Chapter 1

Chloe Hart

The first thing I registered was pain—a dull, throbbing ache that seemed to have taken up permanent residence behind my eyes, as if someone had reached into my skull and squeezed my brain like a stress ball. My mouth tasted like something had crawled in there and died, and my body felt disconnected from my consciousness, heavy and unresponsive, like I was wearing someone else's limbs.

I forced my eyes open, squinting against the pale morning light filtering through the curtains, and found myself staring up at our dorm’s plain white ceiling—scattered with a few faded sticker decals and centered by a simple round flush-mount light.

Wait. I was in my bed. In our dorm. I turned my head toward Leah’s bed beside me, only to find it empty.

The realization hit me with a jolt of panic that cut through the fog in my head. Class. I had class—what time was it? I shot upright, my brain sloshing painfully inside my skull, and immediately cracked my forehead against the metal safety rail with a resounding clang that echoed through the small room.

"Shit!" The word came out as a strangled yelp as I collapsed back onto my pillow, stars exploding across my vision, one hand pressed to my throbbing forehead while the other clutched at my sheets.

"Chloe!" Leah’s gentle, anxious voice carried across the room from her side of the dorm, paired with the quiet scrape of her desk chair as she stood and crossed toward my bed. Within seconds, her face appeared over the edge of my bunk, dark hair falling around her face like a curtain, her brown eyes wide with concern behind her glasses. "Are you okay? I heard you moving around and then—oh my god, did you hit your head?"

"I'm fine," I mumbled, though the dual assault of hangover headache and fresh injury suggested otherwise. I lowered my hand and blinked up at her, trying to focus through the pain. "What time is it? I'm going to be so late—"

"Chloe, it’s half past eleven," Leah said softly. She crossed over to my bed and sat lightly on the edge, her hand hovering just above my shoulder like she longed to comfort me but hesitated. "Tomorrow’s the first day of the semester, don’t you remember?"

I stared at her, my sluggish brain trying to process this information. It’s Sunday then… I'd been asleep for more than half a day. The party had been Saturday night—Derek's big back-to-school bash at that ridiculous off-campus mansion he and his Alpha Sigma brothers rented. I remembered going, remembered the music and the lights and the endless parade of people I used to know pretending they still cared that I existed. But after that...

"What happened?" I asked, my voice coming out hoarse and unfamiliar. "I mean, I remember the party, but everything after..." I trailed off, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to summon any coherent memory from the black hole that was last night. Fragments flickered at the edges of my consciousness—the taste of something bitter and strong, the feeling of the world tilting sideways, a flash of a dark hallway and a silhouette against a window—but nothing solid, nothing I could hold onto.

Leah bit her lip, a gesture I'd come to recognize as her tell when she was worried but trying not to show it. "Derek and someone else brought you back around midnight," she said carefully. "You were... pretty out of it. I helped you change and made sure you got into bed, but you were already mostly asleep by then." She paused, her fingers twisting in the hem of her oversized sleep shirt. "I'm sorry I let you wander around drunk on your own. Do you really not remember anything?"

"It’s not your fault. I just needed some space to clear my head alone." I shook my head, then immediately regretted it as the movement sent a fresh wave of nausea rolling through my stomach.

"Just bits and pieces," I admitted, lowering my hands and staring up at the ceiling, trying to will the room to stop its gentle spinning. "I remember being at the party, feeling like I didn't belong there—which, let's be honest, I didn't. I remember you talking to Ethan by the drink table, looking all cute and flustered." That earned me a small, embarrassed smile from Leah, a brief flicker of normalcy. "And I remember drinking something that tasted like it could strip paint, which was clearly a mistake."

"You grabbed one of the jungle juice cups," Leah said, her tone a mixture of sympathy and gentle reproach. "Justin Parker made that batch, and I heard him bragging that he used three different kinds of rum. You're lucky you didn't end up in the hospital."

God, I can’t believe how stupid I was. Justin was one of those guys who showed up to every party, always hovering around people more important than him, always trying to impress. I vaguely remembered him at the drink table last night, mixing some godawful concoction and acting like he was a professional bartender. Of course I'd grabbed one of his cups. Just my luck.

I closed my eyes, trying to push past the fog, to grab hold of something concrete. There had been a moment—I was sure of it—when I'd felt like I needed air, needed to escape the suffocating press of bodies and the bass that seemed to vibrate in my bones. I remembered wandering, the hallways of Derek's mansion stretching out in all directions like some kind of architectural maze. And then...

A figure. Someone standing at the end of a hallway, silhouetted against a window. The set of their shoulders had been so familiar in its isolation, in the way they seemed to carry the weight of their loneliness like a physical burden. I'd felt it echo in my own chest, that hollow ache I'd been living with for the past year, the one that had carved itself deeper with each passing month of my transformed college experience.

And then—god, he was perched right on the windowsill. The memory was hazy, muddled by booze, yet a sharp, icy dread crashed over me—like he’d hurl himself down any second. He’s going to jump.

I moved on pure instinct, sprinting forward even as my muddled mind screamed I was too drunk, too slow, useless to stop him.