Chapter 15: Jealous Hearts

By the next morning, I understood something that should have been obvious from the start.

Once people at Vineyard Academy smelled drama, they fed on it like starving wolves.

The hallway kiss had already turned into legend. The fact that Kaelric and I had then been seen leaving the locker room together after spending the entire night trapped inside only made everything worse. Every corner of the school buzzed with rumors, theories, whispered lies dressed up as facts. Some people acted scandalized. Some acted entertained. Most of them just wanted front row seats to whatever disaster was coming next.

And now, apparently, we were giving them exactly that.

I should have felt in control after what happened in the music room yesterday. I should have felt powerful. The plan was simple. Use the fake relationship to humiliate the people who had tried to humiliate me. Make Kaelric’s father furious. Make Aurelia choke on her own venom. Make Thorne regret ever thinking I was someone he could play with.

Instead, I woke up restless and irritated because all I could think about was the way Kaelric had kissed me when no one was watching.

That was the problem.

When the kiss happened in the hallway, I could blame adrenaline. Anger. Revenge.

But the one in the music room?

There had been no audience.

No reason.

No excuse.

And somehow that made it worse.

I was still thinking about it when I stepped into the courtyard before lunch and saw Lyssandra.

At first, I only noticed the flash of her pale hair and the sharp, elegant line of her uniform. She was leaning against the stone column near the fountain, one hand resting on Thorne’s chest like she had every right to be there. Then he smiled down at her, slow and intimate, and something ugly twisted hard in the center of my chest.

It took me a second to understand why.

Because Lyssandra wasn’t just standing close to him.

She was draped over him.

Her fingers smoothed over the collar of his rugby jacket with practiced familiarity, and then she rose on her toes to kiss his cheek while half the courtyard watched. Not a shy kiss. Not subtle. It was deliberate, obvious, calculated. She laughed at something he said, then looped her arm through his like he belonged to her.

My steps slowed.

I told myself I didn’t care.

I told myself I had no right to care.

I told myself Thorne Valerius was a liar, a coward, and a pathetic excuse for a human being who had let himself be used in a disgusting little game.

So why did my chest still ache?

Why did it still feel like someone had reached inside me and twisted?

I hated the answer before I even fully formed it.

Because some part of me, no matter how angry I was, still remembered the version of him I had once believed in.

And seeing him look so comfortable with Lyssandra, seeing her touch him so easily, made that old wound sting all over again.

I forced my expression blank and kept walking.

Pretend you don’t care.

Pretend you don’t see it.

I had almost convinced myself I was doing a decent job until I felt a familiar presence fall into step beside me.

Kaelric.

He didn’t say anything at first. He just walked next to me in that infuriatingly calm way he had, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders relaxed, as if he hadn’t just entered the middle of an emotional war zone.

Then, after a few silent steps, he spoke.

“You’re glaring.”

I snapped my head toward him. “I am not.”

He didn’t even look at me. “You are.”

“I’m not glaring.”

“You look like you want to set the fountain on fire.”

I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. “Maybe the fountain deserves it.”

That got a quiet laugh out of him, but when he finally looked at me, his expression was more observant than amused.

His gray eyes flicked toward the courtyard where Lyssandra was now openly fixing Thorne’s tie while students pretended not to watch.

Then he looked back at me.

And I hated how easily he read me.

“Jealous?” he asked, his voice low enough that no one else could hear.

The word hit me like a slap.

“No.”

He held my gaze.

“Liar.”

My face burned instantly, and anger rose faster than embarrassment. “Excuse me?”

He leaned slightly closer, just enough that his voice turned softer, more private.

“You can pretend for everyone else,” he murmured. “Not for me.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but no sound came out.

Because the worst part was that he was right.

I wasn’t jealous of Thorne.

Not really.

I was jealous of how easy it looked.

Of how simple it seemed for Lyssandra to stand there and claim someone in public without fear, without shame, without every eye in the school reminding her that she didn’t belong.

Kaelric’s gaze stayed on me for one long second before he turned toward the courtyard again.

And something in his face changed.

A harder edge entered his expression.

“Oh,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “So that’s what this is.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, suddenly uneasy.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he reached for me.

One second I was standing there, trying to hold together my pride. The next, Kaelric’s hand closed around my wrist, and he tugged me toward him so fast that I stumbled right into his chest.

“Kaelric—”

I didn’t get to finish.

Because his hand slid to the back of my neck, and then his mouth was on mine.

The entire courtyard vanished.

The first kiss in the hallway had been shocking. Reckless. Public. A statement.

This one was something else entirely.

This kiss was deliberate.

And hot enough to steal every coherent thought from my head.

A gasp went up around us from the students nearby, but it sounded far away, muffled by the blood rushing in my ears. Kaelric kissed me like he was proving a point, and for one wild second I thought that was all it was. A move in the game. A way to provoke Thorne.

Then the kiss deepened.

And everything changed.

My fingers grabbed the front of his blazer without my permission, clutching hard as if that was the only thing keeping me upright. His hand at the back of my neck tightened slightly, tilting my face up more fully, and the pressure of his mouth became slower, deeper, more dangerous.

This was supposed to be for show.

It was supposed to be quick.

It was supposed to make Thorne angry and nothing more.

But Kaelric didn’t stop.

And neither did I.

The world around us disappeared under the heat of it. The stone beneath my shoes, the fountain, the whispers, the students, the bright midday sun, all of it dissolved until there was only the warm, solid press of him and the way my body betrayed me by melting against his.

I could actually feel his heartbeat where my chest brushed his.

Or maybe that frantic rhythm was mine.

By the time he finally pulled back, my lips were tingling and my lungs were begging for air.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

His forehead nearly touched mine.

His breathing was uneven and mine was worse.

His eyes no longer looked amused.

They looked dark.

Like he had lost control of the moment just as badly as I had.

Around us, the courtyard had gone almost completely silent.

Then the whispers exploded.

I barely heard them.

Because I looked over Kaelric’s shoulder and saw Thorne.

He was standing rigid beside Lyssandra, his jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might crack. Fury radiated off him in waves, raw and ugly and impossible to miss. Lyssandra’s face was colder, sharper, but even she looked shaken by what she had just witnessed.

Kaelric followed my gaze.

Then, in a move so smug it should have infuriated me, he dragged his thumb slowly across my lower lip like he was wiping away the evidence of the kiss.

The gesture was so intimate my stomach flipped.

“Lunch is more fun when he’s angry,” he murmured.

I stared up at him, still breathless. “That… was not part of the rehearsal.”

“No,” he said, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “It wasn’t.”

His voice was too rough.

Too honest.

And the way he looked at me in that moment made my pulse stumble.

Because for the first time since this fake relationship began, it no longer felt like we were just pretending for everyone else.

It felt like we were starting to lose the line ourselves.

That evening, as the sun dipped lower and the halls of the academy buzzed with anticipation, every student seemed to be talking about only one thing.

The banquet.

The annual event everyone had been waiting for had finally arrived, and by the time I returned home, the academy grounds were already being transformed with strings of golden lights, flower arrangements, and polished black cars rolling in one after another for the arriving families.

I stood in my small room, staring at the dress my mother had carefully laid out on the bed, my heart thudding for reasons that had nothing to do with fashion or social events.

Tonight wasn’t just a school function.

Tonight was war.

And somehow, the thought of walking into that ballroom on Kaelric’s arm felt even more dangerous than facing every enemy I already knew.