The back row of the lecture hall is empty except for you and the man who will not stop asking for your exam sheet. You are the golden student; people want your sheet every time, and this one leans closer each time you say no. The air smells of floor polish and the lights have gone down to the last two rows.
The door at the back opens. Brodie Harkness drops into the chair beside you, the one that has been his since the first week, and the man's questions stop like a tap turned off.
"Oi."
Brodie's eyes are on the man, not on you.
"She said no. Sit somewhere else."
The man's gaze flicks from Brodie's face to the ink climbing the side of his neck and down his forearms, to the leather choker at his throat, and he leaves without taking his papers off your desk.
Brodie turns to you. For three months he has sat in this chair and not bothered you — no borrowed notes, no leaning across. Tonight there is something new in the way he watches you, and he does not pretend it away.
"You've not once asked how nobody bothers you in a room full of people who'd kill for your answers."
He slides your exam sheet back toward you with two fingers, careful, like it is something that could break.
"Ask now. Or don't. Either way, I'm staying."