge of my lip and then lets go, close enough for me to smell him; expensive soap, sandalwood, and something darker. He pulls me close, pressing me against the bark of the tree until I can feel its roughness under my shirt. He lowers his head until the breath that shivers across my hair is all his. “I’m changing your lab partner,” he says.

   “You can’t keep doing this,” I push at him and his chuckle is soft, like a blade.

   “Try me,” he murmurs. He twirls a strand of my hair around his finger, and for a second he’s almost gentle. Almost safe. “You’re mine, sweetheart.” 

   I pull out wordless venom. “You’re delusional,” I spit. “You think you can own me?”

   He leans down, pressing his forehead to mine, maintaining a contact that’s too intimate, too dangerous. He stops for a second, as if taking his time to breathe in. “I don’t bluff,” he says. “See you in chemistry.”

   He gives one last long look and walks away like he hasn’t rearranged my whole morning. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and picked a pebble from the path to kick after him. He walks like royalty, which he is, and I stare after him with the fury of someone who’s learned to hate fate.

   He is unavoidable, a constant carved in my life. He’s older by a year, the quiet gap that makes him feel larger, more in control. Theodore Reeve’s son. The Reeve name is a heavy thing at Velgrave; the family is the institution layered on top of institutions. They own land, businesses, and influence. They are a press release and a threat all at once. Aiden wears that wealth like armor, and people move aside like a tide. 

   I tighten my bag strap and head toward Velgrave Royal Academy, the biggest and wealthiest school in all of France. Where all the rich spoiled kids belong, who think they can get anything just by looking at it. The campus looms, full of over-confident and mean assholes, buildings of stone and ironwork and a sort of sculpted cruelty. It is a mix of wealth and ancestry, polished marble reflecting hidden alliances and older money. Senior year should be different, my parents have plans, college applications open, opportunities coming up, and I cling to that hope like a talisman. 

   By the entrance, my friends already rule the benches like queens of their own small kingdom. Jude, Evelyn, and Stella — the Golden Girls, though we’ve never called ourselves that aloud — perk up when they see me. They are bright in a way that leaves people in awe, a practiced mechanism that keeps predatory types polite. People love us, and those who don’t are simply jealous, or blind. 

   “You’re late,” Stella says, but there’s mischief in her tone.

   “I walked,” I say, pulling the phone from my pocket and scanning messages just to show them his line of tantrums. They laugh like it’s a comedy show. Their laughter is a medicine to me, school is bearable all thanks to them. 

   Jude’s brows crease a little. She knows more than she lets on. “He was restless last night,” she says. “Was it because of you?”

   “He was whining,” I say, trying to make myself sound unamused. “He’s bored.”

   Evelyn frowns at me with a sister’s impatience. “How do you even survive him?”

   “I don’t,” I say honestly. “I just… keep going.” How do you handle someone like Aiden? He’s not exactly the type of person that I can hug and whisper sweet nothings to.  

   We sit down at our usual spot; the cafeteria is filled with status and whispers. People trade stories the way other schools trade gossip notes. I thumb my pastry but don’t actually eat it. I was conscious last night of how long I’d cuddled Parker, how it had been a deliberately public thing, and maybe I’d enjoyed the tiny rebellion of it. Maybe I liked that Parker’s hug had been an accidental warmth. That doesn’t mean I wanted him to be anyone else’s scapegoat.

   I check my phone unimpressed, scrolling through his messages. He calls himself things I do not say aloud. He calls himself my everything and my end. He’s always found cruelty amusing. The texts read: 

   Satan: You shouldn’t have done that, sweetheart. 

   Satan: You’re responsible for what’s going to happen to him. 

   Satan: You knew he had a crush on you, didn’t you? You did it on purpose.

   Satan: You like seeing me this way, huh?

   Missed call

   Satan: Fuck, Lana. Answer the call. 

   Satan: Don’t fucking test me right now. 

   They cut like a blade, the messages are loud and clear, accusation, threat, a pressure to feel small. The following messages are all the same, commanding and threatening. 

   “Did you actually hug him?” Jude asks, leaning forward. It’s the sort of detail a friend needs to pick at. 

   “Yes,” I admit, before I can stop myself. “A little. I didn’t know he liked me.”

   “And you used him to piss off Reeve?” Stella is incredulous, but there’s also something impressive in her tone.

   I chew the inside of my cheek. “No. It wasn’t like that. It was just a hug.” 

   They exchange looks. “You don’t mess with Aiden,” Evelyn says bluntly. “He doesn’t like losing face.”

   “I didn’t think—” I start.

   “You don’t think with him,” Jude supplies. “You think with your spine. Which is exactly why he goes after you.”

   I scowl. Maybe she’s right or maybe she’s romanticizing the thing that terrifies me. The truth is messy, he has always been there. He’s part bully, part worshipper. He watches with an intensity I learned to treat as background noise. People write off his obsession as entitlement, and sometimes it is, but there are times when it’s something sharper, a kind of need that tastes like hunger and fear.

   “Just be careful,” Jude says quietly. There’s a certain finality in her voice that makes me feel older, like she’s seeing beyond the schoolyard. She’s right though, I have to be careful. He can make life small in ways I haven’t even considered. He’s rich enough, powerful enough, to make things happen. He’s also, spitefully, connected to my life through the smallest of ties. Jude is, surprisingly enough, his adopted little sister. It’s something only we know, besides her family. Sleepovers at the Reeve mansion are like stepping on lego, yet reluctantly, I always step in. 

   The bell rings, and the group disperses to class. I walk through the corridors that smell like old books and polished wood, my stomach is twisting, and I can’t figure out why. Senior year is supposed to be my runway. Harvard applications, scholarship letters, that dreamy, imagined life across the ocean, but Aiden makes it so the runway is lopsided and full of potholes. 

   Chemistry is the second period. Sitting down in the lab, I have to remind myself to breathe. I had assumed Parker would still be my partner. Expectations are honest things you can rely on, until they aren't. When Professor Hale claps her hands and says, “You’ll be doing partner titrations today,” I catch Parker's hopeful glance. He gives a small, sheepish smile in my direction. I should have said it right then, “Pick me,” and I didn’t. I let the room settle in first, full of possibility and fear, and then Aiden’s voice cuts into everything like a blade.

   “Change partners. Lana and I will be together.” He says it like a decree. His hand is on the doorframe; his posture is such that you feel smaller simply by standing in the same room as him. The lab goes a second without sound.

   Parker’s face falls and he looks like a boy who had just been told to put his toys away. I force my lips into a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes. “That’s not—” I begin.

   Aiden’s eyes flick to mine like a question and an answer at once. “You hugged him in the courtyard,” he says lowly so only I can hear. The words are unnecessary. I felt them like a bruise.

   Professor Hale clears her throat. “Reeve, your lab bench is over there.” She points to the counter beside the sink. 

   All it takes is one look from him to shut her up, like she never saw anything. I sigh, it’s a cycle that never stops. All the teachers, and even the principal are helpless when it comes to the Reeve last name. I look at him when he grabs my arms, his gentle touch not matching his stone face.

   He moves unapologetically, his chin raised high, and I follow like a puppet, my wrists tight with the knowledge that compliance is the only way to avoid a spectacle right then. Parker is quiet, professional, the kind of kid who handles disappointment by burying it in homework. I think of how easy it was to hurt him by accident. 

   Aiden only lets my arm go when he sets up the equipment with a casual efficiency, thumbs adjusting beakers like he adjusts silence. He leans over the setup, dangerously close, and the steam from the hot plate fogs the air between us. Every time his hand brushes mine, the sensation is an electric bolt I pretend not to feel.

   “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asks, but the question is rhetorical. He knows. He always knows. 

   I turn to him. “This isn’t fair.” 

   “Nothing is fair, sweetheart.” He almost smiles. “Stop pouting.” 

   My lips drop. “I’m not pouting, I’m just done talking.” 

   I do my work mechanically, focusing on the apparatus so my hands stop noticing his. The lab is loud with the noise of teenagers: scrape of chairs, the hum of small talk. Yet under it all is the low, constant hum of him: breathing, waiting, watching.

   Halfway through the titration, he reaches across the table and steadies the burette with a thumb and forefinger. His grip is warm. The action could be helpful. It could be possessive. It could be a thousand things, and I watch the way his jaw tightens and the way his eyes are all focused and patient.

   Parker’s glance cuts across the table, a quick, uncertain look, then he returns to his work. I’m going to talk to him after class, this wasn’t fair to him. 

   After class, I see Parker leaving, I collect my stuff and follow after him, hoping to get a chance to talk. But he’s gone, disappeared into thin air, or caging walls. The corridors are busy with movement. People talk about homework and dates and shoes like it’s all they have, and for some, it really is. On the stairs I feel someone fall into step beside me and I know, without looking, it’s Aiden. He walks as if we are connected by some invisible string and the world will rearrange itself if one of us pulls too hard. 

   “You were brave with Parker,” he says. 

   “I was being social,” I reply. The word is neutral. I don’t want to admit the small thrill his intervention had sparked in me. A dangerous, guilty heat that flares and then retreats like a tide, but I cannot deny it exists. 

   He watches me with the kind of intensity that makes people confess things they haven’t told themselves. I am not innocent in all this; I know my reactions. I know that human bodies are traitors. I know that a hug that was meant to be nothing is suddenly currency. And Aiden? He is the kind of man who not only knows currency, he prints it. 

   “Don’t test me,” The warning is like silk over steel. “Not with anyone.”

   “I’m not trying to test you,” I say.

   “Good.” He releases me then, like a concession. “See you around, sweetheart.”

   He is a storm that never passes, cruelty with a face. He wants everything, and he wants it on his terms. I hate him for it, for the way he can rearrange my morning into an event in which I am the only element that can be owned. I also dislike that, somewhere in the tangle of fear and fury, he’s proven that he can make me feel something other than rage, sadness, or fear, in a way nothing else does. 

   By the time I get home that evening, my nerves are frayed but intact. I spend the first hour doing the basics. I normalize the day. I answer emails, I print an essay prompt, I rehearse lines in my head for an interview. I let music drown out the small noises that sound like regret.

   When I’m alone, I write out my applications. The future is a set of forms and essays and glowing possibilities. I think of Harvard and the skyline of a life that will not revolve around him. I write that in long sentences until the words become a promise.

   Aiden is the beginning of an end. He always will be, at least until I am not standing on the same earth as him. For now, I have to be clever; I have to be deliberate. And most importantly, I have to be honest with myself about the parts of me that ache when he looks my way.

   The rest of the day goes by fast. Busy with classes and studying, I barely notice his shadow around me from time to time. I spend my leisure time with my girls, talking about silly things and revising for quizzes. Although, it’s mostly just us laughing at each other. 

   Tonight, like every night, I put the nightmare in a box. I lock it with the same little tricks I have learned: exercise, routine, smiling through the day. The scar will remain, but in the quiet I practice not letting it define me, or affect me anymore. There are parts of me that stay bright and whole. There are parts that are still broken and crying. There are parts that have plans and college applications and friends who care. 

   And there is Aiden Reeve, the other constant, who will not let me rest unless I make him think I’m untouchable. 

   The wind outside the window hums. I close my laptop, put the notebook away, and try to sleep. The book about my life is still being written. Senior year is only the first chapter of the life I want to steal back from him. For now, the battle lines are drawn. He wants to possess, I want to escape. Rules? Nonexistent. I will not make this easy for him, not anymore than he will for me. 

And just as I’m about to fall asleep, I remember how I forgot to talk to Parker. 

******

To Be Continued.

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