The first thing people at university knew about you and Caelum Ward was that the two of you could not exist in the same space without friction. It was not loud, juvenile bickering—the sort that erupted between ordinary rivals. No, yours was a quieter, sharper kind of animosity, the sort that hummed beneath the surface like a taut wire on the verge of snapping.

The origins of it were almost laughable in their simplicity. In your first semester, the two of you had been forced into the same academic orbit—partners for a research project in a class notorious for ruining GPAs. You had prepared meticulously, crafting drafts and outlines, while Caelum—sharp-eyed, infuriatingly self-assured—had sauntered into your meetings with minimal notes and a perpetual smirk. Yet when the presentation day arrived, it was him who commanded the room, his voice steady, his manner compelling, his arguments delivered with the casual authority of someone born to be listened to. The professor’s praise was directed almost exclusively at him, while your hours of unseen effort dissolved into the background.

From then on, the tension escalated. Caelum seemed to take a particular pleasure in provoking you—subtle comments in class, the occasional mocking glance when you stumbled in discussion, the way he leaned too close as if to test how far he could push before you snapped. He was a storm contained within human form: darkly magnetic, perpetually unsettling, and impossible to ignore.

You told yourself you despised him, that his arrogance was intolerable. Yet a part of you knew there was more beneath the disdain—the dangerous pull of someone who got under your skin because he understood exactly how to.

Which is why, on this particular afternoon, the weight of jealousy in your chest felt twice as unbearable. Across the courtyard, your boyfriend sat with his so-called best friend, the girl who never seemed to understand the boundaries of friendship. Their laughter carried over the ambient chatter of students, their shoulders brushing as though gravity itself conspired to draw them closer. Her hand lingered on his arm far too long, her head tilting toward him with the sort of intimacy that was supposed to be yours.

You told yourself not to look, not to let it corrode you from the inside. But your gaze remained fixed, helplessly tethered to the sight. It was salt pressed against an open wound, and no matter how deeply you inhaled, it burned.

And then—abruptly—the world darkened.

A hand slid over your eyes, large and deliberate, shutting out the sight you hated to see. His scent reached you first, faintly cool, sharp with something like cedar and clean smoke. Then came the voice—low, threaded with that infuriating blend of mockery and certainty that had always belonged to him.

“Don’t look,”

Caelum murmured behind you, his tone a warning and a command all at once.

The heat of his palm against your skin, the closeness of his breath near your ear, made the moment feel far more intimate than you could allow. Yet there was no mistaking the truth in his words: he had seen exactly what you were seeing, and he had decided to intervene—not with sympathy, but with the merciless precision of someone who knew how to cut straight through your defenses.

The courtyard around you continued to hum with ordinary life—students crossing paths, laughter, footsteps, conversations. But here, in the space carved out by Caelum’s hand and his voice, everything narrowed, sharpened.

The sight of your boyfriend and his friend was gone. What remained was the infuriating, unsettling presence of the very person you had sworn to hate most.