The rain had returned, soft and whispering against the windows of Crestwood High, a curtain between the ordinary world and the one Lily carried inside her chest. She watched the droplets crawl down the glass, tiny rivers folding into one another before disappearing into nothing. It reminded her of Marcus—how easily something solid could dissolve when the world decided to forget.
The police files were sealed now; the teachers no longer spoke his name. The world had tidied away the mess. But inside Lily, a pulse of restlessness had begun to hum again, something half-formed, half-hungry.
Jason had noticed. Of course he had.
He waited for her every afternoon in the library now, never saying that he would, but always there. He had a way of filling a room without moving—a stillness that swallowed sound. Today he sat at the far table, book open, dark hair catching the silver light that leaked through the tall windows.
Lily slipped into the chair across from him. The air smelled of dust and ink and something sharp that made her chest tighten.
"You're early," he murmured.
"I couldn't stay in class." She pressed her palms together, trying not to sound breathless. "It feels like they're all watching me again."
"They aren't." Jason turned a page. "They've forgotten. People always forget."
His calmness irritated her, yet she leaned closer, drawn toward the gravity in his voice. "How can you be so sure?"
"Because they want to. Remember, Lily—memory is work. And most people are lazy."
The corner of his mouth lifted, the faintest curve of satisfaction. She hated that it made her heart thud.
He began teaching her again, but this time his lessons weren't about rumors or lies. They were about silence—how to hold it, how to use it.
"Control isn't loud," he said one evening as they walked through the empty hall. Their footsteps echoed between the lockers. "It's measured. You don't have to shout to be obeyed. You just have to understand what people need and then take it away."
Lily looked up at him, studying the clean line of his jaw, the shadow at his throat. "And what do you need, Jason?"
His eyes flicked toward her. For a heartbeat she thought she saw something raw there, a crack in the marble mask—but it vanished.
"Discipline," he said at last. "Same as you."
That night she dreamed of hands—hers and his—painted with rainwater and ink, tracing words on each other's skin that vanished before they could be read. When she woke, her heart was still racing.
She told herself she wasn't obsessed. She was learning. Becoming something better. Jason was the proof that she could.
Still, when she saw him again the next day, she caught herself noticing the way the light gathered on the curve of his wrist, the pulse beneath the skin, and she had to look away.