Chapter 5
Marco
The half-empty water bottle felt cool against my palm as I set it back on the middle shelf, positioning it carefully toward the back where it wouldn't be easily knocked over again. Through the narrow window of the meeting room, I could see the hallway stretching empty and dim, the overhead lights casting long shadows across the industrial tile floor.
I'd only come back for my jacket—the one I'd left draped over a chair during the brief team orientation earlier. Coach Anderson had wanted us exchange players to get familiar with the campus layout before the official training tomorrow. So I used the excuse of fetching my jacket to slip away from Tyler’s nonstop rambling about which girls on campus were "definitely checking us out."
But then I'd heard the soft scrape of folders being shuffled in the hallway, followed by footsteps—quick, purposeful, the kind that suggested someone trying to get through a task list as efficiently as possible. I'd glanced out the window just in time to see her walk past, arms full of manila folders, her ponytail swinging with each stride.
Chloe. The girl from the fractured memory of last night that I couldn't quite shake.
I'd watched her pass the meeting room window, noticing the slight hitch in her step when her shirt caught briefly on something.
Then the glass tumbler on the top tier had teetered, about to fall, and my body had moved before my brain caught up—reaching out, catching it, steadying the whole structure with one hand while the other gripped the cup. The metal had scraped faintly against the floor, barely audible, but enough to make me freeze.
She'd paused. Turned back. And I'd held my breath, pressed against the wall just inside the doorway, watching her scan the hallway with those expressive eyes that seemed to notice everything and nothing all at once.
Then she'd shaken her head and kept walking, and I'd let myself exhale.
I grabbed my jacket from the chair and headed for the door, but my feet slowed as I reached the hallway. She was long gone by now—probably already knee-deep in whatever equipment crisis Coach Mike had called her in to fix.
My gaze lingered down the empty corridor, a faint frown tugging at my brows. How come every private run-in with her was this messy? Still, there was something oddly nice about bumping into her twice like this.
Yet my jaw tightened as I replayed the moment outside the building—the way her eyes had widened when they'd met mine, her breath catching in a way that sent an answering jolt through my chest, the flush that had crept up her neck when Tyler called me out for staring.
She'd been flustered. Curious. Maybe even interested, if I was reading the signs right.
But she hadn't known me.
There'd been no flicker of recognition in those eyes, no hesitation that suggested she was trying to place me, no awkward haven't we met before? that would've made this whole thing easier to navigate. She'd looked at me like I was a complete stranger—which, technically, I was, except for the part where she'd thrown herself at me last night.
I braced my hands on the windowsill and stared out at the empty walkway, letting the memory pull me under.
Last night.
The party had been Derek's idea, or maybe one of his fraternity brothers—I hadn't cared enough to ask. Tyler had convinced me to go with promises of "low-key" and "just a couple hours," but Tyler's version of low-key involved a sprawling off-campus house packed with enough people to violate at least three fire codes. He'd bailed at the last minute, some family thing he couldn't get out of, leaving me to fend for myself in a sea of strangers who all seemed to know each other, all seemed to belong in a way I decidedly did not.
I'd lasted maybe forty minutes before retreating to the upper floor, where the music was marginally quieter and the crowd thinned out to a few scattered groups. Derek had disappeared into the chaos downstairs, playing host, and I'd found myself drifting toward a window at the end of a hallway, drawn by the promise of air that didn't taste like beer and bad decisions.
The window overlooked a small ledge, maybe four feet wide, with a view of the backyard and the stretch of trees beyond. I'd pushed it open and leaned against the frame, letting the cool night air wash over my face, and for a moment—just a moment—I'd felt something close to calm.
Then my phone buzzed. I already knew exactly who it’d be before I even glanced at the screen, a dull, irritable weight settling in my chest. It was almost certainly Dad, firing off another lecture about how I’d failed to do things his way.
I'd pulled the phone out too fast, and my wallet had come with it, slipping from my pocket and tumbling out the window before I could react. It landed on the ledge with a soft thud, close enough to the edge that another gust of wind might send it over.
"Shit," I muttered, glancing down. The drop to the ledge wasn't bad—maybe three feet—and the ledge itself was wide enough to stand on safely. I could climb out, grab the wallet, climb back in. Thirty seconds, tops.
I'd hoisted myself onto the windowsill, one leg already swinging over, when I heard the footsteps.
Fast. Unsteady. Frantic.
"Don't..." she called out vaguely.
I'd barely turned my head before she crashed into me.
Not metaphorically. Literally crashed, her hands grabbing my arm with enough force to yank me backward, her weight slamming into my side as she tried to haul me away from the window. I'd lost my balance, my grip on the frame slipping, and then we were falling—not out the window, thank God, but onto the hallway floor in a tangle of limbs and momentum.
I'd twisted mid-fall, some deeply ingrained instinct taking over, and managed to get my arm under her head before we hit the ground. The impact jarred through my shoulder, but she landed on me, cushioned, her body sprawled across my chest in a way that knocked every coherent thought out of my brain.
For a second, neither of us moved.
Then she shifted, her hair spilling over my face in a cascade of gold-brown strands that smelled like vanilla and something floral, and I realized three things in rapid succession:
One, she was drunk. The scent of alcohol clung to her skin, sweet and sharp, mixing with the warmth radiating from her body.
Two, she was soft. Impossibly, distractingly soft, all curves and heat pressed against me in a way that made my pulse spike and my brain short-circuit.
Three, I was in serious trouble.
She pushed herself up slightly, just enough to look down at me, and her face was so close I could see the faint freckles scattered across her nose, the way her pupils had blown wide, the flush staining her cheeks. Her lips parted, and I felt the ghost of her breath against my skin, warm and unsteady.
"You're okay," she said, and her voice was slurred but earnest, each word carefully shaped like she was fighting to get them out. "You're—you can't—"
She stopped, her gaze unfocused, and then her hand came up to touch my face, her fingers brushing my jaw with a gentleness that felt like a gut punch.
"It'll get better," she whispered, and the sincerity in her tone, the raw, unfiltered kindness, hit me harder than the fall. "You have to—you have to keep going. You have to live. Okay? Promise me."
I stared at her, frozen, my heart hammering against my ribs. She thought I'd been trying to jump. She thought I'd been standing at that window, two stories up, contemplating something desperate and final, and she'd thrown herself at me to stop it.
She'd risked herself—drunk, unsteady, completely vulnerable—to save a stranger.
"I'm okay," I managed, my voice rougher than I'd intended. "I wasn't—"
But she wasn't listening. Her eyes had started to drift shut, her body going slack against mine, and I realized with a jolt of panic that she was passing out.
"Hey," I said, catching her shoulders as she slumped forward. "Hey, stay with me."
No response. Her head lolled against my chest, her breathing evening out into the deep, steady rhythm of sleep, and I was left holding a unconscious girl I didn't know, my back pressed to the hallway floor, my mind racing.
I should've moved. Should've called for help, found someone who knew her, gotten her somewhere safe. But for a long moment, I just stayed there, her weight warm and grounding against me, and let myself absorb what had just happened.
She'd seen me standing at that window and assumed the worst. And instead of walking away, instead of minding her own business or assuming someone else would handle it, she'd acted. She'd cared.
And the worst part—the part that had been eating at me ever since—was that her words had landed exactly where they needed to. It'll get better. You have to keep going.
I hadn't been suicidal. But I'd been lost, adrift in a new place with a future I wasn't sure I wanted, carrying the weight of expectations I'd spent two years trying to escape. And this drunk stranger, with her messy hair and her fierce, misguided compassion, had looked at me and seen someone worth saving.
I'd pulled out my phone and called Derek, keeping my voice low so I wouldn't wake her. He'd come upstairs with questions I didn't answer, just helped me get her to his car and then to her dorm, where her roommate—Leah, I'd learned later—had taken over with the kind of practiced efficiency that suggested this wasn't Chloe's first disaster.
I'd left without saying anything. What was there to say? Thanks for thinking I was suicidal and also you smell really good?
Yeah. That would've gone over well.
I straightened, pulling myself out of the memory, and grabbed my jacket from the chair. The hallway outside was empty now, Chloe long gone, and I was left with the same question I'd been asking myself since this morning.
How could she not remember?
Maybe the alcohol had wiped it clean. Maybe she'd been too far gone to form coherent memories. Or maybe—and this was the possibility that bothered me most—it just hadn't mattered to her. A blurry, forgettable moment in a night full of them.
But it had mattered to me.
I shoved my arms into my jacket and headed for the door, Tyler's voice echoing from somewhere down the hall. "Marco! You coming or what? Coach wants us on the court in ten!"
"Yeah," I called back, my gaze flicking once more toward the corner where Chloe had disappeared. "I'm coming."
She didn't remember. Fine. That didn't mean I had to forget.
And if I was being honest with myself—which I was trying very hard not to be—I wasn't sure I wanted her to remember. Not yet. Not when I didn't know what I'd say, how I'd explain the way that moment had burrowed under my skin and refused to let go.
Better to start over. Better to let her see me as Marco, the quiet transfer student with the glasses and the unimpressive spot on the bench, and figure out if whatever I'd felt that night was real or just adrenaline and proximity.
Better to see if she'd look at me twice when I wasn't a stranger she thought needed saving.
I pulled the door shut behind me and started down the hall, Tyler's impatient shout growing louder.
Right now, I had bigger things to think about.
Like how the hell I was supposed to concentrate on basketball when all I could think about was the girl who'd crashed into my life and forgotten all about it.
