CHAPTER 1
I didn’t expect my fresh start to smell like bleach and old pizza.
But that’s exactly what hits me the second I step into Ashwood Hall, dragging my suitcase behind me like a stubborn, squeaky shadow.
The lobby is chaos—boxes, duffel bags, parents pretending they’re not about to cry. Someone’s little brother is chasing a rolling soccer ball. Music thumps faintly from somewhere upstairs. A girl rushes past me carrying a mini fridge and shouting, “Third floor, Lex! Don’t you dare drop my coffee machine!”
I stare up at the peeling gold letters over the doorway:
ASHWOOD HALL
WELCOME, WOLVES!
This is it.
Crest University.
New city. New school. New people.
And, if the universe is even a little bit kind this time, a new reputation.
I clutch my room assignment in one hand until the paper wrinkles.
Ashwood Hall – Room 4B – /
is me.
Maya .
Eighteen. Transfer student. Former “girl from the rumor.”
is… unknown. Some stranger I’ll be stuck with for an entire year. I told myself that was fine. Anyone is better than someone from home.
Anyone.
I balance my backpack, grab my suitcase handle, and start up the stairs. Each step feels like a countdown.
Fourth floor.
New life.
Do not look back.
On the second-floor landing, I pass a trio of girls taking mirror selfies under the emergency exit sign.
“Tag Ashwood!” one of them says. “Make it look chaotic but cute.”
Chaotic but cute. Yeah, that’s college so far.
By the time I reach the fourth floor, I’m breathless and sweating through my oversized hoodie. The hallway is a blur of open doors, high-pitched laughter, and the occasional swear word when something gets dropped.
I follow the little brass numbers nailed beside each door.
4A.
4B.
I stop.
The door to Room 4B is already half-open.
A muffled male voice drifts out over the sound of hangers clacking. Someone laughs at something on a phone. My stomach twists.
Please let it be normal.
A guy. Fine.
A girl. Fine.
A half-sociable plant that pays its own rent. Also fine.
Just… not someone I know.
Not someone who knows me.
I take a breath that doesn’t go very far and push the door open the rest of the way.
“Hey, sorry, is this—”
And then everything in me freezes.
Tall. Dark hair. Broad shoulders in a faded black hoodie. He’s standing by the far bed, wrestling a fitted sheet onto the mattress. His back is to me, but my body recognizes him before my brain does.
That slouch.
That way he shakes his head when the sheet pops off the corner.
That little huff of frustration.
No.
He turns at the sound of the door. Our eyes lock.
For a second, the world goes completely noiseless. No hallway chatter. No thumping music. Just the sound of my own heart hitting a wall.
He blinks, and his expression does this strange thing—shock, then guilt, then something like dread.
“Maya?” he says.
He says my name like it’s a question and a memory at the same time.
It shouldn’t hurt.
It still does.
“Blake,” I manage, voice flat.
Blake .
The boy who ruined my life without ever touching me.
The boy whose name was in my inbox more than my own.
The boy who stared at me with that same stunned look when the rumors exploded—
and said nothing.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whisper.
He drops the sheet. It slaps against the mattress and falls halfway to the floor.
“You… you’re my…” He glances at the paper in my hand, then at the label on our door. “. . Room 4B.” He gives a short, disbelieving laugh. “Of course. Of course this is happening.”
I blink hard, trying to reboot my brain.
I imagined a lot of worst-case scenarios about college. Getting lost. Not making friends. Accidentally joining some weird cult disguised as a study group.
I never—never—imagined being assigned to share four walls and a bathroom with Blake .
“What are you doing here?” I ask, even though the answer is obvious. This is a college dorm. He’s a student. Of course he’s here.
He runs a hand through his hair, the way he always used to when he was nervous before a game or a presentation. I hate that I remember that.
“I go here,” he says, like it’s simple. “Same as you, apparently.”
My fingers tighten around the handle of my suitcase. The plastic bites into my skin.
“I’m changing rooms,” I say immediately. “There’s no way—”
“There’s a waitlist for room changes.” His voice is annoyingly even. “They told me earlier. Everyone wants to be in Ashwood. It… might take a while.”
Of course. Of course the universe wouldn’t make this easy.
I force myself to step into the room. If my legs shake, I pretend they don’t.
The space is standard dorm minimum: two beds, two desks, two small dressers, one shared wardrobe, a narrow window that probably whistles in winter. He’s already claimed the bed by the window. His duffel bag sits open, clothes spilling out.
“Take the other bed,” he says. “I can move my stuff if you want the side by the door.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” I shoot back.
His jaw flexes. “You don’t have to. It’s just a bed.”
I set my suitcase down on the bare mattress on the left side, maybe a little harder than necessary. The springs squeak in protest.
The silence between us grows thick and heavy, layered with everything we’re not saying.
He clears his throat. “Look, I didn’t know it was you. If I’d known—”
“What?” I cut in. “You would have requested a different room? Transferred buildings? Dropped out entirely to avoid the horror of being near me?”
His eyes flash. For a fraction of a second, I see the boy from home. The one who used to argue with teachers and make group projects bearable. The one who sat next to me in Chemistry and passed dumb doodles when class dragged.
Except that boy also knew when to shut up. This one looks like he’s swallowed a storm.
“Maya,” he says slowly, “that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” I swing my backpack onto the desk, knocking over a stack of his notebooks by accident. Whatever. “Because from where I’m standing, you didn’t want to be associated with me at all back then.”
He bends down, gathers his notebooks, and sets them aside. When he straightens, he’s closer than I realized. Too close. The air between us feels charged, like the moment before lightning.
He doesn’t answer my question.
Instead, he says, “You cut your hair.”
Of all the things I expected him to say, that wasn’t on the list.
I reach up automatically, fingers brushing the ends just above my shoulders. Back home my hair was long, halfway down my back—another thing people loved to comment on.
“Yeah. People change,” I say. “Or did you not get that memo while you were busy staying quiet?”
There it is. The flicker of hurt in his eyes. If I didn’t know better—if I could forget the months of whispers and side-eyes, the way even teachers looked at me like I was something broken—maybe that look would soften me.
But I do know better.
“I didn’t stay quiet,” he says, voice tighter now. “You just didn’t hear me.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was there a secret press conference you held that I forgot to attend? Where you publicly told everyone at High that the rumor was a lie?”
His silence is answer enough.
Exactly.
“That’s what I thought,” I mutter, turning away.
I start unpacking, mostly so I have an excuse not to look at him. I line up my three favorite notebooks on the desk. Set my pencil case on top. Pull out the small photo I always take with me—a shot of me and my mom in front of the River, taken before everything went sideways. Her smile is half-hidden behind her windblown hair. Mine used to match it.
I tape the photo to the wall above my desk.
Blake watches me. I can feel it like a weight on the back of my neck.
“You still have that picture,” he says quietly.
I stare at the wall. “You don’t get to comment on my life, .”
He flinches at the use of his last name like it’s a slap.
“Okay,” he says. “Fine. Then I’m just going to say one thing and you can keep hating me if you want.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say automatically.
He gives a humorless laugh. “Could’ve fooled me.”
My hands still on the zipper of my suitcase.
He takes a breath. “I didn’t start the rumor, Maya.”
I close my eyes.
Here we go.
“Sure,” I say, turning to face him again. “It just magically appeared everywhere with your name attached to it. You expect me to believe you had nothing to do with it?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “I expect you to at least consider the possibility that you don’t know the whole story.”
The worst part is that he’s standing there with that same stupid determined look he used to get before a game, like he actually believes what he’s saying.
“Why would I believe that?” I ask. “Why now?”
“Because we’re stuck together,” he says simply. “Because you’re going to see things you weren’t supposed to see. Hear things you weren’t supposed to hear. And when you do…” He swallows. “You’re going to realize I wasn’t the one you should’ve been afraid of.”
A tiny shiver runs down my spine.
I hate that his words get to me. I hate that a part of me, the part that remembers late-night group chats and shared jokes and him offering me his sweatshirt when I forgot mine, wants to ask a thousand questions.
Instead, I cross my arms. “You had a year and a half to say something. You waited until we were forced into the same room?”
“I did say something,” he insists. “Just not to you.”
“Wow,” I say. “That makes everything so much better.”
He exhales hard, running his hand through his hair again.
Before either of us can add another layer of gasoline to the fire, a voice booms from the hallway. “Ashwood Hall! Mandatory floor meeting in ten minutes! Let’s go, Wolves!”
There’s a chorus of groans and laughter outside.
I grab my student ID from my bag and slip it into my pocket. Blake picks up his keys from the bedside table.
We stand there for a moment in the cramped space between our beds. It feels like being trapped in a memory and a nightmare at the same time.
“Look,” he says, quieter now. “I know you don’t trust me. I can’t blame you for that. But this—” he gestures between us, this tiny room, this whole mess “—is our reality for now. So maybe… we can at least not kill each other in the first week?”
I stare at him.
Part of me wants to say absolutely not, pack my suitcase, and go pitch a tent on the quad. Another part—the worn-out, bone-deep tired part—knows I came here to stop running.
“Fine,” I say finally. “Truce.”
His shoulders drop, just a little. “Truce,” he repeats.
“But,” I add, holding up a finger, “you sleep on your side, I sleep on mine. You don’t touch my stuff. You don’t talk about my past. You don’t mention High. You don’t bring up the rumor. You don’t… you don’t act like we were ever friends.”
Something flickers in his eyes at that last part, but he nods.
“Got it,” he says. “Roommate rules. Anything else, ?”
“Yeah.” I pull my ponytail tighter, like armor. “Don’t call me Maya unless you absolutely have to.”
He studies me for a second, then says, “You know that’s not going to last.”
I frown. “What?”
“This thing where you pretend we were strangers,” he says. “We weren’t. And pretending won’t make the past disappear.”
I open my mouth to snap back, but a shrill beeping interrupts us—the fire alarm, blaring through the hallway and then our room.
I jump. “What the—”
Blake curses softly. “They always test it move-in day. C’mon. We have to go outside.”
He heads for the door and holds it open. I hesitate, then grab my phone and follow him into the crowded hallway. People spill out of rooms, some laughing, some covering their ears.
The noise is overwhelming. The lights above the exits flash.
As we join the stream of students heading for the stairwell, someone bumps my shoulder. “Sorry!” a blond girl chirps. She glances between me and Blake, eyebrow lifting slightly. “You two roommates?”
“Unfortunately,” I mutter.
Blake huffs a breath that might be a laugh.
We step onto the staircase, bodies pressed close in the crush of people. Our arms brush once, accidental and brief. It sends a little spark through me I absolutely refuse to acknowledge.
Outside, the late afternoon sun paints the quad in warm gold. Students scatter across the grass, some immediately taking selfies with the flashing building in the background.
I find a patch of shade under a skinny tree and stand there, arms wrapped around myself. Blake hovers a few feet away, hands shoved in his pockets, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed near me.
We don’t talk.
But I catch him looking at me once, then away, like he’s checking to make sure I’m still there. Still real.
I hate that I notice.
I hate that a tiny part of me feels… safer with him standing within reach.
The fire alarm finally cuts off. An RA yells something about “false alarm, welcome to Ashwood, don’t cook ramen without water,” and everyone laughs.
We walk back inside with the crowd.
At the door to Room 4B, I hesitate again.
Blake notices. “You okay?” he asks.
I shoot him a look. “Do you actually care or is that just roommate small talk?”
His jaw tenses. “I care,” he says simply.
I don’t have an answer for that, so I unlock the door and go inside.
The room feels different now. Smaller, somehow. Our stuff takes up the same space as before, but it’s like the air knows there’s history here.
I drop onto my bed and stare at the ceiling.
Blake closes the door gently behind him.
“Maya,” he says.
I don’t look at him. “I told you not—”
“I know,” he says. “Last thing, I promise. For today.”
There’s a rustle of paper. I glance over despite myself.
He’s holding something in his hand. A folded, creased flyer. My stomach twists when I recognize the school colors printed on the front.
High.
He swallows. “Whatever you think you know about what happened… someone wanted you to believe it. And they used me to do it.”
My fingers curl into the blanket. “What does that even mean?”
He meets my eyes.
“It means,” he says, voice low and steady, “that if you stay here, in this room, long enough… you’re going to find out who really did this to you.”
My heart stutters.
“And if I don’t want to know?” I ask.
He hesitates. “Then you picked the wrong dorm, .”
He drops the flyer on his bedside table, like a secret dropped between us, and turns away to finish making his bed.
I stare at the ceiling, listening to the rustle of sheets and the pounding of my own heart.
New city. New school. New life.
Same ghost.
And unfortunately for me, he sleeps six feet away.
