Valentine’s Day should have been harmless. Hearts on doors, roses in lecture halls, and campus-wide delivery notes written like jokes. Then Jamie hears her name in a crowded hallway and sees the paper roses. CJ did not message her. He paid for witnesses.

Two voices behind Jamie are low, casual, almost bored. “Apparently it was from CJ.” The name lands like a stone. Not a random admirer. Someone with reach, someone who “runs half the group chats,” someone who has turned rumors into narrative before.

Midnight at Hawthorne was supposed to mean answers. Instead, Jamie found Mara waiting in the snow, eyes sharp and certain, as if she had been holding her breath for this moment. The message had not been a dare. It had been a leash.