Rae's POV
Silence.
God, how delicious it was.
Like honeyed stillness dripping from the ceiling tiles, coating every desk, muffling every breath in the room. Their words, their thoughts, their petty games—they'd all come to a halt the moment I opened my mouth and gave them something sharp to swallow.
I stood there in the front of the classroom, posture straight, chin tilted at that precise angle that screamed, I do not belong here, but I own this room anyway. The name I'd spoken just seconds ago—"Aurora Rae Winters"—still hung in the air like a perfume they didn't know how to describe.
And now they were quiet.
How satisfying.
Some had their mouths open slightly, others furrowed their brows as though trying to unravel the syllables of my name like it were some kind of riddle, not a warning. Even the teacher, Ms. Langford, paused with the attendance sheet in her hand, her eyes glinting with quiet curiosity.
I'd won. A perfect first move.
But then it happened.
That.
I felt it before I saw it—a shift in the atmosphere so delicate, so infinitesimal, it could have been imagined. A ripple through still water. But instinct, the part of me that was always two steps ahead of the present moment, told me to look.
I turned my head slightly. Just enough.
Second row from the window. Back seat.
That was where he sat. That was where the smirk lived.
A boy—no, not a boy. Something else. Something… undefined.
His expression was infuriatingly relaxed, as if the silence that had paralyzed the others was a joke meant solely for his entertainment. He had his head propped lazily on one hand, elbow on the desk, lips curled just slightly.
That smirk.
It wasn't condescending or amused, nor was it mocking in the loud, idiotic way most teenage boys communicated.
It was… knowing.
It was the kind of smile someone gave when they'd already read the last page of your story and knew exactly where your plot twist would fail. It was the grin of someone who saw the blade in your coat before you even touched the handle.
And when our eyes met—when the full force of my stare locked with his—I knew two things at once:
1. He was not like the others.
2. Neither was I.
It wasn't a flutter. It wasn't romance. Let's make that painfully clear. This wasn't one of those movie moments where the girl gasps because she saw someone "dreamy" across the room. I wasn't that kind of girl. I never had been.
No, this was something far worse.
Recognition.
I didn't know him, and yet I did. Like a shadow in a dream you can't remember but feel haunted by when you wake. There was a glint in his eyes—silver, I thought, or maybe they only looked that way because of the light bouncing off the glass.
Whatever it was, it cracked something in me. The smallest fracture. A pressure point, hit without warning.
He didn't break the gaze. Not at first.
We held it, suspended in some invisible war of wills. I refused to be the one to look away first. I never did. I never would.
But then… he smiled wider. Just barely.
And broke the gaze.
Effortlessly. Purposefully.
He turned his head and looked out the window like I was nothing. Like I was a static pause in a song he'd already decided to skip.
My stomach clenched.
My pride, sharp as glass and twice as fragile, screamed. I could almost hear it.
He looked away.
He looked away from me.
No one looked away from me.
They stared, they gawked, they whispered and stumbled and apologized. That's how the world was supposed to work. Not this—this deliberate dismissal.
And I hated how intrigued I was.
Because something about that glance—his smirk—had reached into my chest and twisted. Something ancient and animalistic. Something that had been sleeping inside me, content in its silence, now roused.
It wasn't attraction. That word was too soft, too mundane.
It was curiosity drenched in venom.
The kind that says, You think you know something about me? Let's see what else you think you know before I ruin you.
He didn't look back once.
I stared at the side of his face, burning holes into his skin with my gaze, willing him to feel me watching. But no. Not even a twitch. He remained still, statuesque, like he had all the time in the world and none of it for me.
And maybe that was what infuriated me most.
He hadn't spoken a single word.
No insults. No greetings. No fumbling apologies like the others. He just… smirked.
Like I was a game he'd already solved.
A dangerous urge pulsed through me.
I wanted to play.