Vows In Leather•

I slam the manila folder down on the polished marble counter so hard the brass stamp cup rattles.

Dean Arthur Borden doesn’t even flinch. He just sits there in his tailored charcoal wool suit, looking over the rims of his gold wire glasses at my financial aid packet and stamped pre-law course schedule like they’re pieces of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

“I have the receipt, Dean Borden,” I snap, leaning both hands flat on the cold countertop. “Right there. Page three. Stamped by the registrar on August fourteenth. Paid in full via the Mitchell Valley Work-Study Grant and my state stipend. That means I have an assigned dorm room in Hawthorne Hall.”

Borden lets out a dry, rattling sigh that smells like peppermint lozenges and institutional boredom. He doesn’t touch my folder. He taps a single key on his desktop monitor instead.

“Miss Mitchell,” he says, voice like dry toast. “Hawthorne Hall is closed for emergency asbestos remediation. All displaced female residents were reassigned three weeks ago.”

“I didn’t get an email.”

“Because your initial intake file contained a clerical coding error.” He turns the monitor slightly toward me, pointing a manicured finger at the screen. “Your student profile was mistakenly tagged under varsity men’s athletics. You were automatically rostered for a bed in the varsity hockey wing at O’Callahan House.”

I stare at him. My brain stalls out. “I don’t play varsity hockey. I’m five-foot-four and I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds.”

“Which is why the O’Callahan proctor flagged the discrepancy this morning and canceled the placement,” Borden says, adjusting his cufflink with brutal indifference. “All female residential halls on this campus are currently at one hundred percent capacity. There are no available beds.”

The floor beneath my scuffed combat boots feels like it’s dropping into a bottomless pit. “Then give me a cot in an RA lounge. Give me a room in the library basement. I don’t care.”

“University housing regulations prohibit non-designated occupancy.” Borden closes the tab on his screen with a crisp click of his mouse. “You have forty-eight hours to secure verified off-campus housing within the municipal district, or your matriculation hold will trigger and forfeit your semester enrollment.”

“Forty-eight hours?” My voice cracks, sharp and furious. “The average rent in this town is three thousand dollars a month! I work twenty-five hours a week at a diner just to pay for my textbooks! Where the hell am I supposed to go?”

“That is an external matter, Miss Mitchell.” Borden reaches across the counter, slides my soggy folder back toward me, and looks right past my shoulder. “Next in line, please.”

The blood roaring in my ears is so loud I can’t hear the crowd shifting in the lobby. I snatch my folder off the counter, cramming the crumpled papers against my chest as I whip around on my heel.

I freeze.

Ten feet away, framed right beneath the massive gothic archway of Old Bailey Hall, two guys are standing like they own the entire building. Gable Prescott is leaning against the stone with his arms crossed over a navy fleece, smirking at his phone.

And next to him is Logan Kensington.

He’s six-foot-four of pure, lethal dynastic muscle. Dark blonde hair cut short, heavy stubble shadowing his sharp jaw, broad shoulders filling out a black wool coat that probably costs more than my mother’s diner makes in a quarter. He isn’t looking at his phone. He isn’t talking to Gable.

He’s looking straight at me.

His glacier-blue eyes are locked on my face, cold and dead-focused, tracking the wild dark curls escaping my hair clip and the furious tremble in my hands. He doesn't blink. He just watches me with this suffocating, terrifying stillness that makes every nerve in my skin go live.

I grit my teeth, hike my canvas tote over my shoulder, and march straight toward the exit.

Logan doesn’t step aside. He stays planted right in the center of the walkway, forcing me to either stop or brush his shoulder.

I stop two feet in front of him, chin jerking up. “You got a staring problem, Kensington, or is blocking hallway traffic just part of the trust-fund curriculum?”

Gable glances up from his phone, raising an eyebrow with an amused grin.

Logan doesn’t smile. He doesn’t move an inch. He just looks down at me, his gaze dropping to the white-knuckle grip I have on my papers, then rising back up to hold my eyes hostage.

“Forty-eight hours, Mitchell,” he says, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrates right through my chest.

My stomach twists into a violent knot. “Mind your own damn business.”

I deliberately shoulder past his arm, hitting his solid frame like a stone wall, and shove through the heavy oak double doors into the freezing Massachusetts air.

The drizzle hits me immediately, sharp and freezing, soaking right through my oversized thrifted knit sweater.

I tuck my head down and march across the stone pavers of the quad, my worn leather combat boots splashing through filthy puddles. The canvas duffel on my back feels like a bag of wet cement. My teeth are chattering, but the fury burning in my throat is so hot it feels like acid.

Forty-eight hours. Two days.

If I lose my enrollment, I lose my student visa waiver, my grant, and my shot at law school. I’ll be back in the rusted mill valley, scraping burnt grease off the diner flat-top for the next thirty years while my mother works herself into an early grave.

No. Not happening. I’ll sleep in my damn Civic first.

A low engine hum purrs behind me, slow and heavy.

I glance over my shoulder through wet curls. Crawling along the perimeter driveway twenty yards back is a massive, blacked-out SUV. Tinted windows, black rims, matte-finish paint.

It’s idling at barely five miles an hour, matching my exact walking pace across the quad.

I speed up. The tires crunch through the gravel behind me, accelerating just enough to keep the exact same distance.

“Creep,” I mutter under my breath, cutting sharply down the narrow brick alleyway between the science labs where vehicles can’t follow.

The engine revs once behind me, low and dark, before fading back toward the main boulevard.

By the time I hit the cracked neon sign of the Valley Diner on the edge of campus, my legs are numb from the wet cold.

I push open the glass door, the familiar bell jingling overhead as the warm smell of fryer oil, burnt coffee, and bleach hits me in the face.

“You’re late, Mitchell,” Sal, the short-order cook, grunts from behind the stainless pass, scraping grease off the flat-top with a metal spatula.

“Bursar had a line, Sal,” I say, my breath catching as I duck behind the counter.

I strip off my soaked knit sweater, shaking the rain from my arms before pulling a faded black diner apron over my head. My fingers are shaking so badly I can barely tie the strings around my waist. I grab my order pad, jam a ballpoint pen into my damp curls, and clock into the register for the graveyard shift.

During my first ten-minute break near the back dish pit, I pull my cracked phone from my pocket and hit play on a new voicemail.

“Remy, honey… it’s Mom.” Mary’s voice is tired, thin, and rattling with the background hum of the mill valley diner’s ancient exhaust fan. “Listen, don’t worry about sending anything back from this week’s tip envelope. The power company put a shutoff warning on the diner meter, but I spoke to Frank down at the municipal board and he gave us an extension until Friday. Just focus on your classes, okay? Don't stress about us. Love you, bug.”

The line clicks dead.

I press my forehead against the greasy stainless steel of the dish shelf, closing my eyes tight until red spots dance behind my eyelids.

The utility bill is six hundred bucks. My housing deposit is gone. I have forty-eight hours to pull a miracle out of thin air or watch everything collapse.

“Remy! Table four needs refills!” Sal barks from the front.

I scrub my hands over my face, inhale the burnt grease, and push through the swinging kitchen doors.

At 2:30 AM, the front bell chimes.

I don’t look up from wiping down the laminate countertop until a pair of heavy leather boots stops right in front of the cash register.

It’s Gable Prescott. He’s wearing a clean grey hoodie, looking completely awake and ridiculously out of place against the faded red vinyl booths.

“Black coffee to go, Mitchell,” he says, resting his forearms on the counter.

I narrow my eyes at him, grabbing a paper cup and filling it from the glass pot without a word. I snap the plastic lid down and slide it across the formica. “Two dollars and fifteen cents.”

Gable pulls a crisp fifty-dollar bill from his pocket and slaps it flat on the counter next to the cup.

“Keep the change,” he says with a slow, knowing smirk that sets my teeth on edge.

“I don’t need your charity, Prescott,” I snap, reaching to push the bill back.

Gable picks up his cup, already turning toward the door. “Not charity, Mitchell. It’s a tip. Drink some water. You look like shit.”

The door swings shut behind him, the bell chiming into the empty room. I stand there staring at the fifty-dollar bill, my chest heaving with sheer frustration before I shove the cash into my apron pocket.

By 4:00 AM, my shift is done, my bones ache, and my brain is a puddle of static.

I trudge down the cracked sidewalk toward the campus perimeter where the university maintenance shed holds a temporary folding cot I managed to beg from a night janitor. The fog hangs thick around the brick corners, freezing and silent.

I reach into my tote bag, digging through loose pens and folded briefs to fish out my rusted keyring.

A sudden shift in the darkness makes my breath catch in my throat.

Leaning against the damp brick corner of the alley, cloaked in shadow under the flickering amber streetlight, stands Logan Kensington.

He has his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his heavy coat, his massive frame motionless against the wall. The cold vapor of his breath drifts into the mist, his ice-blue eyes fixed entirely on me as I pull the keys from my bag.

He doesn’t say a word. He just watches me in the dead of the night, waiting.

My grip tightens on the jagged metal keys, my heart hammering against my ribs as I freeze on the pavement, caught dead in his crosshairs.