Chapter 31 Kristen
The late afternoon sun was already milky and soft when school finally let out, and I was walking across the quadrangle with Anna, talking about the music list and decorations for the party, trying to convince her that two string lights per table would be better than four. My backpack felt heavy, not just with books but with the swirl of everything I had to balance—homework, party planning, sleep I never seemed to get. The campus was buzzing with students spilling out of classrooms, laughter, chatter about weekend plans, routine energy that felt normal to everyone else but strangely cumbersome to me.
I was mid‑sentence about balloon colors when something at the edge of the woods caught my eye. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just movement. A shift in shadow. A figure standing at the tree line, too deliberate to be a random passerby. My words faltered, and I blinked, the color draining from whatever idea I had been trying to explain.
“Kristen?” Anna asked, following my gaze out of habit, but before she could add anything, my heart stuttered like it had been punched with surprise and relief all at once.
It was him.
Leo.
I didn’t know why the sight of him made my pulse jump the way it did, but it did. Something tight and sudden gripped my chest and made my breath catch. His posture was still, alert but not aggressive, like he was watching rather than waiting, observing rather than preparing to intervene. The safe house image I had of him, the tactical precision, the perpetual readiness… it fit with the way he stood there, part shadow, part figure framed by trees.
Without thinking, I slipped away from Anna. I gave her a quick, apologetic look and muttered something about needing to check on something. She nodded, eyes concerned but trusting, and that gave me the moment I needed to hurry toward him.
Curiosity and irritation curled together in my stomach. Why was he here? I had told myself weeks ago that he wasn’t supposed to hover over me like some overbearing guardian angel who didn’t understand boundaries. I told myself that I could manage my own life, my social navigation, my party plans. But seeing him in the distance, like he was waiting for something I couldn’t yet define, made all those self‑affirmations wobble like a flickering light.
I crossed the grass in long, purposeful strides, arms crossed over my chest before I even reached him.
“So what,” I said the second I was close enough that the wind in his hair and the tension in his shoulders were plain, “protecting me now means following me around campus?”
He turned his head slightly, meeting my gaze with that calm neutrality he seemed to wear like armor. “Just checking in,” he said. His voice was smooth, but there was an edge that suggested that “checking in” was shorthand for something less casual.
I folded my arms tighter and let out an exasperated breath. “I’m trying here. I’m working hard to blend in, make friends, plan this party that feels like I’m juggling landmines, and your presence,” I waved a hand vaguely in the direction of campus, “makes me stand out. Not in a good way. In a weird, mercenary‑shadow next to me way.”
He blinked, once, like he was measuring my tone rather than my words. There was a pause, a soft breeze that rustled through the leaves above us, and then I saw it: his attention flick to something behind me. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that look. It was the look of someone who noticed everything without needing to react to it.
Just then, a woman walked by on the nearby path, not in any hurry but with enough confidence that she looked like she belonged wherever she was. She paused when she noticed Leo and me talking, eyes lingering on his profile with a kind of open appreciation that made my stomach drop into a weird mix of flare and jealousy I wasn’t ready to label.
“Evening,” she said in a voice that was smooth and flirty, like she expected a response. Her smile was slow, calculated, and she didn’t look like she was leaving immediately. She lingered a moment too long.
I watched her eyes before I realized I was the one who felt the prickling heat of irritation. I blinked, annoyed in a way that felt too visceral, and snapped, “Keep walking. Get the hell out of here.”
The woman blinked, startled by the sudden sharpness in my tone, and then she moved on with a glance over her shoulder that was equal parts surprise and reconsideration. I watched her go with my teeth clenched before I turned back to Leo.
He regarded me with a slow smirk, that half‑curved smile that suggested he found my reaction entertaining more than excessive. He didn’t judge. He just observed, like that was a neutral position and not one layered with implication.
“Is someone… jealous?” he asked, voice level and teasing, as though he had read something in my expression before I did.
My breath caught—not because of the question, but because of the way his eyes held mine without flinching. My cheeks heated, but I was quick to recover, too quick perhaps, as though I had rehearsed this kind of denial a million times already.
“Jealous?” I scoffed, testing the word like it was an accusation I didn’t deserve. “Of that? Please.”
He raised a brow, just the tiniest fraction, and I felt the tension thicken between us again, not in a hostile way this time but in that winding tug of attention and confusion that had become far too familiar.
“You’re my dad’s friend,” I said, voice a little too quick, a little too defensive. “It’s not like you’re my type or anything.”
I meant the words to be firm, to categorize and define the distance between us like some neat boundary. But they came out rushed, protective, as though they were saying something other than what I wanted them to mean. I stood there, arms still crossed, pulse ticking up in that restless way where adrenaline and awkwardness did not make good company.
Leo’s gaze didn’t shift. His expression didn’t mock. If anything, he looked slightly amused at my discomfort, but not in a way that felt belittling. Just observant, like someone quietly taking in the emotional weather rather than being swept up in it.
I turned abruptly then, an instinctive barricade against the surge I didn’t want to navigate in public, in broad daylight, on campus ground where anything I said could be overheard or misconstrued or turned into some sensation I didn’t ask for. The tension in my chest felt too close, too loud, and the last thing I needed was to dwell on why the woman’s attention had sparked something in me or why Leo’s subtle smirk had unsettled me more than it should.
“Stop lurking, Leo. It’s creepy,” I said, my voice steady even if my pulse was not.
Without another word, I pivoted and began walking back toward the main campus, each step measured and firm like I was asserting my autonomy with every footfall. My heart was racing, not with fear, but with a kind of confusion that I didn’t have a label for yet. I had told myself a hundred times that he was just a friend of my father’s. That there was no reason for me to feel anything beyond gratitude and maybe mild irritation.
But something in my chest hammered with every step toward the student crowds, and I had no idea why. Not really. Not fully. Not yet.