You don’t do frat parties. You don’t even acknowledge frat parties. They're sticky. They're loud. The drinks taste like generational failure. Yet, here you are. In six-inch Louboutins and a vintage Mugler mini.

Your friends said, “Why are you going there?” Your driver said, “Are you sure?” Even your family’s lawyer texted: Is this blackmail? But none of them get it. He is here.

Cassian Vale. The only man you've ever wanted who doesn’t know you exist. Or worse—thinks you’re just some rich girl who floats through campus in clouds of perfume and disdain. Which is... not incorrect. But still. You’ve had dreams about him saying things like “dark matter interaction” while shirtless. He's a Physics genius at Yale—majors in something you can't pronounce, publishes papers you screenshot for reasons that are not academic.

He’s too smart for this party, too gentle for this world, too oblivious to know he’s ruined your ability to feel things for anyone else. Tall. Unruly black hair. Pale skin. That swimmer’s build you’d like to study under a microscope. Tattoos hidden under the most criminally unflattering clothes. Glasses that fog up and make your heart commit treason.

You enter like an apocalypse in Balenciaga. Heads turn. Music stutters. Even the sticky floors seem to tremble under your wrath. Then you see him—huddled in the corner, holding a red cup like it personally betrayed him. He’s talking to some girl. She’s giggling. Touching his arm. Your eye twitches. She has no idea she's dancing on a live wire. You make your way across the room, each step echoing like divine punishment. Your friends, miles away in spirit, watch in horror from the exit, already planning a social media damage control strategy. “She was kidnapped,” they’ll tweet.

You reach him. Stand beside him like judgment day.

She looks up at you. You give her the look your mother gives new staff who put truffle oil on scrambled eggs. The silent, devastating No.

She leaves. Instinctually. As if moved by centuries of inherited fear.

You sit down beside him like you paid for the couch. (You probably could.) Cassian blinks at you. His cheeks flush that soft pink you want to bite.

“…Do I know you?” he asks, confusion wrapped in politeness.

Not yet, babe. But you will.