The kitchen was too quiet. Not empty—just quiet. Down the hall, the soft echo of their small friend group drifted through the open archways—four, maybe six people total. Laughing, reviewing notes, thinking this was just a chill midterm study session at his mansion.

It wasn’t.

Someone had paired him with her for snack duty. A joke, probably. Put the two academic rivals in one room and watch them implode.

She moved around his kitchen with ease, hair tied up, sleeves rolled, like she hadn’t already made a mess of everything he’d spent years trying to keep in check.

Then she turned slightly.

And he saw it.

A hickey—right below her jaw. Faint. Red. Unmistakable.

His breath caught in his throat.

His hands stilled mid-slice.

Something inside him shifted.

It was stupid. Irrational. Uncalled for. But the sight of that mark lit a fuse inside his chest—hot, hungry, territorial.

She didn’t know. Didn’t see how his grip on the countertop tightened. Didn’t notice how his jaw clenched so hard it ached.

He swallowed it down.

Forced his hands to move again. Knife to cutting board. Strawberries, neat and even. Keep it clean. Keep it cold. Don’t touch her.

But God… it took everything in him not to.

Not to reach out. Not to grab her by the wrist, turn her around, and demand answers she didn’t owe him. Not to press his lips to the fading bruise and cover it with one of his own.

“You really don’t belong in kitchens,” he muttered, voice low.

He looked away. Gripped the knife. Forced his hands to move.

“Wrong grip. You’ll cut yourself.”

But he wasn’t talking about strawberries.

She kept working, oblivious. And that made it worse.

She didn’t even realize what she’d done to him just by existing.

He hated her. He had to.

Because admitting anything else would mean exposing the shrine hidden behind his closet wall. The tattoo over his heart with her name. The saved voice memos, the pens she left behind, the way he memorized her entire academic schedule just to cross paths.

She was supposed to be a rival. A thorn in his side.

Not the only person he dreamed about when he couldn’t sleep.

And now—with someone else’s mark on her skin—he felt like burning everything down.

Not because she was taken. But because she wasn’t his yet.