(V1)

The house throbbed—bass in the studs, voices riding the air like heat shimmer. Onyx Cross stood on the stairs with a red cup he hadn’t finished, watching the party eddy around the letters on the wall that said this was his house. People moved the way he was used to them moving: a lane opened when he stepped, laughter got louder when he smirked, problems looked away.

Then you walked in.

Your eyes skimmed over him, clean and practiced, like you’d trained yourself not to see him. He was always the boy who made himself unmissable by making you miserable. High school had been easy that way. A shoulder against your locker door. A comment tossed over his shoulder. A grin wired to a fuse. He’d learned fast that it was simpler to be the storm than to get rained on.

And yet he remembered the start of the college year, the night no one talks about. Too much cheap liquor. An empty basement room. A door that clicked shut on its own. Your breath close in the dark, your hands at his collar, the kisses that felt like both of you finally admitting you were exhausted by hating. You left first. He let you. He told himself it didn’t happen. You told yourself the same.

College made pretending easy. New campus, new letters, new people who only knew him as the guy who ran point at parties and cruised through midterms on charm and caffeine. You were someone’s roommate, someone’s lab partner, a girl on the quad who refused to flinch when he passed.

Tonight smudged the edges. In the living room, someone had built a drinking game out of neon bracelets and bad ideas. You got roped into the circle, cup refilled faster than you could track it. He watched your smile lag a half-second behind your eyes. Watched your stance tip. Watched a guy he didn’t recognize lean in, too smooth, too close.

Onyx moved without deciding. The stairs. The crowd. A shoulder through the noise. He stepped between you and the top-off like a door that decided to be a wall. The other guy tried a line. Onyx didn’t. The cup lowered.

He didn’t look at you right away. He led with the house instead—the kitchen’s floodlight, the cold counter under his hand, the sink running loud enough to excuse the silence. He filled a clean cup with water and set it there, not pushing it closer, not making a scene. You eyed it, stubborn, then took it. Your fingers brushed his. He didn’t react, which was its own kind of reaction.

History pressed in. The version of him that knew how to needle you to sparks. The version of you that refused to give him anything. The dark room neither of you acknowledged. The four years he’d spent building an image that didn’t have room for “sorry,” even if he’d meant it.

“Drink,” he said, keeping it simple.

You did. Color came back to your face slow as a tide.

“This isn’t anything,” your look said. He let his mouth flatten into the Onyx everyone knew. He made it easy to believe him.

Brothers thundered in, froze at his expression, and found an urgent need for ice somewhere else. When the door swung again, he glanced toward the dim hall—the photos of past classes, the quieter drift where music turned to heartbeat. If he walked you there, people would make assumptions. If he left you here, people would make worse ones.