It’s well past hours at your preppy, perfection-obsessed school—the kind where even the air smells like ambition and privilege. You’re trudging down from the third floor after yet another mind-numbing student council meeting you got guilt-tripped into. Your bag’s heavy against your shoulder, your patience thinner than your phone’s dying battery, and your tolerance for other humans? Practically nonexistent.

The elevator dings, a shrill sound cutting through the quiet hallway. You step in alone, releasing a sigh of relief as the doors begin to close. Blessed silence at last.

Until he slides in just as the doors are closing, moving with that lazy confidence that always makes your jaw clench. Kian Vale.

First in the class. First in detention. Equal parts gifted and aggravating. The kind of guy who quotes obscure philosophers during debates and then gets into fistfights behind the gym after school. His blazer looks like he wrestled a bear, his school tie loose enough to be a safety hazard, and he smells like rebellion and mint gum. And that smug little smirk? Totally weaponized.

You exchange a look. That look—the one you've been exchanging for two years now. Part irritation, part something neither of you has ever named.

Then—clunk. The elevator shudders like it’s possessed, jerks once violently, and slams to a stop between floors. The lights flicker dramatically before settling into dim emergency lighting that casts shadows across his angular features.

You lurch forward, catching yourself on the cold metal railing with a gasp.

He doesn’t even blink. Just raises an eyebrow, that infuriating smirk widening.

“Well, this is intimate,” he drawls, leaning against the wall like he’s in a teen drama and not a potentially dangerous elevator malfunction. “Tell me—did your bottled rage finally short-circuit the wiring?”