The alarm blared at 6:00 a.m.
Tara groaned, half-buried under her blanket, reaching blindly for her phone. But her nightstand was empty. No phone. No alarm clock. No mercy.
The sound kept ringing, loud, shrill, and echoing. She jolted upright, disoriented, hair sticking up like a terrified porcupine.
That was when she realized the noise wasn't coming from her side of the room.
It was coming from his.
Liam Kingsley lay sprawled on his bed, shirtless, arm behind his head like he was posing for some absurd sleepwear ad. The source of the alarm, his phone, sat on his desk, blasting some obnoxious EDM track that could wake the dead.
He didn't even flinch.
"Are you kidding me?" Tara snapped, tossing her blanket aside and stomping toward him. "Turn it off!"
He didn't move.
She nudged his shoulder. "Liam!"
Nothing.
Tara glanced around, spotted his phone, and grabbed it. She fumbled through the touchscreen, trying to silence it, but he'd somehow set a password.
And then, just as she was about to throw the thing against the wall, his lips twitched.
"You're not very patient in the morning, are you?" he said lazily, cracking one eye open.
Tara froze. He was awake. The whole time.
"You" she sputtered, eyes wide. "You pretended to be asleep?"
He stretched slowly, grinning like a cat that just knocked over the family heirloom. "I like to observe the chaos I cause."
"Oh, you absolute"
She didn't finish. She stormed into the kitchenette, grabbed the first thing she could find, a glass of water, and dumped it right on his smirking face.
The look of sheer disbelief was chef's kiss.
Liam sat up, dripping, blinking water from his lashes. "Did you just"
"Yes," Tara said flatly, setting the empty glass down. "Welcome to morning."
For a full second, silence. Then, to her horror, he smiled wider.
"Oh, it's on now."
By the time Tara returned from her first lecture, something felt… off.
Her room looked exactly the same. Too much the same.
She squinted. "What did you do?"
Liam, lounging on the couch with his laptop, looked up innocently. "Do?"
"Yes. You have that face."
"What face?"
"The one that says, 'I've done something that will ruin your life in three… two… one.'"
He chuckled. "You're paranoid."
But when she sat down to take off her sneakers, she screamed.
Her shoes squelched.
"Toothpaste?" she gasped, staring at the foamy mess bubbling from the inside. "You filled my shoes with toothpaste?"
Liam tried to suppress his grin and failed. "You dumped water on me."
"That was justice!"
"This," he said, leaning back smugly, "is balance."
She glared daggers at him. "You started a war you can't win."
"Oh, sweetheart," he said smoothly, "I was born to win."
That night, while he was in the shower, Tara went to work.
She tiptoed across the living room, grabbed his phone charger, and swapped it with the broken one she'd kept from last semester.
Then she set three alarms on his phone, 2:00 a.m., 2:05 a.m., and 2:10 a.m. and hid it under his bed.
She smiled to herself. "Balance."
2:00 a.m.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Liam shot up in confusion, hair sticking out, eyes bloodshot. He scrambled around in the dark, bumping his knee on the nightstand.
"Where the hell"
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
"is that sound coming from?!"
Tara, lying on her side, pretended to snore.
By the third alarm, he'd found his phone and glared across the room at her motionless form. "You're evil."
"Balance," she mumbled into her pillow.
She looked too peaceful when she slept.
That was the first thing he noticed.
Tara Reyes, destroyer of chargers, queen of toothpaste vengeance, had her hair fanned out over her pillow, one arm draped lazily across her stomach. She was snoring softly, lightly, like the hum of a secret.
He hated that he found it cute.
Liam groaned and leaned back against the headboard, rubbing his temple. This wasn't supposed to be complicated. She was just… a roommate. A frustrating, stubborn, rule-obsessed scholarship girl who treated him like he was public enemy number one.
And yet, he hadn't laughed this much in months.
He caught himself smiling and scowled immediately. "Get it together, Kingsley."
He grabbed his phone, ready to scroll through his messages, and froze. His battery was at 2%.
He plugged it in. Nothing.
The charger light didn't blink.
"Oh, she did not."
When Tara came out of the bathroom that morning, dressed and ready for class, she found Liam staring at his phone cable like it had committed treason.
"You switched my charger," he accused.
She gasped dramatically. "Did I?"
"You think you're clever?"
"I am clever."
He leaned closer, lowering his voice. "Then let's see how clever you are when you can't find your favorite hoodie."
Her eyes narrowed. "You didn't."
He smirked. "Check your closet."
She turned, yanked the doors open, and froze.
Her hoodie was hanging from the ceiling fan, spinning slowly like a taunt from the gods.
"Liam!"
He burst out laughing, unapologetic.
The prank war escalated.
Tara filled his shampoo bottle with blue food coloring. He retaliated by setting her phone language to Mandarin.
She sprinkled salt into his coffee. He replaced her sugar with flour.
The entire dorm began placing bets. Team Tara. Team Liam.
Even their neighbor, Maya, peeked in one evening with popcorn. "You guys are insane. Please don't burn the building down."
"We won't," Tara said sweetly, glaring at Liam. "Unless provoked."
"Oh, I provoke easily," he said, equally sweet.
He'd never met anyone like her.
Most people tiptoed around him "Kingsley" carried weight on campus. But Tara? She didn't care. She challenged him, matched him, outwitted him.
It was infuriating. Addictive.
Last night he'd found himself rewatching the moment she'd called him an "arrogant peacock with Wi-Fi" he didn't even know why that replayed in his mind, but it did.
She was getting under his skin.
It started with harmless payback.
Tara swapped his laundry detergent with body glitter.
When Liam pulled his freshly washed black T-shirt from the dryer, it shimmered like a disco ball.
He stormed into the living room. "Are you insane?!"
"Why?" she said innocently. "You sparkle now. Very Twilight chic."
"That's it."
That's when he planned revenge of the century.
He hacked the dorm sound system (because of course he could) and scheduled a 6:30 a.m. broadcast:
Tara's voice recordings from a study session, where she'd been muttering French conjugations under her breath.
The next morning, the entire floor woke up to:
"Je suis fatiguée… je déteste les mathématiques… Liam Kingsley est un idiot…"
Her blood froze when she heard her own voice echoing through the hall.
By the time she ran out of her room, people were laughing. "Tara, that's your voice?"
She looked down the corridor, and there he was, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, grinning like the devil himself.
"You"
"Balance," he said.
She stomped up to him, cheeks flushed red with fury (and a little embarrassment). "You humiliated me!"
He leaned closer, smirk fading. "You humiliated me first."
"You filled my shoes with toothpaste!"
"You dumped water on me!"
They were inches apart now. Breathing hard. Glaring.
And then something shifted, heat, confusion, silence.
Tara's heart skipped. His gaze flicked down to her lips before he looked away sharply.
He stepped back. "Truce?"
She blinked. "What?"
"Temporary. I need to not get expelled this week."
"Fine," she said, crossing her arms. "Truce. But you still owe me."
He smirked. "Oh, I'll pay you back. Just not how you expect."
She frowned. "What's that supposed to"
But he was already walking away, leaving her staring after him with her pulse doing backflips.
Tara lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
For the first time, the room felt… weirdly quiet.
No alarms. No toothpaste. No smug grin across the room.
Just stillness.
She glanced toward his bed. Liam was reading something on his tablet, the blue light painting his face in shadows.
She studied him for a moment his focus, the faint crease between his brows. He looked… human.
When he caught her looking, she turned away quickly, pretending to check her phone.
He chuckled softly. "What? No new prank tonight?"
She exhaled through her nose. "No. Truce, remember?"
"Right."
A pause.
Then, unexpectedly, he said, "You're not bad company, Reyes."
Her heart stuttered. She masked it with sarcasm. "You say that like it's a compliment."
"Maybe it is."
She didn't answer. She just turned off her lamp and whispered into the dark,
"Balance."
From the other side of the room came his low reply, amused and soft:
"Balance."