Chapter 20: Wrath of an Exile: Chapter 19

October 12

The sharp toll of the Hollow Heights clock tower vibrates through the room.

“Papers are due by next Friday, and please let’s not forget our cited sources this time.” Professor Howard clasps his hands together, effectively dismissing the class.

I slide out from behind the desk, tossing my hood up, quietly making my way out of my last class and into the echoing halls. I’m already not looking forward to this walk through campus to the parking lot.

My Vans step across vibrant hues of blues, greens, and reds as light pierces through the stained glass windows, spilling the jewel tones across the polished stone floor.

The cold air bites at my skin when I push through the hall doors and onto a cobblestone walkway. I move through the arcade that connects the buildings of the Kennedy District, listening to the raging ocean just to my right, violent slate waves crashing into the rocky cliffside.

My eyes drift to the square at the heart of the campus, where the towering clock tower stands, looming over everything with its sharp spires cutting into the gray sky.

Below, students rush across the Commons, desperate to avoid the inevitable soaking as the rain pelts down, probably regretting their decision to attend college in the dreary Pacific Northwest.

Hollow Heights is exactly what I’d expected.

Cold, gray, and reeking pretentious bullshit.

The campus stretches out in all its gothic grandeur. Gargoyles, spiral staircases, marble statues everywhere you turn. Which are fucking creepy if you stay late, by the way.

I almost punched a rendition of Socrates after leaving the library the other night.

Spit splatters at my feet, barely missing my shoes, just before I head inside Everhart Hall. My head snaps up, brows furrowing, and I meet the glare of an old woman—skin crinkled like dried parchment, deep-set wrinkles folding into a permanent scowl. Her grip on the cane is white-knuckled, and for a second, I think she might take a swing at me.

“Grandma!” A girl rushes forward, panic in her voice as she yanks the old lady back a step, her eyes wide with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. She’s just—she’s just…”

“Senile?” I offer, the edge of my words sharp, biting back my irritation.

The old woman huffs, her eyes narrowing as she leans heavier on her cane.

“Got enough sense to know you’re rotten. To the core, boy. Sinclairs don’t belong here.” She spits again, as if my name is a curse.

My jaw clenches, the muscles in my neck straining as her words slice through me.

Hollow Heights is built atop ground that carries a twisted history and vile secrets that never escape the wrought-iron gates. Horrible, wicked things that those with my last name orchestrated.

I wish I could say I was surprised or that this is the only time something like this has happened to me, but I can’t.

The girl stumbles over her apology, her words a messy rush. “Oh my God, I’m sorry—again. It’s my birthday, and she wanted to bring me lunch. And she, well, she gets like this, and I—yeah, I’m really sorry.”

I catch her eyes for a moment, expecting pity, but it’s not sympathy that meets me. It’s fear. She’s scared of me.

Fucking great.

“Don’t worry about it,” I grunt, brushing it off.

I step past them, feeling the burn of her stare still digging into my back. The old woman mutters something under her breath, and just as I’m about to clear her range, she swipes her cane out, aiming for my legs.

I sidestep, barely dodging the attempt to trip me. My pulse spikes, the urge to snap back sharp and sudden, but I don’t. Going nuclear on an old lady would not help my sparkling reputation.

So I keep walking, letting the anger quietly brew in my chest.

This was never what I wanted.

I never wanted to go to this school, to be everyone’s favorite pariah. My last name is a curse, a stain on Hollow Heights University, and no one lets me forget it.

It’s everywhere. The whispers that follow me down every corridor, the walls seeming to close in. The very grounds beneath my feet burn with every step—holy ground, and I am the damned.

I know what my father was a part of, what his stepfather did. I know what the Sinclairs left behind—disgust, ruin, the vile imprint of the Halo. It makes me sick too.

My name, my face, everything about me is a living reminder of that horror, a walking ghost of Ponderosa Springs’s worst memories.

I get it. I know why they hate me. I understand why the Springs will never owe me anything. But that’s why I wanted to leave, why I wanted out as much as they wanted me to leave.

I didn’t want to carry this weight anymore, this constant reminder of the damage done by the name I was born into.

More than that, I didn’t want to be the cause of Phi’s pain anymore.

I wasn’t involved. I didn’t know anything about that night with Oakley, but every time Phi looks at me, all she sees is her trauma.

It’s like I’m made of it.

A walking reminder of the night that shattered her into pieces.

When she looks at me, she knows I’m the only other person, besides her abuser, who knows what’s been taken from her.

She didn’t consent to me knowing these things about her. She didn’t ask for me to carry these truths in my head, like some dark secret stitched into my skin. And yet I do.

And that guilt…it’s sunk into me like rot.

The air is thick inside Everhart Hall with the smell of old books and damp stone. I cut through a hallway, passing rows of classrooms, when something catches my eye.

I stop mid-step, glancing over at the open door to my right. There, through the gap, I see miles and miles of cherry-tinted hair. A pair of torn-to-hell red pantyhose and an oversized hoodie that’s doubling as a dress, it seems.

Geeks.

All alone, standing in an empty lab, completely absorbed in the whiteboard in front of her.

In nearly a month, she’s barely uttered two words to me. I could count every time we crossed paths, each moment she slipped past me like I was invisible, not a glance, not a single snarky word, like I’m nothing more than air.

Phi didn’t just wave the white flag the night of the Gauntlet. She broke.

She shattered into pieces right in front of me, and I could do nothing but watch. I had to let the shards slice me open, bleeding all the apologies she didn’t want to hear.

It wasn’t the slow, inevitable decay I’d grown used to in my father’s eyes. The kind that eats at you little by little until there’s nothing left but hollowed-out bones.

No, when Phi broke, she was a star imploding.

Something brilliant collapsing in on itself, pulling everything around it into the void. It was the kind of devastation you couldn’t look away from.

One second, she was whole, and the next, she was cracked wide open. And it lived in her eyes. The fight in those eyes, which once held so much hostility, was snuffed out, and what remained was shattered green stained glass.

And it almost fucking killed me.

That night on the balcony, for the first time, I saw her.

And now? Now, I can’t fucking stop seeing her.

I push the door open the rest of the way, the creak echoing through the empty lab, and shut it behind me. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, the room chilled with that sterile, lifeless air.

Phi stands at the whiteboard, scribbling furiously while muttering to herself under her breath. Her hair spills down her back in messy waves, like she might’ve just rolled out of bed.

She doesn’t hear me. Not surprising, considering the headphones still clamped over her ears. Her foot taps lightly, in sync with the beat I can’t hear, as I move further into the room.

This is all she does recently—buries herself in homework. To the point where it’s past studious and has reached unhealthy obsession.

I woke up at four in the morning two nights ago for a drink and found an academic disaster in the living room.

Papers scattered, at least three open textbooks, and Phi sitting crisscross on the floor in the middle of the mess with a highlighter wedged between her teeth. Which may not be a big deal to some, but we have the same chemistry class, and we’ve barely made a dent in our textbooks. Phi was more than halfway through hers, working on shit that was weeks in advance.

She hadn’t touched the cracked asphalt of the Graveyard in nearly a month. Not once.

No races, no parties, nothing but this.

Even now, I can see it. The desperation in her writing across the board, a frantic need to get it right, to find the answer, like solving this problem can fix whatever’s broken inside her.

I walk closer, close enough that I could reach out and rip the marker from her hand. Close enough that I can see the smudges of ink on her fingers and the slight tremble in her hand as she writes. But I don’t move. Not yet.

I just watch her.

Because Seraphina Van Doren was made to be watched.

I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t fucking help myself. From a distance, those stone walls she built around herself look impenetrable, but up close? They’re littered with cracks, and I noticed them.

Small things, at first.

The music—her wild, chaotic music that used to bleed through the walls every night—went silent. At Sunday dinner last week, she wore a smile that everyone believed. She laughed at all the right moments, threw back her sharp comebacks whenever someone teased her.

But I saw it. The smile never touched her eyes, her laughter just a shade too hollow. I saw the way her hands trembled, fingers twisting the hem of her shirt under the table, like she needed something to anchor herself.

Seraphina Van Doren has spent years mastering the art of hiding in plain sight—locking herself in her own personal hell, building walls too thick for anyone to climb.

And to her credit, no one has noticed.

But that’s because no one has ever really looked.

I stand there for another beat, watching her—waiting for her to notice me, waiting for something to pull her out of whatever world she’s trapped herself in. But she doesn’t look up. Doesn’t acknowledge me. She just keeps going, marker scratching against the whiteboard like if she writes fast enough, she can outrun whatever’s eating her alive.

Without thinking, I reach out, plucking the marker from her hands. Just as Phi whirls around, I step over, leaning my shoulder on the whiteboard.

“You’re not gonna solve shit if you keep scribbling like that. How the fuck do you even read this chicken scratch?”

She turns to face me, round glasses perched on her nose, and my teeth grind the moment I see the dark circles beneath her eyes, the heavy purple bruises staining her skin like a permanent reminder of her sleepless nights.

I was expecting to find fire in her gaze, some trace of the girl who loved having the last word, but all I see is emptiness.

Her eyes, those once fierce, defiant eyes that roared and lived with hostility for me, are lifeless. Two broken stained-glass windows, just together enough to still the color.

“With my eyes,” she mutters, the words falling flat, hollow.

The sarcasm is there, but it’s an echo of what it used to be. No bite. No edge. Just words that float in the space between us.

I smirk, the expression not reaching my eyes. “Smart-ass.”

She barely reacts. No flash of irritation, no roll of her eyes. She just stands there, looking through me like I’m not even real, like nothing in this room is. I hold the marker up, taunting, waiting for her to grab for it.

But she doesn’t.

Instead, she looks at me with the kind of blank expression that makes my chest tighten, then wordlessly turns her back, walking to one of the lab tables. She pulls open a drawer, the sound of metal scraping against metal harsh in the quiet room, and retrieves another marker without so much as a glance in my direction.

Phi was always the center of every room she stepped into, commanding attention without even trying, like the sun dragging the planets in its wake. And now, she’s stopped stepping into rooms altogether.

It’s like she’s allergic to the light. Like it hurts her to even touch it.

And that’s a fucking tragedy because no matter where we stand, the shadows were never meant to hold someone like her.

The spotlight wasn’t just made for her—it bends to her. She doesn’t chase it. She owns it. Gravity pulling everything and everyone into her orbit, whether she wanted it or not.

The world notices when she’s absent.

And unfortunately, so do I.

I can’t not notice—not when I know I helped turn her into everything I hate.

Every single word dipped in poison, every sharp jab about my father, was rooted in a hate that had nothing to do with my last name. Nothing to do with our families and everything to do with the company I kept.

Before the fire at St. Gabriel’s, we didn’t even exist to each other. Same elementary school, same middle school. But not once did our paths cross in any meaningful way. She was the girl in the background of my life, a blur in the crowd, and I was just another kid who didn’t matter to her.

Call it cruel fate or twisted divine intervention, but my first real memory of Seraphina Van Doren was the way the burnt-orange glow of the fire lit up her face just before I got shoved into the back of a police car.

Phi uncaps the new marker, the faint squeak of it cutting through the silence as she goes back to her frantic scribbling. As if I don’t exist. As if she doesn’t exist.

I straighten up, closing the distance between us until my arm brushes against her shoulder. She stiffens, just for a split second, her hand pausing mid-stroke on the board.

But then she keeps going, like nothing happened. Like I’m not standing right there, invading her space.

I lean back against the desk behind us, crossing my arms as I tilt my head to the side, trying to make sense of the chaotic mess of numbers and symbols she’s scribbling.

The whiteboard is covered in equations that don’t mean a damn thing to me, but I squint at them anyway, pretending like I’m interested, like I’m not just trying to get under her skin.

“I flunked ninth-grade biology, you know,” I say casually, my eyes scanning the mess she’s created, “So you’re gonna have to break this down for me. What the hell are you solving for?”

She doesn’t even flinch. Her hand just keeps moving, the marker squeaking against the board like she’s in a race with herself.

“Acceleration due to gravity is…” I trail off, leaning in closer just enough to feel the heat radiating off her, squinting at the scribbles. “What the fuck is coefficient of friction?”

Nothing. Not even a twitch.

The absences not only from her life but from herself leave an ache in the pit of my stomach. It’s like staring at someone who’s already made peace with disappearing.

And I hate it.

I hate how numb she looks, how every step she takes feels like it’s weighed down by a thousand invisible burdens. She’s barely there. A shadow of the girl I knew, the one who’d meet me blow for blow, glare for glare.

I hate how badly I want her to fight me, to feel something.

But most of all, I hate that I notice. I hate that I see it every day, and I can’t stop seeing it.

How the fuck am I the only one who sees this?

“What’s this? Kinetic energy?” I pause, watching the tension in her shoulders build, the way her back stiffens with every word I say. “Are these NASA plans or hieroglyphics?”

I have no fucking clue what the hell is coming out of my mouth. All I know is that I can see the coil in her body winding, and it’s the most I’ve seen out of her in a month.

So if I have to keep spitting science jargon until she cracks, that’s what I’ll do.

Shoving off the desk, I step right into her space, so close I can smell the faint, familiar scent of her vanilla perfume mixing with the ink on her fingers. My chest is inches away from the back of her head, and I can see the way her hand falters, just long enough for me to notice.

“I can see why you got into MIT. Early admission, right?” I mutter, not even bothering to hide the smirk on my face. “Why didn’t you⁠—”

She slams the marker down, the sound reverberating off the sterile walls of the lab. Her whole body stiffens, her fingers clenching into fists at her sides as she spins around to face me, her green eyes flashing with something raw and furious.

Bingo.

“What do you want, Sinclair?” she snaps, her voice sharp, cutting through the air like a blade.

I don’t move, don’t flinch. Finally.

A slow grin pulls at my lips. “There she is.”

“I gave you what you wanted, Loner. We’re fucking even. You’ve got my white flag. What do you want from me?”

I hold her gaze, and it’s like the air between us ignites, crackling with an electricity that has nothing to do with the room and everything to do with her.

For a second, I wonder if she’s going to storm out, throw something, or swing at me. Any of those would be better than the emptiness she’s been serving me for weeks.

But she doesn’t move.

She just stands there, chest rising and falling like she’s been running, fists clenched tight at her sides, knuckles white with tension. And her eyes—those green, shattered eyes—spark with something wild and alive. Raw. Burning.

She’s chaos and ruin, broken glass turned into art.

There’s a violence to her beauty, a savage grace that makes you want to reach out, even though you know you’ll bleed for it.

No one, not a single living soul, has ever pissed me off by being beautiful before. But if anyone could do it, it would be Phi.

“Hate me. I want you to fucking hate me.” My voice drops, raw and jagged as it cuts through the thick air between us. My jaw clenches so hard I can feel the tension creeping up my neck.

I need something—anything but this dead-eyed nothingness she’s been giving me for weeks.

Phi takes a step forward, her boots scuffing the floor, the tips of her black combat boots now brushing against my Vans. Her eyes narrow into dangerous slits.

“I hate you,” she hisses, the venom in her words crackling like static between us.

I hold her gaze, refusing to blink, a wicked smirk pulling at my lips. The smell of her scent fills my nose, reminding me of how fucking good she smelled when I was between her thighs. She’s so close now I can feel the heat radiating off her skin, feel the pulse of her rage beneath her surface.

My cock jerks behind my zipper, and I mentally tell myself this isn’t about that. He’s gonna have to take a back seat today.

“Say it again,” I command, jerking my chin at her, the taste of her defiance already on my tongue. I drag my bottom lip between my teeth. “This time, like you mean it.”

“Haven’t you taken enough from me? You want me to thank you for killing someone to protect me? Is that what you want, Jude? You want me to tell you you’re a good boy?” She spits the words, sharp and biting, and I swear they lash across my skin like a whip.

That’s it. Come on, Geeks. Give it to me. Let me rip you apart.

“Thank you, Jude. Thank you so much for growing a pair of goddamn balls and not being like your coward fucking fath⁠—”

I don’t let her finish.

In one violent, desperate movement, I grab her, my fingers tangling in the thick waves of her hair as I slam her back against the whiteboard. The loud thud echoes through the empty room, reverberating off the walls as my chest heaves with every ragged breath. Her body arches beneath me, her hands instinctively finding my chest.

My breath comes out in short, shallow bursts, brushing across her face as my jaw tightens.

“Give it to me, Phi.” I seethe, the words barely escaping through clenched teeth. “Give me all your pain, all your hurt, every ounce of that rage in your vicious fucking heart. I can take it.”

My fingers tighten at the back of her scalp, pulling her head back slightly so I can look into her eyes. Her chest is rising and falling in sync with mine, our breaths mingling in the space between us, and I can see all the heat dancing around her dilated pupils.

It would take one word, just one, and I’d back away. Give her space and mind my business, but she won’t. She won’t because she wants me just as badly as I want her.

I’ve been someone’s punching bag my entire life. I can handle her.

We aren’t friends. We don’t even like each other.

I don’t have to like Phi to want to help fix what I broke.

This I can do. I can be her outlet, take whatever she needs to throw at me. It’s the least I can do after everything with Oakley. It’s the least she fucking deserves.

Her eyes flicker with a combination of confusion and desperation, her small hands tightening in my shirt.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she croaks, brows furrowed, like the words hurt when she speaks them. “What are you doing to me?”

“Seeing you,” I breathe, the words slipping out like they’ve been trapped in my lungs for years and this is the first time I’ve been able to let them go.

Phi’s hands tighten in my shirt, pulling me into her body, pulling herself closer. Her lips part, her breath shallow and uneven, and I swear I can feel the crackle of her heartbeat beneath my fingers as one of my hands traces the column of her throat.

“Yeah?” she mutters, her voice low, almost broken. “What do you see?”

I lean in, my forehead nearly touching hers as I rub circles on the pulse in her throat. My breath comes out in a heavy, uneven burst as I search her eyes, those shattered, sea-glass-green eyes.

“There is so much agony in your eyes I don’t know how I’m the only one who sees it.” I tighten my fingers at the back of her scalp, leaning down so I can feel her breath on my face. “You’re a goddamn tragedy, Van Doren. But fuck, you’re beautiful.”

The space between us evaporates, her chest flush against mine, our breaths tangling in the air like smoke. Her lips part, and for a split second, I’m lost.

Lost in the shattered pieces of her, in the jagged edges she tries to hide, in the chaos that lives just beneath her skin. And I want to drown in it. I want to feel every bit of that pain that comes with touching her.

Her eyes are wild, desperate, as if she’s trying to figure out whether to pull me closer or push me away. But I can feel it—the way her body leans into mine, the way her breath hitches as my fingers trace the column of her throat.

And then the door swings open.

“Hey, Phi—” Reign’s voice fills the room, casual and unaware, but it’s like a gunshot going off in the silence.

We snap apart, fast and instinctive, like we’ve been caught doing something far worse than whatever the hell this is. I step back, my hand still half-raised, and she slips out from under my arm, ducking past me like she’s been burned.

My jaw clenches as I drag my hand across it, turning to face him, with his eyes narrowed and fists already clenched. Angry doesn’t even begin to cover it. Rage rolls off him in waves, thick and heavy, the air around him practically vibrating with the threat of violence.

Great.

I shove my hands into my pockets, fighting the urge to roll my eyes as his gaze bounces between us. It’s like he’s already decided I’m guilty of something.

Typical.

Reign Van Doren. Notorious man-whore and walking powder keg.

That cocky smirk he usually wears is nowhere to be seen now, which fills me with a small pocket of joy. I love irritating this guy. It’s too fucking easy sometimes.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

I watch Phi from the corner of my eye. She looks unfazed, calm even, as she waves a lazy hand toward the whiteboard.

“Tutoring, idiot,” she mutters, her tone as flat as ever. “Jude’s practically failing physics.”

I arch a brow at her, my expression silently questioning her bullshit. Really? That’s what we’re going with?

She doesn’t meet my gaze, but there’s a flicker of something in her eyes—amusement, maybe, or annoyance. Either way, she’s doing a great job at playing this off like nothing happened.

“Yeah,” I grunt, unable to keep from being a sarcastic asshole. “She’s been a real lifesaver.”

Reign’s eyes narrow even further, his gaze darting between us, landing on me like I’m the cause of every problem in the room. His fists tighten at his sides, knuckles going white. Just a breath in the wrong direction and he’ll lose his shit.

Dude has the shortest fuse I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something, coming from me.

The last thing I want is to have to explain to his mother why her precious soccer star has a broken nose.

I shift, sliding out from behind the lab desk, my hands still in my pockets, “Cool your jets, hotshot. I was just leaving.”

I don’t feel like sticking around for the “don’t touch my sister, or I’ll kill you” conversation. Again.

I glance back at Phi, catching her eyes just for a moment. This isn’t over. Whatever happened here isn’t over, and she knows it.

I want every last piece of the twisted puzzle she hides behind that pretty smile. The darkness she buries so deep no one else dares to touch it. I want the secrets she guards with venom-laced words and the shame she masks with smiles that never quite reach her eyes.

Her violence. Her rage. The seething self-loathing that’s barely held together by threads of pride.

I want to own them.

Fight her for it, to rip it from her with my teeth if I have to, until it’s all mine.

As I reach the door, I feel it—Reign’s hand clamping down on my shoulder, a grip too tight to be casual. It’s like a vise, his fingers digging into my shirt, and for a second, the room goes still.

I glance down at his hand, then slowly lift my gaze to meet his, arching one brow in silent warning.

He really doesn’t want this problem today.

“Move your hand, Van Doren. Before I make you fucking eat it.”

Reign’s fingers tighten for just a second, his grip firm, and I feel the heat of his anger radiating off him. His jaw clenches, working like he’s grinding his teeth into dust. He’s thinking about it—about swinging on me.

“Do it. Make my fucking day,” I bite, the words dripping with a threat I don’t bother to hide.

I’d love nothing more than to kick his cocky spoiled ass.

But he doesn’t.

He hesitates, jaw still tight, before finally, slowly, releasing his grip.

The room feels like it exhales, but the tension doesn’t go away. It lingers, heavy and dark, as his hand drops back to his side. His eyes, still locked on mine, are full of venom, the kind that sticks with you, the kind that festers.

And instead of physically punching me, he gives me parting words that feel like one.

“History has a way of repeating itself. Remember, Sinclair, you don’t get the girl. You break her.”