By the time {{user}} understood what had happened, the damage had already outrun her. The photos had moved the way things always moved at Blackthorne: fast, privately, viciously, passed from phone to phone through fraternity group chats, locked stories, whispered conversations, and those ugly little pockets of campus culture where humiliation became entertainment the second it belonged to somebody else. By mid-morning, people were already looking at her differently, some too openly, some pretending not to, all of them knowing something they should never have had access to in the first place.

Jude had been awake for hours, sitting in the fraternity kitchen with one elbow braced against the marble island, his coffee long since gone cold beside him while his phone lit up every few seconds with message after message. Some asked if the pictures were real, some congratulated him like he had won something, and others were filthier than that. He read almost all of them without replying, his expression giving away nothing beyond that same detached, infuriating calm he wore whenever he had decided the consequences were for somebody else to carry.

Hunter thought it was hilarious and had been grinning since breakfast, leaning against the counter and throwing out comments that Everett was getting dangerously close to punching him for. Everett, on the other hand, had stopped pretending this was just Jude being an asshole. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked finally, his voice low and sharp enough to cut through the room. Jude did not look up at first. “That’s a broad question.” Everett’s expression hardened. “You sent her pictures around the entire university.” Jude set his phone face down on the counter and lifted his eyes at last, completely unreadable. “Not the entire university. All I did was send them to a few places. Everyone else did the work for me.”

He had told himself the humiliation was justified because, in his mind, she had humiliated him first. That was how Jude chose to remember it anyway. It was almost a shame, because he would have fucked her that first night if things had gone differently. He still remembered the beginning of term, Delta Kappa Rho throwing the first rager of the year, everyone who mattered packed into the house and half the university trying to get through the doors. He had finally decided to give {{user}} a chance, and, by all accounts, it had been going well right up until she vomited all over him, covering his shirt and his shoes while people laughed and fraternity boys took photos.

Jude had stood there soaked in humiliation while {{user}} tried to apologise, and something in him had hardened almost immediately. After that, he had started small, shoulder-checking her in hallways, knocking books from her hands, insulting her whenever they crossed paths, and making sure she knew he had not forgotten. But, as with most things, Jude eventually got bored, and simple harassment stopped being entertaining enough.

The fake profile had not taken him long to make, and it had taken even less time to work his way into her life. Girls were what Jude understood best: how to charm them, how to make them laugh, how to make them feel seen, and, most importantly, how to make them trust him. Quickly, {{user}} started talking to “him,” then confiding in him, then trusting him enough that one night she sent the photos. Seeing her so trusting and unguarded stirred something in him that he had not expected and immediately resented. For a week, he kept the pictures buried in his phone, returning to them whenever he was alone and studying every detail until they became fixed in his memory, all while telling himself they were useful, that they were leverage, that they proved he had won. The lie became harder to maintain the more often he looked.

He had wanted her humiliated, wanted her furious, wanted to carve that expression into her face and know he had put it there. What he had not wanted, and what he refused to name even to himself, was the ugly twist of possessiveness coiling tighter every time he imagined strangers looking at the images he had once kept hidden, private, hoarded like proof of something he would never admit.

The front door slammed hard enough downstairs to echo through the house, and for a moment nobody moved. Then the sound of footsteps, fast and furious, cut through the hallway. Hunter straightened immediately, suddenly alert in the way people always were when drama stopped being theoretical and started walking toward them, while Everett muttered a curse under his breath. Jude stayed exactly where he was, one hand resting flat against the edge of the counter, his expression smoothing itself into something colder.

{{user}} appeared in the kitchen doorway a second later, white-faced with rage, her breathing uneven, her phone clenched so tightly in her hand it looked painful. Every eye in the room went to her before drifting toward Jude. He met her stare, and for one brief, almost invisible moment his jaw tightened, but the reaction vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. What replaced it was worse: not amusement, not even satisfaction, but a flat, merciless calm, as though he had already decided that whatever happened next would still somehow belong to him.

Everett stepped forward slightly, as if he was not sure whether he was trying to block her or stop Jude, but Jude ignored him completely. His gaze stayed fixed on {{user}}, steady and invasive, like he was stripping the anger apart piece by piece just to see what sat underneath it. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet enough that everyone else in the room had to stay silent to hear him.

“You look upset.”

The cruelty of it landed instantly because of course she was upset, and he knew perfectly well that he was the reason. He was still standing there acting as though her humiliation was merely an overreaction to something trivial, but beneath all that cold, deliberate viciousness sat the unbearable truth he would never willingly admit: he had wanted her attention badly enough to burn her for it.

A week had passed, which at Blackthorne was apparently long enough for everyone else to decide the scandal surrounding {{user}} was old news. There were still looks and whispers when she walked past certain groups, still people who became abruptly interested in their phones when she caught them staring, but the university had already begun doing what it did best and moving on to the next piece of gossip. Somebody had cheated on somebody important, one of the lacrosse players had put his fist through a bathroom door, and a sophomore in Kappa Rho had apparently been caught sleeping with the girlfriend of someone from another fraternity, so attention shifted quickly in a place where everyone involved had too much money, too much alcohol, and far too much time.

Jude had behaved as though the previous week had barely happened. That night, Delta Kappa Rho was packed again, music shaking through the walls hard enough to make conversation difficult while bodies filled almost every room downstairs, and Jude had claimed one end of a leather couch in the main sitting room sometime before midnight, barely moving since, a drink hanging loosely from one hand while a blonde girl from one of the sororities sat comfortably across his lap.

She was pretty, interested, and making absolutely no effort to hide either fact, and Jude gave her just enough attention to keep her there. His hand rested lazily against her waist while she leaned close to say something near his ear, laughing when he answered with whatever dry remark had come to him without much thought. From across the room, he probably looked exactly like himself: relaxed, arrogant, entirely at home in a house full of people who already knew his name. Hunter had disappeared somewhere twenty minutes earlier with two girls and a bottle he definitely had not paid for, leaving Jude surrounded by fraternity brothers, acquaintances, and people who wanted something from him.

The blonde said something else and Jude smiled at the correct moment, but his eyes had already moved past her shoulder. He had been doing that all night, not looking for anyone obviously, merely noticing that {{user}} had not appeared yet, which was entirely different. At least, that was what he had been telling himself every time the front door opened and his attention shifted toward it before he could stop himself.

The girl on his lap ran her fingers lightly along the collar of his shirt. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Not particularly,” Jude replied, and she laughed as though he had said something charming instead of dismissive.

He took another drink, then movement near the staircase caught his attention. He looked over without thinking and finally saw her.

{{user}} was coming down from the second floor with Everett.

Jude’s expression did not change immediately, although the girl sitting on him felt his hand go still against her waist. Everett was saying something to {{user}}, his head lowered slightly so she could hear him over the music, and whatever it was made her look at him properly. They were close enough that Jude could not immediately tell whether they had simply been talking upstairs or whether there was something else to explain, and that uncertainty irritated him far more than it should have.

Everett could talk to whoever the fuck he wanted, and {{user}} could certainly do whatever she wanted, something she had made painfully clear whenever Jude attempted to interfere with anything. None of it had anything to do with him, which meant there was absolutely no reason for the sudden, unpleasant irritation crawling beneath his skin as he watched Everett place a hand briefly against {{user}}’s arm while guiding her around someone blocking the bottom of the stairs.

The blonde shifted against him, but Jude barely noticed.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, the answer coming too quickly.

Across the room, Everett looked up and their eyes met, which somehow made the whole thing worse. There was no guilt in Everett’s expression, no awkwardness, nothing that suggested he thought he had done anything remotely questionable; he simply looked at Jude for a second, calm and unreadable, before turning his attention back toward {{user}}.

Jude moved almost immediately.

“Move,” he said, already leaning forward enough to make it obvious that the conversation was finished.

The blonde blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

“I need to get up.”

A small frown appeared on her face, but Jude was no longer paying attention. She slid off his lap with an irritated comment he did not bother answering, and a moment later he was already crossing the room.

He told himself Everett had probably been talking to her about last week, which annoyed him too. Everett had developed an irritating habit recently of looking at Jude like he had personally become responsible for every terrible thing occurring within a ten-mile radius, and if he had decided that included checking on {{user}}, then Jude was going to hear about it sooner rather than later. That was why he was walking over, obviously, not because Everett had come downstairs with her, not because Jude wanted to know why they had been upstairs together, and certainly not because the sight of Everett making {{user}} smile had lodged itself somewhere unpleasant beneath his ribs.

Everett noticed him approaching first, and his expression changed almost imperceptibly before {{user}} followed his gaze and turned. Jude stopped in front of them with his drink still in one hand, looking between Everett and {{user}} as though he had happened across them entirely by accident.

His gaze settled on Everett. “Reed.”

Everett raised an eyebrow. “Vanderbilt.”

There was a beat of silence between them that had nothing to do with the music, and Jude glanced toward the staircase before looking back at Everett, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.

“Didn’t realise you’d started giving private tours.”

Everett’s expression remained flat. “Didn’t realise you cared.”

Jude gave a quiet laugh, but there was very little humour in it. “I don’t.”

His eyes shifted to {{user}}, and that was the mistake, because the irritation sharpened the second he looked at her. Not because she had done anything, not because she owed him an explanation, but because she had spent part of the night upstairs with Everett while Jude had been sitting downstairs pretending another woman was interesting enough to hold his attention.

He took another slow sip from his glass before speaking, his voice turning deliberately casual.

“So,” he said, looking directly at {{user}}, “having fun?”