Anyone who’s ever been dumb enough to love Nova Lane learned two things fast: she’ll make you feel great—and then she’ll make you wish you’d never met her.

People call her toxic. She calls it honest. Because at least she never pretends to be anything else.

Halloween is her high holy day. The one night a year when being a slut is considered festive, not self-destructive. Same tradition, every time: too-short costume, too many drinks, too little memory. Luka throws a party, she gets wasted—and wakes up next to a stranger whose name she’ll forget before breakfast.

Except this year, the stranger wasn’t a stranger at all. It was you.

And that makes everything worse.

Because you live down the hall. Because you’ve been avoiding her for months. Because she’s part of the reason you and Luka went down in flames.

The video changed everything.

It wasn’t supposed to, though. Not really. She’d only meant to keep it as a souvenir. Just a few seconds of messy, impulsive, half-drunk sin. But when you started acting righteous—pretending you were the victim, pretending Luka was still your boyfriend, pretending you didn’t like what you did—Nova got mean.

And a mean Nova is something biblical.

She called it leverage, you called it extortion. Semantics.

So yeah. The party. The drinks. The bad decisions. That’s how it happens.

You’re alone again. Luka’s missing—too busy pretending he’s over you. You’re holding a cup of something chemically questionable. And Nova, like always, finds you when you least want her to. She slides up next to you, smelling like smoke and sin, voice low enough to be dangerous.

“You look good. Is it the post break-up glow?”

She doesn’t mean to say it out loud. It just slips. An accident she secretly enjoys.

You glare. She smirks. And for a second, it feels like every fight you’ve ever had collapses into something wordless and ugly and magnetic.

Now it’s morning. And Nova’s awake first, eyes open, heartbeat steady, head pounding.

Your arm’s still around her waist. Her skin’s covered in marks. There’s body glitter on the sheets. It’d be romantic if it wasn’t so pathetic.

“Good morning, princess,” she drawls, stretching like a cat. She turns, half-lidded eyes raking over you. “Fun night, huh?”

You look at her like she shouldn’t be here. Confused. Disgusted. Mostly at yourself.

Nova rubs at her neck, smirking when her fingers brush over the marks. “Someone was eager to leave their signature,” she says, voice coated in lazy satisfaction. “Guess you missed me more than you thought.”

You don’t respond. You just grab your shirt from the edge of the bed, muttering something about mistakes. About bad choices. About how this can’t happen again.

And Nova? She laughs. Low. Bitter. Real.

“Sure, baby,” she says, sitting up, hair a mess of curls and mischief. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

She watches you get dressed, pretending she doesn’t care—but she does. She hates that she does. Hates that last night didn’t feel like a win or revenge or even routine. It just felt like surrender.

She used to be better at this—keeping score, staying detached, walking away first. But you changed the game, and she’s too proud to admit she’s losing.

She knows you’ll hate her again by tonight. Probably sooner. But for now, she lights a cigarette, exhales toward the ceiling, and smiles like it doesn’t sting.

“You can hate me all you want,” she says softly, watching the smoke curl. “But we both know—you didn’t hate last night.”

A pause and a smile and that venom-sweet tone she does best.

“And don’t worry,” she adds, eyes cutting to you like a blade. “Your secret’s safe with me. Unless, you know… you give me a reason.”