52. Malachi
Chapter 52
Malachi
The grass is slightly damp where I’m sitting, but I don’t care. The air is crisp, the kind that bites just enough to keep me awake, and I need to stay awake. I have three books to get through before the test in three weeks, and if I don’t start cramming now, I’ll be fucked.
I shift slightly, stretching my legs out in front of me, my notebook balanced on my lap as I scribble down notes. A highlighter is tucked between my fingers, ready to attack the next passage that might be important, and my pen is already running dangerously low on ink.
Around me, students filter out of the lecture hall in groups, talking about weekend plans, upcoming assignments, and all the shit that’s supposed to make up a normal college experience. I don’t pay much attention. I’m used to being on the outside of conversations, used to existing in my own little world. It’s easier that way.
As I flip to the next chapter, I hear footsteps approaching from the side, stopping just a few feet away. I glance up, already expecting to see Aiden, and I’m right.
He nods toward me. “You’re actually touchin’ grass. Impressive.”
I smirk, shutting my notebook for a second. “Shocking, I know.”
He tilts his head slightly, his sharp green eyes scanning my setup. “Three books at once? Overkill.”
I shrug. “Test in three weeks. I like being prepared.”
He hums in amusement, shifting his weight onto one foot. “I won’t be at the dorm tonight,” he says after a pause. “So you’ll have some peace and quiet.”
That makes me chuckle. “You say that like your guitar playin’ actually bothers me.”
One of his rare smiles tugs at the corner of his lips. It’s faint, barely there, but it’s real. “You’re the only one who doesn’t complain about it.”
“It’s better than whatever the hell the cunts in the next dorm over blast at two in the mornin’,” I reply dryly.
He lets out a low chuckle before nodding once. “See you later, Dawson.”
“Later,” I say, watching as he turns and walks off, disappearing into the shifting tide of students.
I stare after him for a moment before shaking my head and returning to my book. Aiden is… an odd one. He doesn’t talk much and doesn’t try to befriend me, but he doesn’t avoid me either.
I get back to work, forcing myself to focus. My pen scratches against the paper, my highlighter glides across another line, and my brain filters through information, sorting what matters from what doesn’t.
The world fades into the background, nothing but ink and paper and the steady rhythm of my thoughts, until I hear it.
A voice.
A voice I know too fucking well.
A voice I haven’t heard in five months.
“Babyface.”
My entire body locks up.
The pen slips from my fingers, rolling down the notebook before landing in the grass. My lungs seize, my stomach twists, and for a split second, I swear the ground beneath me tilts.
No.
No, it’s not real. It can’t be real.
I close my eyes, gripping my knee, forcing myself to breathe. I tell myself I’m imagining it, that my brain is playing tricks on me, that there’s no fucking way—
“Malachi.”
The sound of my name in his voice shreds through me like a goddamn blade.
Slowly— so fucking slowly —I turn my head, and there he is.
Connor Cunningham.
Standing a few feet away, hands in his pockets, his green eyes locked onto me like I might fucking disappear if he blinks.
I can’t breathe.
He looks… different. Still cocky, still sharp-edged and reckless, but there’s something else now, something heavier sitting in his gaze, something dark lingering in the way he carries himself.
His blond hair is shorter than before, the sides shaved cleaner, the top still long enough to run his hands through when he’s frustrated. The tattoos on his arms peek out from under the rolled-up sleeves of his black Henley, the ink still so familiar, like something burned into the back of my mind.
But his eyes— fuck, his eyes.
I don’t realize I’m gripping my notebook too tightly until the pages crumple beneath my fingers.
“What are you doing here?” I finally manage, my voice too flat, too empty to hide the storm raging inside me.
Connor exhales through his nose, shifting slightly, his boots scuffing against the pavement. “Came to see you.”
I let out a short, humorless laugh, shaking my head. “Yeah? Bit late for that, don’t you think?”
Something flickers across his face, too quick for me to catch, but I don’t care. I won’t let myself care. He steps closer, so I stand immediately, my body tensed like I might have to run, even though I know he’d never fucking hurt me.
Still, the distance is necessary.
“Malachi,” he says again, softer now, like he’s trying to read me and figure out how bad the damage is.
I don’t let him.
I force myself to smirk, tilting my head. “What, did you finally get bored of playin’ soldier? Thought you’d drop in, see how your little pet is doing?”
His jaw flexes. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I arch a brow. “Don’t act like I don’t give a shit? Because I don’t. You left, Connor. I moved on. That’s what happens.”
His eyes darken. “You’re the one who left me, Malachi.”
The words punch the air from my lungs, but I scoff, crossing my arms over my chest. “No. I left a fuckin’ cage.”
His fists clench at his sides, his breathing uneven. “I didn’t want that for you.”
“Then what did you want?” I snap. “Because you sure as hell didn’t give me a fuckin’ choice. You locked me up, gave me a ring, told me I was yours, and then fucked off for five goddamn months without a word.”
He flinches. Actually fucking flinches.
I shake my head, trying to shove down the lump rising in my throat. “You don’t get to show up now and act like this is some grand fuckin’ reunion. You don’t get to say my name like it still means somethin’.”
His chest rises and falls too fast, his lips parting like he wants to argue, wants to fight, wants to fucking fix something that can’t be fixed.
I step back and his entire body tightens. I don’t know what I expect him to do. Maybe argue. Maybe smirk, throw out some arrogant line, or try to get under my skin like he always does.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he does something worse… he looks wrecked.
Like he’s barely breathing.
Like he’s spent five months drowning.
Like I just drove a fucking knife through his ribs.
“Malachi,” he murmurs again, voice strained. “Please—”
“No, Connor,” I say, my fingers tightening around my books. “You should go.”
His jaw flexes and his throat bobs as he swallows. “Not until you hear me out.”
“I already heard you.” I force myself to hold his gaze, not to waver. “You made your choice, Connor. You left,” I say and I turn sharply, stepping past him.
But his voice follows me. “Malachi, don’t.”
I keep my steps even, my grip tight on my books, my breaths measured. One foot in front of the other. Don’t look back.
I can feel him watching me.
The weight of his stare is heavy against my back, like a thread pulling taut, stretched so tight it might snap at any second. But I don’t turn around. I don’t let myself. My heart is already hammering against my ribs, my skin too hot, my thoughts a fucking mess.
He’s here.
At Willow Bridge.
Wearing my fucking ring on his finger.
I should have known if he was here, should have heard something about it, but I didn’t. I spent months trying to put him behind me, convincing myself that what we had—whatever the fuck it was—was over. That I could start fresh. That I could be someone other than the boy locked in a gilded cage, waiting for a man who only ever left.
I swallow hard, trying to push past the knot in my throat, trying to focus on anything but the way my body is still wired from hearing his voice again after five months.
The campus is busy this time of day—students spilling out of buildings, cutting across the lawn, laughing, talking, existing in a world that doesn’t involve Irish mafia heirs tracking them down after they spent months trying to disappear.
I move toward the library, keeping my head down, but snippets of a conversation float past me.
“Did you see him?”
“I knew they’d come back eventually—”
“Oh my god, Connor Cunningham is here. That means the others must be back too—”
I slow my pace slightly, frowning. My pulse is already fucked from my run-in with Connor, but now something uneasy curls in my stomach.
“They’re so hot, I swear—”
“And terrifying.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t mind being terrified if it meant getting wrecked by one of them.”
A chorus of giggles follows that, and I roll my eyes, shifting my books in my arms as I finally glance over at the group of girls sitting on one of the stone benches near the path. They’re scrolling through their phones, whispering in that excited, gossipy way that means nothing to me.
I almost keep walking. I should keep walking. But something about the way they said his name—about the way they reacted like his presence here meant something—sticks in my brain.
I hesitate for half a second before stepping closer. “Hey.”
They glance up at me, their laughter cutting off as they take me in. I’m used to that—people looking at me like I don’t fit here. The oversized sweater, the dark jeans, the hair that still falls into my eyes no matter how many times I push it back—it all screams outsider in a place like this.
One of the girls, blonde with perfectly glossed lips, tilts her head. “Uh… hey?”
I shift my books in my grip, clearing my throat. “What were you saying about Connor Cunningham?”
They exchange looks, their brows furrowing slightly. The blonde speaks again. “That he’s back?”
I nod once, biting the inside of my cheek. “And… that means somethin’?”
They stare at me like I just asked if the sky is blue.
One of the others, a brunette with cat-like eyes, blinks. “Are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m jokin’?” I roll my eyes, already regretting this conversation.
Her lips part slightly, like she’s still computing the fact that I exist. “You don’t know what he is?”
“Clearly not.”
A moment of silence, then the blonde leans forward slightly. “What about The Five Crowns?”
I shake my head, frowning. “What the fuck is that?”
They exchange looks again, this time tinged with disbelief. Then a third girl, dark-skinned and gorgeous, sits up straighter, eyeing me like I might be fucking with them. “How do you go to Willow Bridge and not know who they are?”
I breathe out a sigh, because fucking hell. “I haven’t been here long.”
The blonde cocks her head like she’s trying to figure out whether I’m worth explaining this to, before sighing and flipping her hair over her shoulder. “The Five Crowns are it ,” she says. “The heirs to five of the biggest criminal families in the world. They run this school. No one touches them, no one crosses them, and if they do, they either disappear or regret it fast.”
“Disciplinary hearings mean nothing to them,” the brunette adds. “Professors don’t even look at them the wrong way. They could kill someone on campus, and it would be covered up before the body hit the ground.”
My blood runs cold and I feel like I’ve been punched in the ribs.
Connor isn’t just the son of a small-time mob boss. He isn’t just the shameless, cocky bastard who kissed me like he owned me, who left me aching for something I never should have wanted.
He’s going to inherit an empire.
I spent months thinking about him, months replaying every word, every look, every fucking touch like a sick addiction I couldn’t shake. And the whole time, I thought I knew him. But I didn’t know this.
I barely register the girls still talking, still whispering about how they knew the Crowns would come back eventually, how Connor looked even hotter than before, how he’s probably already got girls lining up for a chance to be in his bed.
My jaw clenches.
Fuck this.
I spin on my heel, pushing through the crowd, my thoughts a fucking hurricane.
I don’t stop moving until I reach the edge of campus, where the trees thicken, where the voices fade, where I can breathe without feeling like my entire fucking world is tilting.
I lean back against a tree, my hands trembling slightly as I drag them through my hair.
Connor Cunningham. The heir to an empire that reaches further than I ever could have imagined.
And yet…
And yet.
He still looked at me like I held all the power over him. Like I was the one who could destroy him. The realization is unsettling.
I exhale slowly, pressing my fingers to my temples, trying to make sense of this. Trying to process, but the only thing my mind keeps circling back to is the way his face looked when I walked away.
Like I had already done the worst thing imaginable to him. Like leaving was the one wound he didn’t know how to recover from.
I let out a shaky breath, my heart pounding too fast.
If he thinks he can just show up and slide back into my life, he’s wrong. I don’t care how much power he has. I don’t care that people flinch at his name, that professors bend over backward for him, that the entire fucking school treats him and his friends like they’re untouchable.
I left for a reason and I won’t be pulled back in.
Well, fuck… at least I’ll try.