Between Us

Chapter 1 – Wrong Room, Wrong Guy

I had one plan for second semester.

Stay invisible.

No drama, no distractions, no unnecessary conversations with people who thought university was one big social event. I had a scholarship to protect and a GPA that wasn't going to maintain itself. Both of those things required the same ingredient — focus — and focus required the absence of everything that didn't matter. I had learned that early and I had learned it well.

So when my alarm went off at 6:47 that Monday morning, I was already dressed, bag packed, notes color-coded by topic. Not because I was obsessive about it — though Denise would argue otherwise — but because prepared was the only version of myself I trusted completely. Unprepared Ava made mistakes. Prepared Ava did not.

Ava Mitchell. Always prepared.

What I was not prepared for was Room 204 being switched to Room 104 without so much as a group chat notification. No email. No announcement on the board outside the faculty office. Nothing. I found out the hard way — standing in an empty classroom for four full minutes, folder in hand, wondering why none of my coursemates had arrived yet, before a cleaner looked at me from the doorway with an expression that was one step short of pity and pointed me back downstairs.

I hate being late. It physically bothers me in a way I cannot fully explain — a tightness behind my ribs, a specific irritation that starts small and builds the longer it goes unresolved. Being late means something slipped. Something wasn't accounted for. And things that weren't accounted for were, in my experience, always the beginning of a problem.

So I was walking fast, head down, earphones in, mentally rehearsing an apology to a lecturer who didn't know me yet and whose first impression of me was apparently going to be the door opening mid-session — when I walked straight into someone standing in the doorway of Room 104 like he owned the building.

The impact knocked my folder clean out of my hands.

Three weeks of notes. Gone. Scattered across the corridor floor like confetti at an event I had not agreed to attend.

I yanked out one earphone and looked up.

Bad idea.

Zane Carter was leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded, watching me with this lazy half-smile like I was the most entertaining thing that had happened to him all morning. He was tall — annoyingly tall — wearing a hoodie that probably cost more than my entire feeding allowance for the semester. His hair was slightly messy in that deliberate way that took effort to look effortless, and he had the particular ease of someone who had never once in his life been in a hurry and saw no reason to start.

The whole campus had opinions about Zane Carter. Most of them involved words like "dangerous" and "don't bother." I had filed those opinions away in the part of my brain reserved for things that were not my problem and moved on.

I crouched down and started gathering my papers.

"You know," he said, not moving an inch, "most people knock."

"It's a classroom." I didn't look up. "Not your bedroom."

"I sleep here between my 8am and 11am. Have done since first year." A pause, timed too well to be accidental. "You must be new."

"I'm not new." I stood up, clutching my now-crumpled notes to my chest. "The timetable says BIO 215 is in Room 104. So unless you're also registered for Cellular Molecular Biology, you're the one in the wrong place."

Something shifted in his expression. The amusement didn't disappear exactly — it just made room for something else. Something I couldn't quite name and didn't particularly want to spend time trying to.

"BIO 215?" he said.

"Yes."

He was quiet for a second too long. Then he stepped aside and swept his arm toward the room like a very unbothered tour guide who had decided, without consulting anyone, that this was now his job.

"After you."

I walked past him without another word and went straight to the third row. Not the front — that was desperate energy, the kind that announced itself before you'd even opened your notebook. Not the back — that was where focus went to die slowly and without protest. Third row. Central. The seat with the clearest sightline to the board and enough distance from the lecturer to take notes without feeling supervised.

I opened my notebook. Clicked my pen. Stared at the blank page and took one quiet breath.

And then — because God apparently thought my morning needed more character development — Zane Carter dropped into the empty seat right next to me. He leaned back, stretched his legs out in front of him, and stared at the ceiling like he had absolutely nowhere else to be and zero problems in the world. Like scattered notes and late arrivals and the general chaos of a Monday morning simply did not apply to him.

I said nothing.

He turned his head slightly.

"I never caught your name."

"I never threw it."

A slow smile crossed his face. Not the performative one from earlier — something smaller, more genuine. Like I'd genuinely surprised him and he was deciding what to do with that.

He faced forward again.

"I'm Zane."

"I know who you are."

"Most people do." No arrogance in it. Just the flat acknowledgment of a fact he hadn't chosen and didn't particularly seem to enjoy. "You have me at a disadvantage."

I kept my eyes on the board.

"Good."

He laughed — quiet, almost to himself, like it had come out before he could manage it — and didn't say anything after that.

The lecturer walked in two minutes later. I wrote down every word.

And I told myself, very firmly, that this was going to be a completely uneventful semester.

I was already wrong and I didn't even know it yet.