Chapter 2

Lena

The bass from the Sigma Chi living room hit Lena Rodriguez in the chest before she even cleared the entryway. It was a physical force, rattling her ribcage and vibrating the floorboards beneath her feet.

Lena adjusted her leather jacket, checking the zipper. It was too hot in there for leather, but the jacket was a look. It signaled that she wasn’t there to be sweet, and she certainly wasn’t there to hold anyone’s hair back later that night.

“Jesus,” Maddy yelled over the noise, her voice cracking, “it’s packed.”

Lena wasn’t looking at her friend; she was busy scanning the room. It was the first Friday night of the semester, and the room smelled like frat boys: cheap body spray and spilled beer.

“It’s a frat house, Maddison,” Lena said, though she knew Maddy couldn’t hear her. “Packed is the point.”

Lena moved forward, her eyes narrowing as she surveyed the terrain. The living room had been stripped of anything breakable. What remained were heavy, abused leather couches pushed against the walls, and a makeshift DJ booth on a folding table draped in a plastic tablecloth. The lighting was a seizure-inducing mix of strobes and red gels taped over the recessed can lights.

She took a step and felt resistance. Her boot had stuck to the hardwood.

’Great.’

She looked down and saw that the floor was glazed with a mixture of reduced sugar and alcohol. A crumpled red Solo cup lay flattened near her toe, a casualty of the stampede. Lena lifted her foot with a wet peeling sound and navigated around a puddle of mysterious brown liquid.

“I’m getting a drink!” Maddy shouted, pointing toward the kitchen where a dense knot of bodies suggested a keg.

Lena waved her off.

“Good luck with the livestock.”

Maddy disappeared into the crush. Lena drifted to the side, claiming a spot near a bookshelf that was tragically empty of books and currently holding a collection of empty cans. She leaned back, crossed her arms, and let her face settle into a bored expression.

This was her favorite part, the observation phase.

To her left, a group of guys in pastel polos were shouting at each other and high-fiving with forceful aggression. They looked like they were trust-fund jerks with poor impulse control. To her right, three girls in identical tube tops were taking a selfie, their lips puckered in synchronized duck faces. They were unaware that the guy behind them was pouring beer onto the floor just to see it splash.

It was a performance; everyone here was acting. The freshmen were pretending they weren’t terrified, and the seniors were feigning boredom. The guys were fantasizing about being alpha predators, and the girls were imagining they didn’t know they were being hunted.

Lena watched a guy in a backward hat try to lean casually against a wall, miss the stud, and stumble. He recovered quickly, looking around to see if anyone had noticed.

Lena caught his eye and raised an eyebrow.

He flushed red and turned away.

’Too easy.’

She sighed, feeling the humidity of a hundred sweating bodies pressing against her skin. Lena needed amusement, real amusement, not just the schadenfreude of seeing newly minted college kids fail at social interaction.

She scanned the far side of the room.

That’s when the pattern broke.

Standing near the sliding glass door to the backyard, separated from the main herd by a few feet of buffer space, was a guy who didn’t fit.

He wasn’t shouting, wasn’t dancing, and wasn’t looking at his phone to avoid eye contact.

He was just standing there.

Lena straightened up, her interest piqued.

The guy was tall, broad-shouldered, taking up space without apologizing for it. He wore a blue Oxford shirt that looked crisp, almost too clean for this environment, but he hadn’t tucked it in; it hung over dark denim jeans.

But it was the boots that caught her eye.

They weren’t fashion boots, not the polished Timberlands the city kids wore to appear rugged. They were battered, dark leather work boots with thick soles, the kind of boots that had seen things nastier than a sticky fraternity floor.

He held a red cup in his right hand, but he wasn’t drinking from it. He held it loosely, like a tool he’d been handed and didn’t quite know where to store.

Lena watched him.

A girl with glitter on her cheeks bumped into him hard, spilling her drink down his arm.

Most guys in this room would have snapped or used it as an excuse to hit on her.

The guy didn’t flinch, just looked at his arm, then at the girl. He said something short, and the girl laughed, apologized, and stumbled away. He watched her go, his expression unreadable—not angry, not lecherous, just ... perplexed.

The guy stood with his weight evenly distributed, his feet shoulder-width apart, looking like a security guard who hadn’t been hired yet.

’Potentially safe,’ Lena thought, ’temporarily amusing.’

He wasn’t posturing; in a room full of peacocks, he was a rock. And Lena was currently adrift in a sea of noise; the idea of a rock was appealing.

She pushed off the bookshelf.

The journey across the room was a tactical operation. Usually, Lena moved fast, cutting through gaps before they closed, but this night, the density was too high, and she had to weave.