Chapter 3
JAGGER
RAIN ON CAMPUS
Rain makes campus look honest.
The polished stone walkways turn slick and dark, the old brick buildings bleed rust-colored streaks down their sides, and all the pretty ivy choking the walls starts looking less romantic and more like something trying to drag the whole place into the ground.
Dead leaves stick to the steps outside the lecture halls in wet clumps, plastered flat under boots and sneakers, turning to brown mush every time someone steps on them.
Everything smells like wet concrete, burnt coffee, cigarette smoke, and rot under old trees.
I like it better this way.
On dry days, the university is too clean.
Too fucking proud of itself. Red brick, expensive glass, names carved into buildings by people who bought their way into being remembered. Professors with tweed coats and tired eyes. Students laughing too loud on the quad like none of them have ever done anything they’d deny under oath.
Rain shuts some of that bullshit up.
It makes people move faster. Heads down. Shoulders hunched. Umbrellas tilted low. Nobody looking too closely at anybody else because staying dry suddenly matters more than being seen.
Good.
I’ve always preferred moving through places unnoticed.
Which is ironic, considering half the student body knows my fight name.
Not that they say it to my face during the day.
At night, inside the warehouse, with cheap liquor in their blood and a cage between us, they’ll scream Wraith until their throats go raw.
They’ll press against chain-link and beg for violence like it’s something holy.
They’ll throw money on me, chant for me, look at me with flushed faces and glassy eyes like I’m giving them permission to want something ugly.
In daylight, they pretend not to know.
I don’t blame them.
Monsters are easier to love when the lights are low.
I step out of my last lecture ten minutes after everyone else, because the professor likes hearing himself talk and I made the mistake of sitting too far from the door.
Criminal psychology, ironically.
Apparently, I’m supposed to sit there and listen to a man in corduroy explain deviant behavior like he’s ever made a bad decision without citing three sources and asking his wife first.
The hallway outside is crowded with students shaking rain off jackets, complaining about the weather, and making plans they’ll change three times before committing to anything. Someone brushes against my shoulder, mutters sorry without looking up, and keeps walking.
My phone starts vibrating in my pocket before I even make it down the hall.
I pull it out just far enough to check the screen.
Johnny.
Of fucking course.
I stare at his name for half a second while irritation crawls hot under my ribs, then shove the phone back into my pocket without opening a single goddamn message.
He’s been doing this since the fight. Random texts. Bullshit comments. Little needles slid under my skin whenever he gets bored enough to start digging.
That’s the fucking problem with Johnny. He doesn’t need a reason to ruin your day. He just needs five minutes, a phone, and the emotional stability of a raccoon in a gas station dumpster.
The phone buzzes again against my thigh.
Then again.
I keep walking.
He’d love it if I checked. Love it more if I answered. Me reacting is the whole point, and I’m not giving him proof he found the right nerve.
Not today.
The rain is coming down harder by the time I step outside.
Cold drops hit the back of my neck and slide under my collar, and it immediately pisses me off more than it should.
I pull my hood up, shove my hands into my pockets, and head down the steps close to the building so the overhang takes some of the abuse.
I have no reason to go toward the visual arts building.
None.
My apartment is the other way. The gym is three blocks south. My bike is parked behind the business building because campus security gets lazy when it rains, and there’s a coffee place beside the library that only tastes like burnt shit if you order wrong.
So, no.
There is not one solid, rational, normal reason for me to cut across the old courtyard, past the chapel path, and toward a building full of people who think paint splatter and emotional damage count as a personality.
Except Alice Aster is visual arts.
Which is inconvenient.
Annoying as fuck.
And apparently enough to change where I’m going.
I know she’s visual arts because after the warehouse, I looked her up.
Obviously.
Not in a creepy way.
In a practical way.
A girl blinds me mid-fight, points a camera at me like she’s trying to piss me off on purpose, then says my name like she knows exactly what it did to me? Yeah, I’m going to find out who the fuck she is.
That’s not a fucking obsession. That’s common sense.
One search gives me her name, her department, and a few photo credits under campus articles nobody reads unless they have to.
There’s a group gallery from last semester too. Alice stands near the back, half-turned away from the camera, dark hair over one shoulder, mouth flat, eyes bored.
Except she doesn’t look bored.
She looks like she doesn’t want to be found.
Which is funny.
Because I found her anyway.
That should’ve been harder.
That’s what pisses me off most.
Alice doesn’t look like someone the world should get easy access to. She looks like something you have to earn. Something that should stay half-hidden behind a lens, behind black lace, that sharp little mouth and all the quiet she uses like a locked door.
But there she is.
Alice Aster.
Photography focus. Visual arts. A few clicks, and suddenly I know where to look.
Which is not the same as looking for her.
It’s not.
It means I know where she is, and maybe that’s a bullshit distinction, but it’s the one I’m using because the alternative makes me sound like I need professional help and a locked drawer for my phone.
The problem is Alice doesn’t feel like someone who should be that easy to find.
She feels like someone who keeps half of herself tucked away on purpose. A name under a photo credit. A face turned from the camera. A look thrown over her shoulder in bad lighting like she knows exactly how long it’ll stay in your head.
She gives just enough to make me curious, then acts like curiosity is my problem.
Maybe it fucking is.
Because I saw teeth under all that quiet, and now I can’t stop thinking about what it would take for her to show me.
Knowing her building doesn’t mean I’m looking for her.
It doesn’t mean I want to follow her.
It means I want to get there first.
That sounds better.
Cleaner.
Less like obsession and more like strategy.
A shadow near the arts building. Footsteps behind her in the rain. A flicker in the darkroom that makes her pause and think of me before she knows why.
Not Wraith.
Me.
Jagger.
I don’t want to scare her away. I want to scare her just enough that she learns fear tastes better when she stops running from it.
Enough that leaving stops feeling like the obvious choice and staying starts feeling like the mistake she wants to make anyway.
Then every safe place she has starts to rot around the edges.
And that’s when she’ll start looking for me inside them.
My steps slow before I reach the courtyard.
I tell myself it’s because the path is slick.
Bullshit.
A cluster of students spills through the building doors, laughing under umbrellas, portfolios tucked under arms, coffee cups balanced badly in wet hands. I don’t look for her right away. I watch the crowd the way I watch a fight, waiting for the part that doesn’t match the rest.
Then she steps out.
Black umbrella. Camera bag on her shoulder.
Heavy boots splashing through shallow puddles like she doesn’t give a shit about getting mud on them.
Her hair is loose, dark and damp at the ends, curling slightly where the rain has caught it.
She’s wearing a long black coat over something lace at the throat, silver crosses tucked against her chest, rings flashing when she adjusts the strap of her bag.
Daylight softens her, but it fucking shouldn’t.
She looked right in the warehouse, swallowed by smoke and red light, camera lifted like a weapon she knew how to use. Out here, with rain dripping off her umbrella and students moving around her, she looks smaller.
Quieter.
Not safer, though.
That’s the problem.
Nothing about Alice Aster looks safe to me.
She pauses beneath the entrance awning and checks her phone, thumb moving over the screen. One earbud is tucked in, the other hanging loose, white cord stark against all that black. Her mouth presses into a line, almost annoyed, like whatever she’s reading is wasting her time.
She slips the phone into her pocket and starts walking, cutting left instead of following the crowd toward the main path. I move after her, keeping enough distance that it doesn’t look obvious to anyone who isn’t paying attention.
Alice is the type to pay attention.
I know that, but she still doesn’t turn around.
She stops at the coffee cart near the courtyard, orders without taking her earbud out, then shifts under the edge of her umbrella while some guy steps in beside her like he belongs there.
He’s tall and lanky, all sharp elbows and lazy posture, purple hair falling into his eyes, black liner smudged underneath them, baggy jeans hanging off his hips, and a skateboard tucked under one arm.
Alt boy. Skater type. The kind who looks like he spends half his life pretending not to care and the other half hoping someone notices how hard he’s pretending.
Alice notices him, and that’s bad enough.
Worse, she knows him.
He says something that makes her glance up from her phone, and his smile kicks wider like he just won something. He leans against the cart, too close, rain dripping from the ends of his hair while he looks down at her like she’s the only interesting thing on campus.
My teeth press together.
Fuck that.