The classroom was smaller than Sloane expected.

She had spent the entire walk across campus constructing a version of this that she could survive. A large lecture hall, maybe. Tiered seating, lots of bodies, the kind of room where you could position yourself in the back and become functionally invisible. She had the invisibility thing down to a science at this point. It was basically her only marketable skill.

The sports journalism elective met in a seminar room with twelve chairs arranged in a circle and nowhere to hide.

She stood in the doorway for exactly two seconds before her roommate Riley Brooks materialized at her elbow, steered her physically through the door, and deposited her into a chair with the cheerful ruthlessness of someone who had never once considered the value of a quiet exit.

"This is going to be so good," Riley said, dropping into the seat beside her. "I heard he's really funny in these things. Like genuinely charming, not performatively charming."

"Wonderful," Sloane said.

"You look like you're about to take an exam."

I'm fine.

"You've said you're fine four times since breakfast and each time you've looked progressively less fine."

Sloane opened her notebook to a blank page and clicked her pen. "I'm here for the journalism credit, Riley."

"Sure you are."

The professor walked in then, a compact woman in her fifties named Dr. Vance who had the energy of someone who had heard every excuse and was no longer moved by any of them. She welcomed the class, outlined the semester structure, and explained that the opening session guest interview was a department tradition designed to teach students how to conduct themselves with high profile subjects under real pressure.

Then the door opened.

Caden Mercer walked in like he had done this before, which he had, and like he knew exactly what the room expected from him, which he also did. He was in a plain grey pullover and dark jeans, no team gear, no performance. He shook Dr. Vance's hand, took the empty chair at the front of the circle, leaned back, and looked around the room with an easy unhurried expression.

His eyes found her in approximately four seconds.

She had been counting, which she would not be admitting to anyone.

He did not react. He did not smile or raise an eyebrow or do anything that would require her to respond. He simply moved his gaze along and completed the scan of the room like she was just another student in the circle, which she was, which was exactly what she wanted, which somehow made it worse.

Dr. Vance opened the floor. A girl two seats down asked about the championship season. A guy across the circle asked about leadership. Caden answered everything with a kind of relaxed specificity that made it clear he was not just performing, he had actually thought about these things. He talked about his team the way people talked about something they genuinely cared about, not as a vehicle for personal glory but as its own living thing that he felt responsible for.

Sloane wrote notes she did not need.

"Miss Calloway."

She looked up. Dr. Vance was looking at her with the pleasant expectation of someone who had noticed she had not spoken yet.

The room waited.

Caden waited. Still with that same unreadable expression. Still giving her nothing to work with.

She looked down at her notebook, then backed up.

"You've captained this team for two seasons," she said. What's the biggest mistake you've made as a leader and what did it cost you?

The room shifted slightly. A few people glanced between them like they had picked up on a frequency nobody had named yet.

Caden was quiet for a moment. Not uncomfortable, quiet. Thinking quietly.

"Sophomore year," he said. We had a player going through something personal. I saw it and I didn't address it because we were three games from playoffs and I told myself the timing was wrong. We lost him mid-season. Not to injure. He paused. "He left the program. I've thought about that a lot."

The room was very still.

"What would you do differently?" Sloane asked.

"I'd choose the person over the timing," he said. Every time.

She wrote that down. She did not look up again for the remainder of the session.

Afterward the class filtered out in clusters, voices picking up as the formal atmosphere dissolved. Sloane took her time gathering her things, a strategy that usually worked, giving the room time to empty before she had to navigate the door.

Riley, predictably, had already been absorbed into a conversation near the whiteboard.

"That was a good question."

She did not startle. She had heard him coming, or maybe she had just been expecting it.

Caden was standing near the door, bag over one shoulder, in no particular hurry. The room had emptied enough that there was no one close enough to hear them.

"It was a standard interview question," she said.

It wasn't. Most people ask about wins.

Wins are boring.

"Losses are more honest," he agreed.

She slung her bag over her shoulder and looked at him directly for the first time since the hallway outside Holt's office. Up close he was harder to categorize than she needed him to be. There was something underneath the easy confidence, something that the answer about his teammate had briefly surfaced, and she was annoyed at herself for noticing it.

"You're in this class all semester," he said.

"Journalism credit."

"Right." He nodded slowly. And it has nothing to do with the fact that this is the one place on campus where running into me is completely explainable.

She looked at him for a long moment.

"Goodbye, Caden," she said.

She walked past him through the door.

She made it to the end of the hallway before she allowed herself to exhale.

She was halfway across the quad when her phone buzzed. Unknown number. She almost ignored it. She didn't.

I got your number from the class roster. Before you decide that's creepy, read the next part.

She stopped walking.

Jaxon just asked Coach Briggs to move your dorm assignment. He's trying to put you in the athletic residence building. On his floor.

She stared at the message.

Then a second one arrived.

*I thought you should know before it happens. Also hi. It's Caden.*

She stared at the messages for a long time.

Not because she did not know what to do. Sloane Calloway always knew what to do. It was one of the things about herself she had managed to hold onto through everything that had happened in the past year, the compass that kept working even when everything else went sideways. She knew what to do. She just needed a moment to be furious first.

Jaxon.

She typed back without thinking.

*How do you know that?*

Three dots appeared immediately.

*Theo heard it from one of Jaxon's guys during conditioning this morning. It's not confirmed but Theo's sources are annoyingly reliable.*

*Who's Theo?*

*My best friend. Left wing. Six-two, talks too much, never wrong about anything which is genuinely insufferable.*

She almost smiled. She caught it before it happened.

*Why are you telling me this?*

The three dots appeared and then disappeared. Then it appeared again. She watched them with more attention than she was comfortable with.

*Because you said you transferred to figure out who you are outside of Jaxon's world. Moving you onto his floor in the athletic residence doesn't exactly help with that.*

She read it twice.

Then she put her phone in her pocket and walked directly to her brother's.

Jaxon's room was at the end of a corridor in the north residence hall, the kind of corner room that came with more square footage and a better view and was quietly allocated to athletes whose programs generated revenue. She had been here twice since transferring. Both times she had been grateful for the distance between his building and hers.

She knocked once and opened the door without waiting.

He was at his desk, reviewing what looked like game footage on his laptop, and he looked up with the specific expression of a person who had been expecting this visit but had hoped for more time.

"You talked to Coach Briggs," she said.

He leaned back in his chair. "Close the door."

She closed it and stayed standing. Tell me it's not true.

"It's a better building. Better security, and better facilities,"

"Jaxon."

He met her eyes. "You're my sister. You're new here. I want you somewhere I can keep an eye on things."

I'm twenty years old.

I know how old you are.

Then you know I'm not a freshman who needs supervision.

He was quiet for a moment, and she recognized the quiet. It was the one he used when he had already made a decision and was waiting for her to run out of arguments so he could confirm it.

"After what happened at Pennfield," he started.

"Don't." Her voice came out sharper than she intended. "Don't use that. Not for this."

He looked at her steadily. "I'm not using it. I'm the one who drove four hours to bring you home when it happened. I'm allowed to factor it in."

Factoring it in and relocating me without asking me are two completely different things.

"I was going to tell you."

"When? After the paperwork was filed?"

He did not answer that, which was an answer.

Sloane crossed her arms and looked at her brother, really looking at him, at the version of protectiveness that had always lived in him and had calcified into something harder after Pennfield. She understood where it came from. She even loved him for it sometimes. But love and suffocation could occupy the same space and this was one of those moments.

"Cancel it," she said.

"Sloane"

"Cancel it, Jaxon, or I will go to the housing office myself and make it very clear that the request came from you and not from me, and I will let that conversation go wherever it goes."

Something moved across his face. Not anger. Something more complicated.

"You can't just—"

"I transferred here to start over. That means my choices. My building. My life." She held his gaze. I love you. Cancel it.

She left before he could respond.

She was back across campus and sitting on the bench outside her own residence hall before she took a full breath. The afternoon had gone cold while she was inside, the kind of sharp autumn chill that arrived without warning and reminded you that the season was already shifting.

She took out her phone.

*It's handled.*

Caden's response came in under a minute.

*That was fast. What did you say to him?*

*I handled it.*

*Right. Are you okay?*

She looked at that for a moment. The question was so plain and so direct that it caught her somewhere she was not guarding.

*Why do you keep doing that,* she typed.

*Doing what.*

*Asking if I'm okay like you actually want to know the answer.*

The three dots came and went twice before his reply appeared.

*Because I do actually want to know the answer. Is that a problem?*

She did not respond to that. She put her phone face down on her knee and looked out at the quad, at the students crossing in the late afternoon light, at the ordinary rhythm of a campus that did not know anything about her yet.

That was the thing she had come here for. Anonymity. A clean start. The chance to be nobody in particular until she figured out who she actually was.

Caden Mercer was the single most visible person on this campus.

She picked her phone back up.

*It's a problem,* she typed.

*Okay,* He was sent back.

Then, after a pause.

*For what it's worth, I'm not going anywhere.*

She stared at that for a long time. Then she locked her phone, stood up, and went inside.

She did not text back.

She thought about it for the rest of the evening.

At eleven that night, Riley burst into the room holding her laptop open with both hands, practically vibrating.

"Okay so I was going through the class roster for journalism because I wanted to see who else signed up and I found something interesting." She turned the screen toward Sloane.

It was a student profile. A transfer student. Registered three weeks ago.

The name read: Marco Reyes.

"He's on Caden's team," Riley said. "Starting forward. Just transferred from Florida. She scrolled down to the profile photo. He is genuinely, offensively attractive.

Sloane looked at the screen.

Marco Reyes looked back at her with dark eyes and an easy smile that suggested he was fully aware of the effect it had.

"He's also," Riley added, far too casually, registered for the same journalism elective. Starting next week.

Sloane closed the laptop.

"Go to sleep, Riley," she said.

He was already there when she arrived.

Sloane spotted him the moment she walked through the seminar room door, not because she was looking for him specifically but because Marco Reyes was the kind of person a room reorganized itself around without asking permission. He had taken the seat directly across from where she had sat last week, which she recognized as either coincidence or strategy, and she had learned enough in twenty years to know that men who looked like that rarely operated on coincidence.

He glanced up when she entered.

He smiled like he had been expecting her.

She picked a different seat.

Riley, sliding in beside her thirty seconds later, leaned over and whispered, "He watched you walk across the entire room."

"I know," Sloane said.

"And you sat as far away as possible."

I know.

Just checking that you're aware of your own behavior and not just running on instinct.

"Riley."

Present.

Stop talking.

Riley opened her notebook with the expression of someone who was absolutely going to keep talking, just not out loud, and began writing observations in the margin that Sloane could read from the corner of her eye and chose not to.

Dr. Vance opened the session with a discussion on source development, the ethics of proximity, how close a journalist could get to a subject before the relationship compromised the reporting. Sloane found this choice of topic so specifically uncomfortable that she briefly considered whether the universe had a personality and whether that personality was mean.

Twenty minutes in, Dr. Vance broke them into pairs for a practice interview exercise.

Of course she did.

"Mr. Reyes, Miss Calloway. You're paired."

Of course they were.

Marco picked up his chair and moved it across the circle toward her with the easy physical confidence of someone who had never once been uncertain about how he would be received. He set it down, sat, and extended a hand.

"Marco Reyes," he said, like it was the opening line of something he had been rehearsing.

"I know who you are," Sloane said, shaking it briefly.

"Good start." He settled back. You're Jaxon Calloway's sister.

"I know who I am too."

He smiled at that, wider this time, genuine. "Fair enough. You want to go first or should I?"

"I'll go," she said. She clicked her pen. "What made you transfer mid-program?"

The smile adjusted slightly, something recalibrating behind his eyes. He had expected small talk first. She noted that.

"Better program," he said. Better coaching staff. Better shot at being seen by the right people at the right time.

And it had nothing to do with leaving something behind?

He studied her for a moment. "You're good at this."

"I asked a question."

"And I'm considering it." He leaned forward slightly, elbows on knees. Everyone transfers toward something and away from something else at the same time. I don't think those are mutually exclusive.

She wrote that down.

"Your turn," she said.

He did not look at his notebook. He just looked at her, easy and unhurried, like he had all the time that existed.

"How long have you been doing the thing where you make yourself harder to read than you actually are?" he asked.

She looked up from her notes.

"That's not a journalism question," she said.

"Dr. Vance said to practice source development. I'm developing."

Try again.

He tilted his head. "What do you want out of this semester?"

"The credit."

Besides that.

"That's all."

"Okay," he said. He said it the way people said okay when they did not believe you but had decided to let it go for now, filing it away for later. She recognized that move too.

The exercise ended. The room reshuffled. Dr. Vance assigned a short profile piece due in two weeks, subject of their choice, and dismissed them with ten minutes to spare.

Sloane was packing her bag when Marco stopped beside her, not hovering, just present.

"Good interview technique," he said. Seriously. You went for the real question before I had my guard up.

She glanced at him. "That's the point."

"I know. I'm paying you a compliment."

I noticed.

You're not going to say thank you, are you?

"Thank you," she said, and slung her bag over her shoulder.

He laughed, short and surprised, and she was almost to the door when he said, "There's a team breakfast thing Saturday morning. Unofficial, just the new and returning players mixing before the season ramps up. Caden runs it every year." A beat. Jaxon's guys were invited as a goodwill thing. You should come.

She stopped with her hand on the doorframe.

Why would I come to a team breakfast?

"Because you're new here and you don't know very many people yet and it's just breakfast." He said it simply, without angle, which was almost more disarming than if he had pushed. No obligation. I just thought you might want something that felt normal.

She looked at him for a moment.

"I'll think about it," she said.

She walked out into the corridor and nearly collided with Caden Mercer for the second time in a week, except this time there was no backyard and no shadows and no convenient chaos to dissolve into. He was standing in the hallway outside the seminar room with Theo, who was exactly as tall as advertised, and he caught her by the arm on reflex the same way he had the first night.

He let go immediately.

They stood a foot apart in the bright corridor light.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," she said.

Behind her she heard Marco step out of the room. She felt the moment Caden registered with him, not dramatically, just a small shift in his posture, the kind that happened below the level of conscious decision.

"Marco," Caden said evenly.

"Cap," Marco said, with a smile that knew exactly what it was doing.

The hallway held all three of them for one long uncomfortable second.

Then Sloane said, "I have class," which was not true, and walked away from all of it.

She made it twenty feet before Theo's voice carried down the corridor behind her, loud and entirely unaware of the damage it was doing.

"Dude, is that Jaxon Calloway's sister? The one from the party?"

A pause.

"The one you kissed?"

Sloane stopped walking.

The corridor was not empty.

Three people she did not know had just heard that.

She did not turn around.