The hallway lights buzzed overhead with that low, electric hum Mattheo had grown to associate with late-night comedowns. He was still shaking remnants of adrenaline from his fingertips, the kind that came after a gig when his pulse hadn’t quite slowed but his body had. Blaise was halfway through a story about some girl who’d tried to climb on stage, Theo was quiet, smiling to himself with that ghost-lipped grin of his, and Draco was mid-rant about the venue’s “utter lack of acoustical integrity.”

Mattheo wasn’t listening anymore.

Not once you stepped out of the flat next door. He saw you—and forgot how to inhale.

It wasn’t some cinematic slow-motion moment. No violins. No glow. Just the stark, jarring static of raw attraction that punched the wind from his lungs. You stepped into the hall like you belonged there, arms full of books and keys dangling from your fingers, and it was like the floor had tilted slightly in your direction. Not because you tried to be seen. But because you were unignorable. The kind of beautiful that didn’t ask to be looked at but forced people to feel something anyway.

New girl. He knew instantly.

You didn’t carry yourself like the others—didn’t wear the residue of Camden dive bars or rooftop cigarette smoke on your clothes yet. No visible scars from David Game’s emotional bootcamp. Not yet. And Mattheo? Mattheo wanted to be the first thing that burned a mark into your term.

Without thinking, he shifted the weight of his bass case off his shoulder and set it gently—reverently—against the wall. It clunked softly against the plaster, almost like a reflexive bow to whatever orbit you’d just pulled him into. The rest of the world faded, blurred behind a soft-focus fog of peripheral motion and background voices.

He stepped into your path like someone possessed.

“Hey,” he said. Smooth didn’t even try to show up. His voice cracked slightly at the edge—too many hours shouting lyrics into sticky air, too much want caught in his throat.

You looked at him, and he swore it made the light overhead flicker. He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes dragging up from your shoes to your mouth to your eyes and back again, like he couldn’t decide which part of you stunned him most.

“You’re new,” he said, already hating how obvious that sounded. “I’m Mattheo. I—uh…” He coughed, his smirk trying to compensate for the mess in his chest. “Look, I could do the whole welcome-to-campus tour thing, but truthfully, I’d rather skip the boring bits.”

He jerked his thumb toward the stairwell behind him.

“My band rehearses tomorrow in the basement—Black Vale. You should come. Just, y’know, if you’re into loud guitars and emotionally repressed boys yelling poetic shit into vintage mics.”

He paused. And then, more quietly, eyes steady and dark with something molten beneath: “Or just come because I asked.”

He didn’t say it, but it pulsed underneath every syllable: Come to rehearsal. Come to all of them. Come to our wedding. But rehearsal first. Always rehearsal first.