“He will.”

Nate looked up, catching my gaze. I let him see the promise there, and he nodded. Some of the pain slid away.

He murmured, “Thank you.”

Park Sebastian did this shit to him. It went down as Nate said. Sebastian’s friends jumped him in a back parking lot. He was going to his class when they showed up. They’d herded him to a back corner for more privacy, and then they let loose and pounded the crap out of him.

He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t even pull out his phone to dial 911. A security guard found him, and during that time, Sebastian was waiting for Sam.

He orchestrated the whole thing.

The message was sent.

The war had finally started.

SAMANTHA

It’d been a couple of weeks, and I fell into a routine.

Early mornings would be spent with the girls. Summer and I would walk to our classes together. When Ruby’s latte machine broke, Summer and I began going to the campus coffee shop. Some of the other girls joined us, including Kitty and Nina, and it became a gossip session. Kitty and Nina no longer waited in the hallway for me after I’d evaded them for the first week.

Logan was given strict instructions not to come to my dorm. He came a second time, and Kitty took root on Summer’s love seat in my room. She wouldn’t leave. Nina tried getting her to leave, pinching under her arm and hoisting her legs in the air. She tried to roll Kitty across the floor to the door. Nina’s plan had been to drag Kitty the rest of the way down the hallway to their room, but her butt had been too heavy for Nina. The ninety-six-pound girl was no match for Kitty, who was a solid one hundred eighty. When their Logan fandom lessened, once he had stopped coming by, they became more normal.

The afternoons would be spent going our own ways—to classes and to the library.

My evenings were split between running and seeing Mason. If I saw him in the afternoon, I’d run at night. Summer would go with me, reading her book in the stands as I circled the gym track. If I ran earlier, I’d see him later at night. There were no more sleepovers in the movie lounge. He hung out in my room a couple of times, but Kitty and Nina were scared of him. Summer got better with her starstruck ways. She wasn’t as awkward, but when she caught herself staring at Mason, she’d leave and spend time in another room.

It was easier to go to his house, but it was nice when he was at my place, too. Since the torture from the movie-room night, we kept everything PG-13. If things were going to the R rating, we’d ease back or go straight to his place. Logan caught on. If I saw him on campus during the day, he’d ask if it was a fuck night or a no-fuck night. That was his way of asking if I’d be at the house later, so we could all hang out in the kitchen or living room or if I’d just be seeing Mason at my dorm.

It was that time of day when my path would cross Logan’s. His class was in the same building as the post office and while I waited for him, I was in line to get a package from Malinda.

“Next.” A lady at the counter signaled for the next person to step forward.

That was me. I waited for the guy in front of me to move aside. He stayed in place, so I moved around him and gave the lady my slip. As she went to get my package, the guy didn’t move. I didn’t look up, but I could feel his attention. He shifted to the side, resting his hip against the counter, and he folded his arms over his chest.

He was watching me, and he wasn’t being bashful about it.

I waited, my jaw clenched. Guys were interested in me. I hadn’t dealt with that attention at Fallen Crest Public because everyone knew about Mason, but it was different at Cain University. Mason was known, but our relationship wasn’t. In some ways, it was refreshing. I could go to classes as I pleased with no attention, judging, or cutting me down if I wore a black shirt versus what was in style, but I assumed this guy was interested in more than my fashion sense. I was prepared with an easy lie to evade him, but he never moved back a step. He held firm, almost touching my elbow.

He was quiet, waiting for me to address him.

The guy was an asshole. I felt that much from him, by how brazen he was being. I gritted my teeth when the lady came back. She slid a box to me, and I was right. Malinda’s handwriting was on it. She’d put hearts all around my address with quotes written on the sides.

Go for it, Sam!

Live life to the fullest!

I miss you, and so does your father.

David says, “Hi.”

Mark says, “What’s up?”

Don’t let Logan get you into too much trouble.

Give Mason a hug for me.

There was more written, but those were the ones I glimpsed before I turned to leave. The guy blocked me. I couldn’t go behind me. A large group of students were there, trying to get to their mail slots, too, so I had to go around the guy.

I stepped right, and so did he.

I went left. He did, too.

A growl formed at the bottom of my throat, and my eyes snapped. I didn’t want to get hit on. I didn’t want to deal with this. Everything froze in me.

I was looking right into Park Sebastian’s smirking eyes. His hair was blond, gelled and combed to the side. He wasn’t wearing the polo like last time, but he had on a Cain University shirt with a pair of jeans. The outfit fitted his form nicely and screamed money. Others were wearing the same shirt, but they couldn’t pull off the wealthy vibe like he could. They also couldn’t pull off the arrogant asshole vibe like he was giving off either.

As our gazes made contact, the corner of his lip curved up. He was taunting me. He knew I hated this, hated having another male standing so close to me. He wasn’t Mason. I began to back up, holding the box to my chest, but I was bumped into. Elbows ground into my back. Someone’s hair whipped at my face as she turned abruptly. I was jostled forward.

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