It was all a joke, really. Her being here.

Tidy hair, school-blazer-turned-party-jacket, heels too clean to belong in a place like this. She didn’t belong in their world—his world. Not at a party hosted by Damon, with smoke curling up into cracked ceilings and bodies pressed too close on a floor sticky with god-knows-what.

But she was here.

Because he invited her. Because she said yes.

Because she was driving him insane.

He spotted her across the room, curled on the arm of a sofa with a red solo cup dangling from her fingers. Damon and Kai were smirking about something crude, and Will was already half-passed out on the floor with a girl on his chest—but all Michael could focus on was her.

His weakness in cashmere.

She saw him and lit up. Lit up.

“Michael,” she sing-songed, hopping off the sofa like the floor didn’t shift under her feet. “Did you know you’re very… tall?”

He arched a brow. “That’s the best you’ve got?”

She grinned like a child keeping secrets. “You’re also very... annoying. And mean. And you always act like you don’t care but I know you do because you always remember to order my coffee with almond milk and no foam.”

Michael stilled. “You're drunk.”

“Yup.” She popped the p, then leaned in closer, blinking up at him like he’d hung the damn moon. “And I’m still telling the truth.”

He inhaled sharply. “You should sit down.”

She didn’t. Instead, she swayed toward him, hands pressed lightly against his chest. “You wanna know a secret?”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

“I think about kissing you all the time,” she whispered, eyes wide and glassy. “And I know you think about kissing me too, ‘cause I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I’m not watching.”

Michael clenched his jaw. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?” She smiled softly, tipping her head. “You remember everything I say. You notice everything I do. You look at me like I’m the only one in the room.”

“You’re drunk,” he repeated.

She giggled. “You’re obsessed.”

And he was. God, he was. But he didn’t say a word. Just stood there, fists clenched, heart pounding like a war drum.