Calculated Risk (Thornhill University #4)

Chapter 1

Marcus

I'm in the middle of mediating a dispute between two business students when my phone buzzes for the third time in five minutes.

I silence it without looking. Sebastian taught me never let people see that something else has your attention. It suggests their problem isn't your priority. If I’m honest sometimes I don’t care about their problems.

"So what you're saying-" I address Jason, "-is that you deserve the treasurer position because you have the highest GPA. And you—" I turn to Michelle, "—believe experience matters more than grades."

"Exactly," they say in unison.

This conversation has been going on for so long now that I want to walk away from them both. We’re going around in circles, and I’m getting a headache.

"Then here's what we do. Jason, you become treasurer with Michelle as your deputy.

You handle the books, she handles vendor relationships and event budgets.

You both get what you want, and the fraternity gets the benefit of both skill sets.

" This is the only other thing I can think of to make them both work together and stop annoying me.

They look at each other, considering my idea.

"That works," Michelle says finally.

"Yeah, okay." Jason nods. "That's fair." Now Jason doesn't sound one hundred percent on board with it, but they shake hands and leave my study room, crisis averted. I make a note in my planner: Business Frat - Treasurer resolved. Follow up in 2 weeks.

Because I know I will have to follow it up, I’m about ninety percent sure they will kill each other if I leave it any longer than that. But if one of them phones me complaining about the other then I will have to step in sooner.

My phone buzzes again. Four times now. Who the hell is calling me so much?

I finally check it. Three texts from Isla, one from Carter.

Isla: Marcus, I need your help. It's urgent.

Isla: Please. I know you're busy but this is important.

Isla: It's about Lilah. She's in trouble.

Carter: Yo, Rivera's asking about your matchmaking services. I want to know if you can set him up with someone on the women's soccer team. Thoughts?

I respond to Carter first. Tell Rivera I'm not a dating service. Also, half the women's soccer team would eat him alive.

Carter: Fair. But you DO matchmake. You got like a 90% success rate.

Me: That's different. I give advice. I don't arrange dates like some Victorian marriage broker.

Carter: Semantics.

I switch to Isla's messages. My thumb hovers over the keyboard.

It's about Lilah. Is the only thing I can think about.

Delilah Rodriguez. The one person on this campus I actively avoid. The one problem I've refused to solve for three years. The one girl who makes me feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff with no safety rope.

I don't do cliffs. I do calculated risks, carefully planned outcomes, and controlled variables.

Lilah is the opposite of all of that.

Me: What kind of trouble?

Isla: Can you meet me at the art gallery? Now?

I check my schedule. I have office hours in thirty minutes, then a Legacy Council meeting at four, then I'm supposed to help Ethan revise his grad school applications.

But one thing I’ve learned from Isla, is she doesn't ask for help unless it's serious.

Me: On my way.

The campus art gallery is in the Winters Building, a converted mansion that houses the art department. I've been here exactly once, freshman year, for a required university culture event.

It made me uncomfortable, so I never went back there. All that art, all those feelings on display, that’s not my type of thing. Give me a spreadsheet any day.

Isla meets me at the entrance. She's with Sebastian, which means this is serious enough that she called in backup. Which also means she knows there is a chance I’m going to say no to whatever they are about to ask me.

There’s a complexity to this moment that I can’t quite name. Something about the way past and present collide, the way carefully maintained boundaries start to blur when you least expect it.

"Thanks for coming." She leads me inside quickly. "It's bad, Marcus."

"What happened?" I ask looking at them both. I’ve known Sebastain long enough to know he wouldn’t have just called me for nothing.

"Lilah's senior thesis show. Someone destroyed it."

We walk through the gallery. I've never paid attention to Lilah's work, that would require paying attention to Lilah, which I've been carefully not doing, but even I can see the devastation.

I’m hyperaware of my body in space, of the distance between us, of every small movement and what it might signify. It’s exhausting, this constant monitoring, but it’s also become second nature.

Paintings slashed. Sculptures broken. An installation that looks like it was ripped apart deliberately. Paint splattered across the walls and in the middle of it all, sitting on the floor surrounded by destroyed art, is Lilah Rodriguez.

She's wearing paint-stained overalls over a black tank top. Her dark hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun. Her face is streaked with tears and what looks like charcoal.

She's the most beautiful disaster I've ever seen.

And I hate that I notice.

"Fuck," I say quietly.

"Yeah." Sebastian crosses his arms. "The gallery director called campus security. They're treating it as vandalism, but whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing. This is personal, no other piece was touched."

With all the art work in here, they would have to know which pieces were hers, there is no way this is by chance.

"When did it happen?"

"Last night, sometime between eleven when Lilah left and seven this morning when she came back." Isla crouches next to Lilah. "Security footage was wiped. No witnesses. Nothing."

Lilah finally looks up. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her expression somewhere between devastated and furious.

When she sees me, something flickers across her face. Recognition. Then something else I can't identify, but the tone which comes is not friendly.

"What's he doing here?" Her voice is hoarse. Well that wasn’t the words I was expecting from her.

"Marcus helps people," Isla says gently. "He's good at solving problems—"

"I don't need him." Lilah stands abruptly. "I don't need the great Marcus Chen swooping in to fix things with his perfect logic and his perfect plans."

"Lilah—" Isla tries to speak but is cut off, and I can’t stop smiling with how angry she is with me, for what? I have no idea.

"No. I'm serious. Everyone on this campus runs to Marcus when shit goes wrong. 'Oh, Marcus will know what to do. Marcus always has the answer.' Well, I don't want his help."

The details come into sharp focus in that hyperaware way that happens when emotions run high. The particular quality of the light. The ambient sounds that normally fade into background noise. The temperature of the air against my skin.

The venom in her voice surprises me. We've barely interacted in three years, I've made sure of that so what the fuck is up with the attitude?

"Your entire thesis was destroyed," I point out calmly. "Your senior show is in two weeks. You need help whether you want it or not." She wants to be bitchy with me and not tell me why, she won’t be getting the nice me.

"I need a lot of things. Your condescending problem-solving isn't one of them."

"Condescending—"

"Yes. Condescending. You swoop into everyone's drama like some kind of relationship therapist slash life coach slash campus savior, but you know what? Some of us don't want to be your charity project." She points her finger towards me. I glance over at Sebatian who is looking between us.

What the hell is going on here? My head is telling me to tell her to go to hell and walk away, but before I can speak Sebastian clears his throat. "Lilah, I don't think—"

"He's been avoiding me for three years." She's on a roll now, anger overriding her devastation. "Everyone else gets Marcus Chen's infinite wisdom and helpful suggestions. But me? He can barely look at me. So forgive me if I don't want his help now just because Isla called him."

She's right. I have been avoiding her for three very specific years. Because looking at Lilah Rodriguez makes me want things I can't control. Feel things I can't calculate. Risk things I can't afford to lose.

"You're right," I say evenly. "I've been avoiding you, but that doesn't change the fact that your work is destroyed and you need help."

"Why? Why do you care? You've made it clear you want nothing to do with me." I’m not sure if she’s angry with me for being the campus helpline, or for not giving her any of my time, or because her work is ruined. The way she’s just shouting at me without even thinking about what she’s saying is confusing me.

Because you scare me. Because you make me feel like I'm falling. Because every time I see you, I have to remind myself why getting close to you is a bad idea.

"Because Isla asked me to," I lie. "And because someone deliberately sabotaged your thesis. That's not just vandalism. That's targeted."

"You think I don't know that?" Her voice cracks. "This was everything. A year of work. Every piece in this show meant something. And someone -" She stops, taking a shaky breath. "Someone wanted to destroy it. To destroy me."

Isla puts an arm around her. "We're going to figure out who did this."

"How? The security footage is gone. There's no evidence and even if we find out who, it doesn't change the fact that I have two weeks to recreate an entire thesis show or I don't graduate."

"Can you recreate it?" Sebastian asks.

"I don't know. Maybe? Some of it. But not all of it. Some pieces took months. I'd need to work twenty-four hours a day and even then—" She laughs bitterly. "It's impossible."

"Nothing's impossible," I hear myself say. "Just improbable. And improbable things require planning."

"Oh my god." Lilah turns to face me fully. "Did you seriously just try to motivate-poster-quote me right now?"

I have to bite my inner cheek to stop myself from smiling at her reply, and how angry she looks at the moment.

"I'm saying there's a solution. We just need to find it."

"We. There is no we. I don't want your help, Marcus."

"Then you're going to fail. Is your pride worth your degree?" I ask her and the words come out harsher than I intended. Lilah flinches like I've slapped her.

"Fuck you," she says quietly. "You don't know anything about me or my life or what I'm willing to sacrifice. So take your calculated risk analysis and your perfect problem-solving skills and get the hell out of my gallery."

She walks away, disappearing into the back rooms. Isla shoots me a look that clearly says That could have gone better before following her.

Sebastian and I stand in the destroyed gallery.

"Well," he says after a moment. "That went about as badly as it could have."

"I'm not good at this. The emotional stuff." I never have, I’m not good with talking to girls when they’re emotional.

"No shit." He surveys the damage. "What aren't you telling me?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've been weird about Lilah since freshman year. Every time her name comes up, you change the subject. Every event where she might be there, you find an excuse to leave early and just now, you were trying so hard not to look at her that you might as well have been staring."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Marcus. I've known you since we were six. I know when you're lying." He turns to face me. "You like her."

"I don't—"

"You do and for some reason, that terrifies you enough that you've spent three years avoiding her rather than dealing with it."

He's right. Of course he's right. Sebastian's good at reading people when he actually pays attention.

"She's chaos," I say finally. "She's messy and emotional and impulsive. Everything I'm not."

"And that's bad because...?"

"Because I don't know how to navigate that. I solve problems with logic. She creates problems with feeling. We're fundamentally incompatible."

"Or," Sebastian suggests, "you're perfect for each other and you're just scared."

"I'm not scared. I'm realistic."

"Realistic is your word for scared." He heads toward the exit. "You're going to help her whether she wants it or not. Because you can't help yourself. You see a problem, you fix it and Lilah Rodriguez is the biggest problem you've ever encountered."

"She doesn't want my help."

"Then you'll have to be creative. Do the thing you do where you solve problems without people realizing you're solving them." He pauses at the door. "But Marcus? Eventually, you're going to have to admit why you're really helping her and it's not because Isla asked."

He leaves me alone in the gallery, surrounded by Lilah's destroyed art and my own carefully maintained denial.

I pull out my phone and start taking photos. Documenting the damage. Making lists of what can be salvaged, what needs to be recreated, what resources she'll need.

Already planning. Already calculating. Already solving a problem I wasn't asked to solve.

Because Sebastian's right about one thing, I can't help myself.

And Lilah Rodriguez is the one problem I've never been able to walk away from.

Even if she hates me for it.