Brett and Anderson nearly bowled her over.

The two of them came barrelling around the corner like a pair of over-caffeinated rhinos who'd just discovered fire, faces flushed the color of cheap merlot, eyes bulging with the kind of panic usually reserved for men realising the condom broke nine months ago.

They shoulder-checked her hard enough to make her stagger, didn't even toss back the obligatory "sorry" that civilised wankers at least pretend to feel, and kept thundering down the hall like the devil had scheduled a performance review.

Absolute wankers!

Delilah smoothed her rumpled uniform with the calm dignity of someone mentally adding names to a very slow-burning shit list.

Those two had been at it all afternoon—sprinting through corridors, kicking open classroom doors, hunting someone or something with the frantic energy of virgins on prom night who'd heard a rumour about an unlocked janitor's closet.

Whatever meltdown they were chasing, it wasn't hers to babysit.

She had a date with her locker, and the thought alone stretched a smile across her face that felt alien, almost painful, like flexing a muscle that had atrophied under years of professional-grade sneering.

A real, unguarded smile.

Because of him.

She snorted softly while spinning the combination lock, replaying the afternoon in filthy high-definition: the fire pit lounge, his hands sliding under her skirt with the confident ownership of a man who'd decided she was his new favorite sin, the way he'd kissed her slow and deep like he was memorising the taste of her guilt before it could ruin everything.

And before that—the talking.

Actual words, strung together without armor or agenda. Him admitting, plain as day, that he'd chosen to drown the past in lust rather than let revenge fester until it ate him hollow.

"I'd rather be consumed by lust than destroyed by hate," he'd meant, like it was the most obvious life choice in the world. No theatrics, no brooding monologue—just raw, almost embarrassing honesty about the starving thing in his chest that wanted to fuck instead of fight.

Delilah shook her head, a quiet laugh escaping. Respect.

Real, grudging respect for someone who could just say what he wanted instead of wrapping it in the usual Paradise games of fake smiles and sharpened knives.

But the guilt slithered in anyway, cold and familiar as an old hangover.

How do you erase ten years of calculated cruelty in three weeks?

Fine—let's be generous. Three weeks since she'd noticed the shift, since the scrawny charity case had morphed into this devastating creature with violet eyes that made her thighs clench involuntarily and her brain blue-screen like a cheap laptop watching porn.

Three weeks to overwrite a decade of me being an absolute bitch.

If someone had done to her what she'd done to him, she'd nurture that grudge like a prize orchid—watering it daily with fresh humiliation, pruning the weak memories, letting it bloom black and poisonous until it strangled everything else.

Give me a year, five, a lifetime—I'd still be plotting creative ways to ruin their sleep.

Yet here she was, heart racing because the boy she'd helped break at seven years old had grown into a man who could wreck her with a single look.

She'd watched her mother haul that sobbing, freshly orphaned kid through the Maxton doors. Seen his red-rimmed eyes, his shaking hands, the hollow face of someone whose entire world had been gutted overnight.

And her response?

Second punch of the day.

Danton threw the first—always the fists with him—but Delilah delivered the words. The sneer. The "what are you crying about, charity case? At least you'll be getting free food and roof."

Seven. Fucking. Years. Old.

She hadn't stopped for a decade. Had sharpened every remark, honed every cruelty, until three weeks ago when she'd looked—really looked—and felt her carefully armoured heart stutter like a drunk trying to start a lawnmower.

Then, in a move so brazen it deserved its own medal for delusion, she'd begged him to let her in.

Just because he is beautiful now. Powerful now. Fuckable now. Am I that shameless?

As if the past decade hadn't happened. As if she deserved anything warmer than the contempt she'd spoon-fed him since elementary school.

And Phei—my gorgeous, impossible idiot—has said yes to me.

Had kissed her like she mattered. Touched her like she was precious instead of poisonous. Made her feel things that didn't have polite names.

How the hell was she supposed to carry that weight without buckling? How was she supposed to look at him and not see the ghost of that broken seven-year-old she'd helped shatter?

Mercifully, when they were tangled together he never let her drown in it. Kept her anchored in skin and heat and the present, as if he understood that guilt was a luxury neither of them could afford right now.

Maybe he did it on purpose. Maybe that was just who he has decided to become instead of getting buried and consumed by revenge?

She didn't care. Not in this moment. All she cared about was the promise he'd murmured against her throat: "Check your locker after last period. I'm leaving a surprise for you."

Her fingers shook—actually shook—as she yanked the door open.

There.

A small cotton drawstring bag, tucked innocently between textbooks like it wasn't about to ruin her in the best possible way. And beside it—something else. Something that made her pulse spike hard enough to taste metal.

She reached—

"Sis."

Delilah jolted like someone had jabbed her with a cattle prod, spinning and shoving the bag and its mysterious companion into her school bag in one clumsy, guilty quick scramble.

Sienna stood there, cool as a mortuary slab, wearing the same flat expression she'd patented at twelve and refused to retire since.

"Drive me home," Sienna said. Not a question. Never a question. "I have things to do."

Delilah's heart was still trying to punch its way out of her chest. Fuck. Has she seen? Has she—

But Sienna's gaze was the usual arctic blank, giving away less than a tax return. Impossible to tell if she was bored, irritated, or mentally drafting legislation to ban emotions.

Probably all three, with a side of mild contempt.

Delilah exhaled, slow and shaky. "Fine. Just… give me a second."

Sienna's eyes narrowed a fraction—the Sienna equivalent of raising an eyebrow and demanding an explanation. Then she clearly decided whatever drama Delilah was marinating in wasn't worth the calories and glanced at her phone instead.

Gods, Delilah loved that about her sometimes.

Loved that she could be clutching evidence of whatever filthy, fragile thing was blooming between her and Phei, and Sienna would simply blink, scroll, and treat her like a mildly incompetent taxi service.

Perfect.

She slammed the locker shut, grabbed Sienna's free hand—the one not already flying across the screen—and started towing her toward the car park.

Sienna allowed it without comment.

The bag bumped against Delilah's hip with every step, the secret inside pressing like a second heartbeat.

She was burning with impatience.

Every corridor felt endless, every second a theft from the moment she could finally be alone and discover what he'd left her.

A note? A token? Something sweet enough to make her chest cave in—or something filthy enough to make her ruin her knickers before she even reached the car?

She didn't know.

She needed to.

"You're walking fast," Sienna observed in the tone of someone reading a weather report for a city she didn't live in.

"Am I?"

"Yes. It's annoying. I have short legs."

"You're the same height as me."

"My legs are proportionally shorter. Medical fact."

"That's bollocks."

"Are you a doctor?"

"Are you?"

Sienna just looked at her.

Delilah sighed, slowed down slightly, and kept her hand wrapped tight around the strap of her bag.

Soon.

She'd be home soon.

And then she'd finally get to see what the devil had left in her locker.

The car eased out of Ashford's parking lot with all the urgency of a hearse on valium, and Delilah's brain was already sprinting ahead, fixated on the cotton bag nestled in her purse like a live grenade wrapped in lingerie.

All she could think about was getting home, slamming her bedroom door, and finally discovering whatever filthy little promise Phei had tucked inside.

"He's different."

Delilah blinked hard enough to risk whiplash. She glanced sideways.

Sienna had actually lowered her phone—an event rarer than a solar eclipse in Paradise—and was staring out the window at the perfectly trimmed hedges rolling past like she was watching paint dry on a rich person's lawn.

"Who?"

"Phei." Sienna pronounced the name the way a pathologist might label a particularly interesting tumour. "He's different now."

"I… yeah. Understatement of the bloody century."

"Not obviously. Specifically." Sienna turned, and for once the usual glacial blankness in her eyes had thawed into something almost pointy. "Three weeks ago he was furniture to everyone. Barely registered. Now Sierra Montgomery and Maddie Whitmore are clawing each other's extensions out in the group chat like he's the last functional vibrator on earth. Horny. Teenagers."

Delilah's hands strangled the steering wheel.

The group chat.

Christ, the group chat.

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