Chapter 1: The Decimal Point
Chapter 1: The Decimal Point
The midterm rankings went up on the lobby glass at 7:52, and by 7:55 there was a crowd around it thick enough that Seraphina Windsor didn’t bother pushing through. She didn’t need to see the sheet. She already knew her number down to the decimal.
99.8%.
It was the number a certain kind of person got — the kind who color-coded her notes, treated a study schedule like scripture, and hadn’t slept past six a.m. since freshman year. It was the number expected of a Student Council President.
What she hadn’t expected was the name sitting directly beneath hers, close enough to sting.
Julian Knight.
99.1%. A hair behind her, same as always — second place, exactly where he’d been every single ranking period since freshman year, without ever once looking like he was trying to close the gap.
A boy who spent most of first period watching the window instead of the board, whose tie hadn’t been fully knotted since October, and who somehow sat at the top of the class rankings anyway, like gravity simply didn’t apply to him. Everyone loved him for it — teachers included, which was the part that genuinely offended her. She’d watched Mr. Alvarez let him turn in a lab report two days late without so much as a raised eyebrow, the same week she’d been docked half a point for a citation formatted one space off. Seraphina mostly wanted to file a formal complaint against the universe.
“No way. He’s still that close behind her?” someone near the glass said.
“Julian didn’t even open a textbook this week,” another voice added. “I watched him nap through half of AP Chem.”
“Windsor’s going to combust.”
Seraphina was already walking away by the time the laughter started. She had a council room to get to, and a morning that did not have room in it for public combustion.
The council room, at least, was hers. Empty at this hour except for the hum of the overhead lights and the faint smell of the coffee she’d started brewing before the rankings even went up. She dropped her bag by her desk, pulled out the morning’s paperwork, and had just uncapped her pen when the door swung open without a knock.
“You’re holding that pen like it insulted your family, Prez.”
She didn’t look up. She recognized the voice, the doorway, the particular unhurried arrogance of the footsteps that followed it. Julian dropped his bag on the leather couch hard enough to make it complain and crossed the room in three easy strides, coming to a stop against the edge of her desk like he owned it.
“If you wanted first place to yourself,” he said, leaning down until his eyes — green, always distractingly green — were level with hers, “maybe you should’ve studied harder.”
She capped her pen. Set it down. Leaned back in her chair and let herself smile, slow and entirely genuine.
“Actually, Julian, I’m proud of you.”
The smirk on his face stuttered.
“You skipped half the review sessions,” she went on, watching something shift behind his eyes, “spent the chemistry final staring out the window, and still landed a fraction of a point off my score. That’s not luck. That’s a genuinely rare mind, wasted most of the time — but rare all the same. You earned that number. I mean it.”
He went very still. Whatever comeback he’d walked in with died somewhere in his throat, and for the first time all morning, the school’s reigning golden boy looked like someone had rebooted him mid-sentence. Color crept up the back of his neck.
“You—” He stopped, dragged a hand through his hair, looked anywhere but at her. “You’re not allowed to say things like that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Because I have a reputation to maintain, and it does not include blushing in a council room at eight in the morning.” He said it lightly, but he still hadn’t quite managed to look at her again.
She held his gaze anyway, refusing to let her own pulse show on her face, though it was doing something unhelpful under her ribs. She was aware of how absurd this was. To the rest of the school, Julian Knight was untouchable — the guy who held the center of every loud, easy circle of friends without ever making anyone feel unwelcome in it, who every girl in their year had a theory about and no one had proof of anything. And then there was her: the President, the iron wall, beautiful in the way people mentioned right before they called her rigid, or intimidating, or worse.
They made no sense together. They never should have started.
Her mind went, unbidden, to a wet afternoon five months ago — Julian loitering in the courtyard after the track coach had dragged him into a “just try it” sprint session, for what had to be the fourth time that semester, surrounded by friends who were supposed to be on cleanup duty and weren’t. Anyone else would have let it slide.
She hadn’t. She’d walked straight into the middle of his friends and pressed a disciplinary slip to his damp uniform.
“I don’t care how many medals you’ve won for this school, Knight,” she’d told him, ignoring the way his friends had gone quiet around them. “You don’t get to be lazy on my watch.”
He’d looked down at the slip, then at her, clearly deciding whether to be amused or annoyed. “It’s raining. Cleanup can wait.”
“Cleanup was scheduled for three o’clock. It is currently three-oh-four.” She hadn’t blinked. “Pick up a broom, or take detention with me.”
Something in his expression had changed then — not annoyance. Interest.
No one had ever told him no like that. It was, she suspected, the exact moment he’d decided cracking her composure was going to become a hobby.
“You’re thinking about the courtyard,” Julian said, low, pulling her back into the present.
Before she could answer, his hesitation — if it had ever really been there — vanished. He leaned in, fingers sliding across the desk until his palm found the side of her face, thumb resting just under her bottom lip.
Her composure went first, then her color. Heat rushed up her neck in a wave she had zero ability to stop.
“Julian. Let go.”
“No.” The word came out low and pleased, vibrating against her skin as he slid his other hand to her waist and pulled her against him, face dropping to the crook of her neck. “You’re terrifying out there, you know that? Ice-cold, everyone flinching when you walk by. I like you a lot better like this — falling apart, and only for me.”
“I’m not falling apart.” Her voice came out breathless enough to argue otherwise.
“Sure.” He pulled back just far enough to look at her, that infuriating smirk creeping back in. “Keep telling yourself that, Prez.”
Somewhere down the hallway, the first bell rang, distant and muffled through the closed door. Neither of them moved right away. Julian’s thumb traced one slow, absent line along her jaw, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it before letting her go back to being untouchable in front of everyone else.
“You’re going to make me late,” she said, not moving to stop him.
“You’re never late. You’ve built in a seven-minute buffer for exactly this scenario.” His mouth curved against her skin. “Don’t pretend I haven’t noticed.”
“That buffer is for equipment malfunctions, not—” She gestured vaguely between them, unable to find a word that didn’t make this feel more real than she was ready for it to be. “This.”
“Sure it is.” He pressed one last, unhurried kiss just below her ear before finally straightening, infuriatingly unbothered, already reaching for his bag off the couch. “See you at lunch, Prez.”
For exactly as long as the empty council room would allow it, the President and the golden boy stayed exactly where they were — no armband, no rankings, no version of themselves anyone else was allowed to see.
