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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐀𝐆𝐄 swam in front of my eyes.
I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, on the plush blanket I'd dragged down an hour ago. My back ached from hunching over my notes. Books were spread open in chaotic rings around me like the remnants of a ritual—calculus, physics, chemistry—interrupted only by my MacBook's blue screen glow and the faint hum of a forgotten kettle cooling in the corner. The tea I made had long gone cold. I didn't bother heating it again.
Tomorrow's exam was one of the biggest of the semester. I couldn't afford to fail—not that I would. But still. I wanted to annihilate it. Break the curve. Be the name everyone saw first when results came out.
So I stayed up. Mind wired, body weary. The hour was crawling toward 1 a.m., and everything inside me was screaming for sleep—but something kept me going. Not fear. I didn't do fear. It was... something else. That slow-burning obsession I'd carried with me since I was twelve and realized I liked the feeling of being the best.
But tonight, the thoughts weren't lining up the way they usually did. Every number I tried to solve scattered. Every formula on the page looked unfamiliar. Because despite the equations in front of me, my mind kept going somewhere else.
Rafe.
He was at a party tonight. Some rooftop thing a third-year was hosting. Booze. Blunts. Loud music. I didn't ask questions. He didn't give answers. He just left a few hours ago with a half-hearted "I won't be long," and a glance that was already distracted. And I hadn't heard from him since.
Not that I expected him to check in. That wasn't how we worked.
Still... it bugged me.
He never really went anywhere without me. That was kind of the point. Rafe liked control. Presence. Having me next to him wasn't about affection—it was about ownership. Statement. So what the hell was he doing there without me?
I sighed and scribbled an equation into my notebook, got halfway through solving it, then stopped. The numbers didn't even make sense. I dropped my pencil and leaned back on my palms, staring at the ceiling. I told myself I wasn't going to spiral. I wasn't some pathetic girl refreshing her phone for a text. I had better things to do. Bigger things.
Still...
My hand reached for my phone.
Just a glance. A scroll. Just to keep my mind from running wild.
I opened Instagram and tapped through the stories—most of them blurry party videos, identical people doing identical things. Then I landed on a post from the guy hosting the event. Javier something. A guy with too much money and zero restraint.
