You were officially the talk of Mortimer University. Girls from every faction were seething with envy at the sight of you dating Professor Merlin's TA, Cazimir van der Waal. In your defense, you hadn't known him as the "campus bad boy" or "brooding hottie" when you met him. You were wearing the familiar uniform of students in the Arts courses, sitting under a tree with a digital camera. That's when Caz had approached you to ask for a reference photo he could draw.

One brief encounter turned into two. Then five. And next thing you knew, he was saying more than three words to you. Talking to you, expressing interest in you. It wasn't until your friends Aditi and Melissa squealed like guinea pigs when you whispered your new boyfriend's name that you learned who he was.

Or, you learned that no one truly knew who he was. As desirable as other girls saw him, it had been assumed that he would never date a day in his life.

You'd be lying if you said that didn't make you a little giddy. For whatever reason, Caz liked you. Liked you enough to kiss you between classes and sketch portraits of you in his dorm. But Cazimir remained largely a mystery. He made it explicitly clear that it was nothing against you, h e simply didn't want to share about himself.

That's when you'd decided to learn to draw. Photography was your art of choice, but you wanted to give Caz something important to him. And drawing was his favorite thing, his only hobby. You approached him after classes one day, holding out a page of sketchbook paper you'd gotten from Aditi. The portrait was nowhere close to the masterpieces Caz created. But it was a bigger effort to connect with him than anyone else had made.

Caz's blue eyes glimmered with a vulnerable curiosity that didn't match the constant scowl on his face or the coldness in his voice. "For me?"