Chapter 1 The Welcome Party

Avery's POV

Madison Thorne stepped into my path before I made it three steps through the door, and the music spilling from the ballroom behind her seemed to dim, like even the speakers knew she was about to make a scene.

"Well, well," she said, her eyes dragging over me like she was cataloging everything she planned to destroy. "The scholarship infestation has finally arrived."

I stopped with my hand still near the doorframe, and I felt the room shift toward me, two hundred pairs of eyes pretending they weren't watching while Madison's four friends spread out behind her in that practiced formation they'd perfected over years of making people miserable.

"Love what you've done with your face," I said, tilting my head and keeping my voice light even as my pulse hammered against my ribs. "Did the filler finally settle, or is that still in progress?"

A ripple moved through the crowd, that collective pause that told me I'd broken some unspoken rule. Because everyone at Ridgemont knew that Avery Bennett didn't talk back, that she kept her head down and her mouth shut because she couldn't afford the attention that came with fighting.

Madison stepped closer, slow and deliberate, and her smile sharpened into something that made my stomach twist. She hadn't expected me to resist, and she was already figuring out how to make me pay for it.

"Still wearing the thrift store dress?" she asked, her gaze trailing over my outfit like she was measuring something she planned to destroy. "I saw that exact one on a woman outside the pharmacy last week."

"Then she had excellent taste," I said, meeting her eyes with a smile that felt like it might crack my face in half.

Her smile widened, slower this time, and I knew I'd just made a mistake. Madison Thorne didn't forgive people who embarrassed her in public.

She stepped even closer, lowering her voice so only I could hear, and the sweetness in her tone made my skin crawl because I knew what was coming, could feel it building like a storm.

"I heard your mother started cleaning for the Ryders," she whispered, her eyes gleaming with satisfaction. "Mopping their floors, scrubbing their toilets. How does it feel knowing your whole family survives because your mother wipes up after people who actually matter?"

My chest locked up and I couldn't breathe. My mother had taken that job three weeks ago, and every night she came home exhausted with her hands raw from chemicals. I hadn't told a single person at school because I thought silence would keep it safe.

"At least my mother works," I said, holding her gaze even as anger and shame twisted through me. "What do you do, Madison? Besides spending your father's money and peaking at eighteen while everyone else is still pretending that's actually impressive?"

Her smile widened, and then a phone appeared somewhere behind her, then another. I saw the way the girls around me shifted, and I understood I was no longer standing in a conversation but in something that had already been recorded.

"Say it again," Madison said, louder now, turning slightly toward the crowd. "She thinks she's too good for us. Little Miss Coding Genius. The scholarship girl who builds video games in her bedroom because she can't afford to go anywhere real."

Laughter started small, then spread like wildfire until it wasn't about what Madison had said anymore. It was about me.

"She lives in a shed behind her landlord's house," someone whispered.

"Her mother's bedroom is basically a closet."

"Why is she even at this party?"

None of it needed to be true. I stood there feeling my fingers press harder into the fabric of my dress, my jaw tight, my throat doing the thing I refused to let turn into anything visible.

"Excuse me."

The voice came from behind the circle, calm and unhurried, and the entire room shifted before I even turned, like it recognized him before I did.

Jaxon Ryder walked through the crowd like he owned the place, dark jacket and messy hair and those pale gray eyes carrying that tired distance he wore like a second skin.

I hated how I noticed him.

He stopped between me and Madison without looking at either of us for more than a second.

"Thorne," he said flatly. "Party's that way."

"Jaxon, I was just..."

"Leaving."

Madison hesitated for half a breath, then flipped her hair back like she'd never been interrupted at all. She laughed once under her breath and walked away, her girls following behind her like wounded soldiers retreating from a battle they'd lost.

The circle dissolved like it had never existed, and the music swelled again, strings filling the space like nothing had just been torn open.

I stared at the floor and breathed slowly.

"You okay?" he asked.

I looked up at him and saw something in his eyes I'd never seen before, something that looked almost like concern.

"I didn't need your help," I said, my voice cold even though I was trembling.

"Didn't say you did."

"Then why step in?"

"She was getting loud," he said, shrugging barely. "It wasn't about you."

A pause stretched thin between us, and I hated that he'd seen me like that, embarrassed and humiliated and almost broken.

I hated even more that part of me was grateful.

"Thanks for the rescue, quarterback," I said, keeping my voice cold. "I'll try to be less inconvenient next time."

I turned and walked before he could answer, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might actually break through my ribs, and I felt his eyes on my back the entire time.

Behind me, I heard nothing except a short exhale. But the way my skin prickled told me it wasn't nothing.

I pushed through the front doors and the cold air hit me like a wall. I stood there on the steps of the Prescott mansion breathing in the night air and trying to remember how to feel like myself again.

My phone buzzed in my clutch, and I pulled it out to see a text from an unknown number.

"You left your phone on the table. I have it. Meet me outside the back gate."

I stared at the message and felt my stomach drop because I had left it at the party, had been so focused on escaping that I'd forgotten the one thing I couldn't afford to lose.

I turned back toward the house and saw a figure standing at the edge of the garden, watching me.

Jaxon Ryder stood there with my phone in his hand, his expression unreadable in the moonlight, and I knew that whatever was about to happen next would change everything.