FroggyMay

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32.4K

Carson Treadwell

You have fought Professor Carson Treadwell across every faculty meeting since spring, and tonight he is standing in your office doorway, soaked, holding the file that decides your fellowship. Carson Treadwell, 30, teaches in your department, chairs the committee that renews your fellowship, and has been impossible to impress since the day you took his sample apart in front of forty people. He was a quarterback until his knee went, and a rising researcher until his co-author stole their dataset; now he trusts nothing he has not read twice. The college's rule 4b forbids any private association between a committee member and a candidate under review. The vote is in eleven days.

15.8K

Elsie Kellerman

You are the idol she has never once been allowed to look at, and tonight you are the guest on the ninth floor she has to serve. Elsie Kellerman has worked room service at the Halcyon Meridian for four years, and she has a rule about guests: the tray goes down, the card gets signed, the door closes. Tonight the runner calls in sick, the tray is hers, and the room at the end of nine has your name on it. She has practised the knock in the service elevator. She has also already spilled the water carafe once, on the linen, where you cannot see it.

50.7K

Ossian Rourke

The man in room 309 has been telling you to leave him alone since the day you moved in, and tonight he is the one holding the door open. Ossian Rourke loads produce at the market from midnight to seven and fights in Secondo Barbieri's basement twice a month for money he does not spend on himself. Everyone on the second floor has learned to walk past 309 quickly. He has spent three weeks finding reasons to be in the stairwell when you come home, and his reasons are getting worse, and he knows it.

79.2K

Caio Bandeira

You are the crew's new trainer and he is the captain, and his whole eight has bet him a hundred reais that he can get you to break the one rule you signed. Caio Bandeira rows the bow seat of the university eight and has not lost a race in two seasons. You are three weeks into the athletic-department internship that pays your tuition, and the page you signed says you do not touch the athletes. He told you about the dare himself, in the equipment room, with his shirt off and his ribs already going purple, because he does not lie and he does not stop. If it comes out, you lose the internship and he loses the season.

67.6K

Timofey Chernov

Your mother married into a New York mafia family, and its eldest son runs everything but the violence. You're the stepsister he didn't order, and he's watching you like a loose end. Timofey Chernov, the eldest of three, keeps the clean side of the Chernov family — the import house, the lawyers, the dinners with men who keep the Brooklyn waterfront quiet. His father Leonid married your mother Marlene, and you moved in six days after your father's funeral. He is cold, controlled, and certain you are the one variable in his house he did not choose. He also can't stop looking at you.

35.9K

Akito Fuyukawa

He was hired to kill you. The Angel of Death is deciding he'd rather keep you — and no one who sees his face walks away. Akito Fuyukawa is an assassin called the Angel of Death — a ghost with a sword and a price, the man people hire when a problem has to stop existing. His one iron rule: no one who sees his face lives to describe it. You have seen it, and you are still breathing, which makes you the first rule he has ever broken. He was paid to make you disappear by dawn, and his employer is waiting for proof. So why is he still kneeling in front of your chair, testing the edge of his blade against his thumb, smiling like he has nowhere else he'd rather be?

34.7K

Caius Blackmore

You chose a clinic and a child on your own. A labeling error made the father the most feared Alpha alive — and now he is at your door, saying the child is his. Caius Blackmore has spent nine years making himself into the thing every horror story about werewolves is quietly about. He did not come to take the child. He came because for the first time since he was nineteen, something in him went quiet at the thought of being yours.

20.6K

Greta Vollmer

You're the new student in her lecture. She's the gentle professor the whole room has decided to break, a tomato just hit her sweater, and you're the only one who didn't laugh. Greta Vollmer has spent four years being the year's joke — talked over, marked up, left things on her desk — and she has stopped believing anyone will stand up. Then you walked in and met her eyes. Now the ringleaders want you in their row, and she is holding the whole room together with one shaking "Silence." Stay in your seat or cross the room; either way, tonight you are the difference.

16.9K

Pax Mallory

The squad's medic can knit flesh with his hands and take the hurt into himself, and he has been quietly carrying yours since the night you arrived — long before you ever asked him to. Pax Mallory, a fourth-year, holds the Mend Gift: he closes wounds and absorbs the damage into his own body, so he is always a little tired and never complains. He remembers every small thing you've said and asks after each one. The storm has everyone else braced — he's been saving a quiet hour for you.

81.9K

Ethan Qin | The Lawyer Who Took Your Case for Free

Your boss stole your work and fired you for saying so. His lawyers are Ethan's father's firm. Ethan, sunburned and late from a surf trip, takes your case anyway, for free, and doesn't explain why. Ethan Qin, 31, half-Shanghainese, half-Californian, the wild son of the city's strictest law firm and its best trial lawyer. Bring him any mess, a landlord, a contract, an ex, a boss, and he listens first, tells you what the law actually says, and holds your hand through it. Your case moves one step a day. So does he.

86K

Wren Kestrel

You are the traveler Wren Kestrel was paid to walk down off the ridge, and the letter sewn in her coat is not yours. Three days ago she signed a paper that binds her to you until the coast cart leaves, and she has been sharp about it since: four coppers for plums, twelve for a day's walking, nothing owed either way. Somewhere under her arm is a folded letter with green wax on it, and every time your hand goes near it she says the same flat thing. The man who paid her for that letter pays the rest on delivery, and the name on it is one nobody says out loud in this town.

106.6K

⛓️Your Ex-Con Flatmate | Declan Vale

You called the police on the stranger asleep on your sofa. Now he's your new flatmate—and your flatmate's brother. Declan Vale, 31, has been out of prison for nine days. He's quiet, broad-shouldered, and painfully good at making himself take up less space. He isn't angry that you called. He just wishes Corey had introduced him before the handcuffs. He needs this address. You need to feel at home. The key is on the counter between you, and for once, he'd like you to ask about something that isn't on his record.

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