One week at Blackwell Imperial University, and I'd almost convinced myself I could survive this place.
Almost.
I stood in front of my closet—if you could call a metal cabinet barely wide enough for hangers a closet—debating between my two pairs of jeans that didn't have visible wear spots. First day of actual classes. First real test of whether I belonged here or if I was just a charity case playing dress-up in someone else's world.
"You're doing that thing again," Maya mumbled from her bed, one eye cracking open to peer at me through her mountain of curly hair.
"What thing?"
"That terrifyingly organized thing where you've been awake since six and I can hear you thinking from across the room." She pulled her pillow over her head. "It's unsettling."
I grabbed my backpack, checking for the third time that I had everything. Notebooks, pens, laptop, the reading assignments I'd already completed and annotated. "It's called being a scholarship student. We don't get do-overs."
"Mmph," came the muffled response. Then, barely audible: "Bring me coffee on your way back?"
"You're not even going to class for another two hours."
"Doesn't mean I won't need coffee."
I smiled despite my nerves. In a week, Maya had become the closest thing I had to a friend here. She was talented, funny, and refreshingly real in a place where everyone else seemed to be performing for an invisible audience. We understood each other—two scholarship students trying to navigate a world that wasn't built for people like us.
"I'll see what I can do," I said, slinging my backpack over my shoulder.
The morning was beautiful—one of those perfect early fall days where the air smells like possibility and the sky is so blue it almost hurts. The campus looked like something out of a movie, all Gothic spires and manicured lawns and students who somehow made eight-thirty AM look effortless.
I'd checked out a stack of books from the library last night—research for my first paper in Advanced Lit. They were heavy enough that my shoulder was already starting to ache, but I didn't mind. Books were the one thing here that didn't make me feel like an imposter. Books didn't care about your bank account or your family name.
I was cutting across the main pathway, checking my campus map to make sure I was heading in the right direction (the campus was enormous and I'd gotten lost twice already), when it happened.
One second I was walking, the next I was slamming into what felt like a brick wall.
The impact knocked me backward. My books exploded from my arms like a paper grenade, pages fluttering in the morning breeze. My backpack slipped from my shoulder, and I heard the sickening thud of my laptop hitting the stone pathway. I fell hard on my ass, palms scraping against rough stone.
And then came the coffee.
Hot coffee. Everywhere. Soaking through my shirt, my jeans, splashing across my face. The smell of it—expensive, dark roast that probably cost more than my textbooks—filled my nose as I sat there, stunned and dripping on the ground.
For a moment, I just sat there, too shocked to move. My palms stung. My hip throbbed where I'd landed. Coffee dripped from my hair into my eyes.
Then the anger hit.
I looked up to see who I'd crashed into, ready to apologize—because that's what you do when you run into someone, right? You apologize?
The guy standing over me clearly hadn't gotten that memo.
He was tall. Really tall. Six-three, maybe six-four, with dark messy hair that looked like he'd dragged his hands through it and called it styling. Ice-blue eyes that were currently focused on his phone instead of the girl he'd just demolished. A leather jacket over a black t-shirt and jeans that had actual wear on them, not the designer pre-distressed kind.
There was a scar through his left eyebrow. His knuckles were bruised, fresh scrapes across them like he'd recently introduced them to someone's face.
He was also covered in coffee, but unlike me, he didn't seem to notice or care.
The pathway had gone silent. Students who'd been rushing to class had stopped, forming a loose circle around us. Phones came out. People whispered. The crowd gave us—specifically gave him—a wide berth, like they were afraid of getting too close.
He still wasn't looking at me.
"Are you serious right now?" The words came out sharper than I'd intended, but I was sitting in a puddle of expensive coffee with my books scattered like casualties around me.
He glanced at me. Barely. Like I was a minor inconvenience in his otherwise important day. "What?"
I gestured at the disaster zone that was now my life. "You just crashed into me and destroyed my stuff."
His attention returned to his phone. "You walked into me."
The audacity of it sent a fresh wave of anger through me. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the way my coffee-soaked jeans clung to my legs and the curious burning sensation in my palms. "You weren't looking where you were going!"
Now he looked at me properly. One eyebrow—the scarred one—rose slightly. There was something in his expression that might have been amusement. "Neither were you."
I started gathering my books, hands shaking with a mixture of adrenaline and fury. The pages were soaked, coffee seeping into the spines. Library books. Books I'd have to pay for. My laptop—god, my laptop—I grabbed my backpack, unzipping it with fumbling fingers.
The laptop turned on, but the screen flickered ominously. A dark spot was spreading across the corner.
No. No no no. I couldn't afford to replace this. This laptop had to last me four years. It was already old when I got it, already on its last legs.
"You could at least apologize," I said, hating how my voice shook. "Or help pick this up."
He was watching me now, head tilted slightly like I was a puzzle he couldn't quite figure out. "Why would I do that?"
I stood, holding my coffee-soaked books against my chest like a shield, and looked up at him. Way up. He had at least eight inches on me, broad shoulders, and the kind of physical presence that suggested he could remove me from his path without breaking a sweat if he wanted to.
I didn't care.
"Because it's the decent thing to do? Because you ruined my books? Because my laptop might be broken and I can't afford to replace it?"
The crowd around us had grown. I could hear whispers, feel phones pointing at us. Someone gasped.
The guy's expression shifted into something that definitely was amusement. "Sounds like a you problem."
The rage that went through me was so intense I actually saw red for a second. I stepped closer, which was probably stupid considering he could probably bench-press me, but I was too angry to think straight.
"Look, I don't know who you think you are, but you just destroyed about two hundred dollars worth of library books I have to pay for, potentially broke my laptop, and ruined my clothes. The least you could do is apologize."
Something flickered across his face—genuine surprise, maybe?—before that dangerous half-smile appeared. "Do you know who I am?"
"Should I?"
The smile widened. "Apparently not."
We stared at each other. I refused to look away first, even though my heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Even though every survival instinct I had was screaming at me to back down, to walk away, to remember that I needed to stay invisible.
But I'd never been good at backing down from bullies, and rich or not, that's what this guy was.
Around us, the silence was deafening. I could practically feel the collective held breath of the watching students.
Then he pulled out his wallet.
I watched as he extracted several bills—not one, not two, but several—and dropped them on the ground near my feet. They fluttered down like leaves, catching the morning light. Ben Franklin stared up at me from multiple hundred-dollar bills.
"For your books," he said, his tone suggesting this was a completely normal solution to the problem. "And your laptop. Whatever."
I stared at the money. Counted quickly. At least five hundred dollars, maybe six. Just thrown on the ground like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.
The insult of it burned worse than the coffee.
"I don't want your money," I said through gritted teeth. "I want an apology."
He actually looked confused. Like the concept of someone rejecting his money was so foreign he couldn't process it. "You're serious."
"Dead serious."
He studied me for a long moment, and I had the unsettling feeling he was seeing something I didn't want him to see. Really looking at me for the first time. My coffee-stained thrift store clothes. My panic about the laptop. The determination in my stance despite the fact that I was obviously outmatched.
"Interesting," he said finally.
Then he stepped around me and walked away.
Just like that. No apology. No acknowledgment of the destruction he'd caused. Just that single word—interesting—and then he was gone, the crowd parting for him like he was royalty and they were peasants who knew better than to get in his way.
"See you around, scholarship girl," he called over his shoulder.
The nickname hit like a slap. He knew. Somehow he'd looked at me and known exactly what I was. What I wasn't.
I stood there, shaking, surrounded by ruined books and spilled coffee and scattered money, while dozens of students stared at me with expressions ranging from shock to pity to secondhand horror.
Someone whispered: "Did she just yell at Ashton Wolfe?"
Another voice: "Is she insane?"
"She's dead. She's so dead...