There are only around two hundred students in each year—all of which usually start freshman year—so for someone to transfer this late is generally unheard of, never mind her being someone that nobody knows anything about.
As if that wasn’t enough to intrigue me, the girl is a goddamn smoke show. She’s shorter than me by around six inches, with an athletic build, thick blonde hair and mesmerizing blue gray eyes.
She’s also an asshole.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile. She barely speaks to any of the students who have actually bothered to talk to her, only communicating with grunts or glares.
I hate how much of my attention she’s had since she turned up here. Normally, I’d be focusing on schoolwork and hanging out with the guys, but I can’t concentrate on anything other than her. And it’s not that I want her, like my friends would say.
It’s just that she… intrigues me.
And I hate that she does.
I want to know who she is and why she’s here much like everyone else, but it’s also deeper than that. I can’t stand the mystery surrounding her. She doesn’t belong here, that’s clear with just one glance. But what is she doing here, of all places?
Pissed at myself for noticing her again, I send a glare in her general direction—not that she’d notice—and storm back to the cottage.
My three best friends and I have shared the only premium accommodation on campus since we arrived freshman year. I’ve known Harley, Noah and Logan since we were kids, and we attended private school together. The four of us areso completely different that I know other people wonder how we’re such close friends, but it just works.
Harley is the fun one of the group of us, the joker. He’s easy going and with his blond hair and blue eyes, he looks like a goddamn Ken doll that people automatically gravitate towards.
Noah is the sensitive one. He’s the voice of reason between us and is the fixer of the group. He’s the one who will take on the caretaker role without a moment’s notice, even when it’s unwanted.
Which it always is.
Which leaves Logan, the smart one. He’s a genius and quiet as hell, and if we weren’t as close as we are, I’d have no idea just how smart he is, since he hates to advertise it. He barely talks to anyone other than the three of us. He’s not shy; he just prefers to observe rather than communicate when it’s unnecessary. Though looking at him, he usually comes across as a grumpy asshole, considering he’s tall as fuck and packed full of muscle. From first glance, he probably comes across as one of those tall, dark and dangerous types. Which would probably be right, since even the guys and I don’t actually know what he gets up to half of the time. Though his size does make sense, since he’s on the hockey team.
He’s the one I relate to the most, I guess. I’m probably a mixture of the three of them combined, the one who holds us all together and can think like each of them, which has helped us all stay such close friends for so long.
I head back to the cottage, and I’m a ball of energy as I pace the kitchen before grabbing a beer from the fridge and uncapping it. My mind spins in a hundred different directions between schoolwork, my family, and Lana.
That girl is driving me insane.
“You saw her again, huh?” Noah’s voice startles me, and I spin to face him.
“Didn’t think anyone was here,” I mutter and take a swig from the bottle.
The place we share is basically just a one-story cottage on the outer edge of campus. We each have our own rooms, with a bedroom to spare and a huge lounge, kitchen and theater/game room.
We tried to persuade my sister, Gracie, to move in with us when she started her freshman year, but she refused. Gracie is a year younger than the rest of us and hates how protective we all are of her, so she decided to move into the dorms instead. Though we obviously made sure she had a single, because like fuck was my little sister sharing a room with someone.
“Yeah, I gathered that by the way you were pacing. Why don’t you just fucking speak to the girl if she bothers you this much?”
This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. He just doesn’t get it.
“I don’t want her like that,” I grunt and down the rest of the beer before placing the empty bottle on the counter. “And I have talked to her. I talked to her the first day back at school. She’s a dick, and it pissed me off, is all.”
I shake my head and walk to my room, needing out of that conversation. I don’t need to talk about her, I need to forget she exists. I need to get out of my head, and there’s only one way I know of doing that.
The town of Blackwater is so miniscule, it barely shows up on the map. It’s one of the reasons the founder of the university chose this place—because it’s out of the way, and a smaller town makes it so much easier to ensure the place is guarded heavily.
And although the small town mainly consists of wealthy people who grew up here and holiday homes for those who want to visit their children during the school year, there’s still darkness that lurks in the shadows. Just like any place.
I’ve been fighting for a few years now, always underground and never in the spotlight, since my family would see it as a stain on their name, so I needed to find somewhere I could do it here once I moved away from the city. It was easy back home; there was an underground fighting ring on almost every corner. Here? Not so much.
But I knew there were people around here that would gravitate towards the darkness, and it didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.
I’ve been coming here since I found the place in freshman year. It was by pure luck that one night I escaped the clutches of security over at the university and decided to wander the town, only happening to walk past the old, abandoned church at the exact right time.
