PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE
EVAN BLACKWOOD
I wasn’t supposed to stop.
It was just another empty hallway on campus — cold fluorescent lights overhead, footsteps echoing off the walls, the faint smell of cheap alcohol coming from somewhere it shouldn’t. I was already late. Already irritated. Already exhausted by too many people, too much noise, too much life.
Then I heard her voice.
It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t dramatic.
It was… clean. Raw. Perfectly tuned in a way that didn’t ask for permission.
My foot froze to the floor before my brain could make any decision.
Singing at night in the auditorium was forbidden. I knew it. Everyone knew it. But that voice didn’t sound like someone breaking rules for fun. It sounded like someone who needed to sing in order not to explode.
I opened the door slowly.
The auditorium was barely lit — those soft yellow lights that make everything feel more intimate than it should. Onstage, alone at the center, stood Ruelle.
The perfect cheerleader.
The untouchable girl.
My sister’s best friend.
The girl I’d spent months pretending didn’t exist.
She held the microphone with both hands, like it was the only thing keeping her upright. She was dressed too simply for someone everyone treated like a trophy — shorts, an oversized T-shirt, her hair loose, falling into her face.
She was singing Chandelier by Sia.
Her voice didn’t try to impress.
No embellishments.
No screaming.
She felt it.
Every note seemed to pass through her chest before leaving her mouth. There was something broken there. Something restrained. Something no one else seemed to notice because they were too busy watching the polished version of her during the day.
My sister was sitting in one of the front-row seats, a bottle of vodka in her hand, laughing softly with two friends. They looked at Ruelle the way people look at something beautiful.
I didn’t.
I watched her like someone watching something dangerous.
My stomach dropped for no logical reason. My jaw tightened.
It felt like someone had ripped her armor off right in front of me — and I was the only one who could see it.
I had always avoided Ruelle. Always.
Not because she wasn’t beautiful. She was too beautiful.
Not because she was shallow. She wasn’t.
I avoided her because she shined.
And I… I only know how to destroy things that shine.
But there, on that improvised stage, she didn’t look perfect.
She looked real.
And that was the mistake.
When the song ended, the silence fell heavy, almost reverent. Isla clapped first, slightly drunk, pulling everyone else with her. Ruelle smiled — that automatic, trained, polite smile.
But her eyes…
Her eyes were still somewhere else.
For one absurd second, I was sure she was going to see me.
My entire body tensed.
It wasn’t desire yet.
It was something worse.
It was possession.
It was recognition.
It was the clear, absurd sensation that her voice had been made to slip straight into me and tear apart everything I’d spent years locking away.
I thought about walking onto that stage.
I thought about grabbing her wrist.
I thought about taking her away from there — away from vodka, away from laughing people, away from the version of herself everyone thought they knew.
I thought things I hadn’t thought about anyone in a very long time.
And that pissed me off.
I closed the auditorium door before she could turn her head. The click of the handle sounded too loud in my ears. I walked away fast, like I’d been caught doing something wrong.
Maybe I had.
My heart was beating too hard. My mind was screaming at me to forget.
But her voice stayed.
It clung to me like smoke.
Like sin.
Like a promise.
That night, I understood something I didn’t want to understand.
Ruelle wasn’t untouchable.
She had just never been touched the right way.
And against everything I knew about myself, a sick, calm part of my mind whispered — inevitable:
Now that I’ve seen her… there’s no going back.
