Chapter 3: The Cold Shoulder
Leo’s question hung in the air between us, a simple offer that felt anything but. The noise from the party below was a dull, throbbing bassline, vibrating up through the floorboards into the soles of my feet. The cool night air from the open window brushed the back of my neck, a stark contrast to the heat pooling low in my stomach—a heat that was part tequila, part defiance, and a sickening, unwanted fraction of something else entirely.
I could feel him. Even here, a floor above, tucked away on this landing, I could feel the specific gravity of Harry Styles in the building. It was a prickling at the base of my skull, a current in the charged air. I’d spent the last hour carefully cultivating this moment with Leo, building a wall of easy smiles and political theory between myself and the living room below. Every laugh I’d tossed back, every time I’d leaned in to hear Leo over the music, had been a brick in that wall. I’d felt Harry’s eyes on me the entire time, a laser scope tracking my movements. Let him watch.
“A running partner,” I repeated, my voice softer than I intended. I looked up at Leo. His eyes were brown, warm and steady, like good whiskey. There was no storm in them, no hidden, turbulent history. It was refreshing. It was terrifying. “I’m a pretty fast runner. And I don’t look back.”
“Sounds like my kind of pace,” he said, and his hand, which had been resting on the windowsill, shifted. His fingertips grazed the back of my hand, a question.
The touch was a spark, but the wrong kind. It was pleasant. Uncomplicated. It didn’t scorch. It didn’t send a memory of brick and bruising and bitten-off curses firing through my nervous system. For a second, I hated him for that. I hated that he wasn’t him.
That thought alone made me lean into it. I turned my hand over, letting my fingers lace loosely with his. A decision. A statement. “Okay,” I said.
A real smile broke across his face, transforming it from thoughtful to genuinely handsome. “Okay.”
The crash from downstairs was violent and immediate—the unmistakable sound of glass shattering against a hard surface, followed by a wave of startled shouts and then a sudden, dead hush. The music, a pulsing hip-hop track, stuttered and died.
Leo’s head jerked toward the stairs. “What in the—”
But I knew. The knowledge was a cold stone dropping through my chest. The pricking at my skull had become a screaming alarm.
“Probably just a keg stand gone wrong,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction. I pulled my hand from his. “We should… maybe go check it out.”
I didn’t wait for his agreement. I moved toward the staircase, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The descent felt like walking into the mouth of something. The second-floor hallway was crowded with people peering over the railing down into the living room, their whispers a sibilant hiss.
“…totally lost it…”
“…just grabbed it out of Zayn’s hand and launched it…”
“…where’s Kendall?”
I pushed through them, my gaze dropping to the scene below.
The epicenter was clear. The flat-screen TV was unharmed, still glowing with a paused video game, casting a ghostly blue light over the wreckage. At the foot of the mahogany bar, a galaxy of glass glittered on the hardwood floor. It was the bottle. The expensive tequila bottle Zayn had been pouring from. The one I’d taken my shot from.
And standing in the middle of the glittering shrapnel, chest heaving, curls falling wildly over his forehead, was Harry. His knuckles were white, clenched at his sides. A faint trickle of blood dripped from a cut on his thumb. Zayn stood two feet away, his expression one of pure, unadulterated shock, his body angled as if he’d just jumped back. Liam was beside him, a hand on his chest, murmuring something low and urgent.
Harry wasn’t listening to Liam. His eyes were scanning the upper hallway, a wild, green searchlight. They locked onto me.
The air left my lungs. His gaze wasn’t pleading now. It was raw, stripped, blazing with a possessive fury so potent it felt like a physical shove. This was the other Harry, the one he kept buried under charming smiles and casual shrugs. The one from the alley. The real one.
“Harry, man, what the hell?” Niall’s voice, always a balm, cut through the silence. He stepped into the danger zone, his golden brow furrowed in concern. “You’ve cut your hand. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Stay out of it, Niall,” Harry ground out, his voice low and gravelly, but it carried in the quiet room. He didn’t look away from me.
Kendall materialized then, seeming to glide from the shadows near the kitchen. She looked perfectly composed, a slight, bewildered frown on her flawless face. She reached for Harry’s bleeding hand. “Baby, you’re hurt. Come on.”
He shook her off without even glancing at her. The rejection was so public, so brutal, that a fresh wave of whispers erupted. Kendall’s face remained a mask, but her eyes flickered—first with confusion, then with a dawning, cold understanding. Her own gaze lifted, following the line of Harry’s stare until it found me on the stairs.
I felt Leo move up behind me, a solid, warm presence at my shoulder. “That’s your friend?” he asked quietly.
“An old acquaintance,” I said, the words tasting like ash. My armor felt thin, brittle.
Harry started moving. He stalked across the living room, ignoring the glass crunching under his sneakers, ignoring Liam’s low command to stop, ignoring everything but the staircase. The crowd on the stairs parted for him like the Red Sea.
I didn’t run. I held my ground, one hand on the banister. Leo shifted slightly, placing himself partially between me and the approaching storm. The gesture was protectively masculine, and it made something sick twist in my gut.
Harry took the stairs two at a time. He stopped on the step just below ours, putting him almost at eye level with me. The scent of him—sweat, anger, and that stupid, wonderful sandalwood soap—wrapped around me. Up close, the fury was even more terrifying. It was a live wire, snapping and sparking in the space between our bodies.
“We need to talk,” he said. His voice was a taut wire, vibrating with the effort of control.
“No, we don’t,” I replied. My own voice sounded distant, calm. A miracle.
His eyes flicked to Leo, then back to me. The possessiveness in them deepened, mixed with a searing betrayal. “Now, Nikki.”
“You’re bleeding on the carpet,” I observed coldly.
He glanced at his hand as if noticing the cut for the first time. He made a fist, squeezing fresh beads of blood. “I don’t give a fuck about the carpet.”
Behind him, I saw my squad assembling at the foot of the stairs. Spencer’s arms were crossed, her law-student brain clearly calculating liability. Aria’s hand was pressed over her mouth. Hanna looked ready to charge up and throw a punch. Emily was holding her back, her face pale.
“Well, I do,” I said. “It’s a nice carpet. And you’re causing a scene. Go back to your girlfriend. She looks worried.”
He flinched. “Stop it.”
“Stop what? Having a conversation with a friend? You told me to be quiet, Harry. You didn’t specify about all conversation.” I let the venom drip, sweet and lethal. I turned to Leo, forcing a smile that felt like cracking glass. “Leo, this is Harry. Harry, this is Leo. He’s in poli-sci. We were just discussing border policy as a manifestation of collective societal anxiety. Fascinating stuff.”
I’d never seen a human being look so utterly eviscerated by a sentence. The fury in Harry’s eyes splintered, revealing the wounded, frantic thing beneath. His gaze darted between Leo’s polite, wary face and my fake smile.
Leo, to his credit, didn’t miss a beat. He extended a hand. “Hey, man. Tough game last week. That free kick in the eighty-ninth minute was unreal.”
Harry stared at the offered hand as if it were a venomous snake. He didn’t move. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Leo slowly lowered his hand.
“You’re really doing this,” Harry said to me, his voice dropping to a private, shattered register meant only for my ears.
“Doing what?” I asked innocently. “Making new friends? Yes. It’s what people do at parties. You should try it. Though maybe work on the whole ‘breaking bottles’ thing as an icebreaker first. It’s a bit aggressive.”
A low, wounded sound escaped him, almost a groan. It went straight through me, a physical pain. I locked my knees to keep from swaying.
“Nikki,” he breathed, my name a prayer and a curse.
It was the way he said it. The same way he’d sighed it into my neck in the alley. The dam inside me, the one holding back the flood of everything I felt—the hurt, the longing, the stupid, undying want—threatened to burst. I couldn’t let it. If it broke now, I’d drown in front of everyone.
I turned my back on him. Fully. Deliberately. I faced Leo, placing my body as a barrier between myself and the wreckage of Harry Styles. I looked up at Leo, pouring every ounce of false warmth I could muster into my eyes.
“You mentioned that paper on the visual rhetoric of campaign posters,” I said, my voice miraculously steady. “I’d love to read it. Maybe we could grab coffee sometime and you could walk me through it?”
I felt Harry go perfectly still behind me. The pressure of his gaze was like a weight, pushing down on my shoulders.
“Yeah,” Leo said, his eyes soft with understanding and something like sympathy. He got it. He might not have known the history, but he understood the performance. “I’d like that. How about tomorrow? The Grind, at ten?”
“Perfect,” I said.
The shuffle of feet. The creak of a stair. I didn’t turn. I kept my eyes on Leo’s kind, uncomplicated face, listening as the heavy, uneven footsteps descended. The crowd below seemed to exhale collectively. Murmurs started up again, the music tentatively resuming, a lower volume now.
I watched over Leo’s shoulder as Harry reached the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t look back up. He walked straight past Kendall, who reached for him again only to be ignored. He pushed through the front door and vanished into the dark night, Liam and Zayn exchanging a grim look before following him out.
The victory was instant. And hollow. A vast, echoing hollow opened up in the center of my chest where the defiant fire had been. My hands were trembling. I clasped them together to make it stop.
“You okay?” Leo asked quietly.
“Peachy,” I whispered. The word cracked.
Hanna was the first one up the stairs. She barreled past Leo and wrapped me in a hug so tight it forced the air from my lungs. “Holy shit,” she muttered into my hair. “You just murdered him. With words. I have never been more proud and more terrified of you in my life.”
The others gathered around—Aria, Spencer, Emily, Louis and Niall now too, their faces a blend of concern and awe.
“That was…” Spencer searched for the word. “Strategic. Brutally effective. Legally questionable if he decides to sue for emotional distress.”
A small, shaky laugh escaped me. It sounded like a sob.
“He won’t,” Louis said. His usual mischief was gone, replaced by a grave seriousness. He looked at me, really looked. “He’s in hell, Martinez. You just showed him the flames.”
“Good,” I said, but it lacked conviction.
“Come on,” Emily said, her arm sliding around my waist. “Party’s over for us. Let’s get you home.”
I glanced back at Leo, who was hanging back, giving me space with my friends. “I’m sorry,” I said to him. “That was… a lot.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. He offered a small, understanding smile. “Coffee tomorrow. Ten. If you still want to.”
I nodded, unable to form more words. Hanna and Emily began steering me toward the back door, avoiding the main living room and the lingering, curious stares.
The night air was colder now, sharp. It cleared the tequila fog but did nothing for the deeper, more confusing haze within. We walked in a silent, protective pod back toward our block of apartments.
“I meant it, you know,” I said abruptly, my voice too loud in the quiet street. “The coffee. With Leo.”
“We know,” Aria said softly, taking my hand.
“I’m moving on. For real this time.”
“We know,” Spencer echoed.
But they didn’t. They couldn’t. Because I could still feel the ghost of his gaze on my back, the phantom pressure of his hands on my hips. I could still taste the victory in my mouth, and it tasted like bile and broken glass.
When I got to my apartment, I didn’t turn on the lights. I went straight to my closet, opened the door, and stared at the black leather jacket balled on the floor. The scent of him rose from it, faint but undeniable.
I didn’t pick it up. I didn’t cry. I just stood there in the dark, the hollow in my chest expanding until I felt like a shell. I had won the battle on the stairs. I had wielded his own cowardice against him with surgical precision.
So why did I feel like I was the one who’d been shattered?
So why did I feel like I was the one who’d been shattered?
I kicked the closet door shut, but the scent lingered in my dark bedroom—sandalwood and stupid, beautiful regret. I stripped off the crimson top, tossing it toward my hamper where it missed and pooled on the floor like blood. My skin felt hypersensitive, buzzing with the phantom imprint of Leo’s steady hand and the searing brand of Harry’s stare. I climbed into bed, the sheets cold. Sleep was a country I couldn’t reach. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the bottle exploding, glass catching the TV’s blue glow like falling stars. I saw the cut on his thumb, the blood welling up. A stupid, domestic injury. He’d probably need a tetanus shot.
My phone lit up on the nightstand. A text from Spencer.
Spencer: Debrief. My place. Noon. Bring sustenance or face my wrath.
A second text followed, from Hanna.
Hanna: I’m bringing mimosas. This is an orange juice and champagne situation. Do not argue.
A weak smile touched my lips. They were my life raft, my reality. I texted back a thumbs-up emoji, then stared at the ceiling until the grey dawn light seeped around the edges of my blinds.
The Grind was all exposed brick and the hiss of steam wands. I got there at 9:55, my stomach a knot of nerves I refused to acknowledge. I’d worn a soft grey sweater and my hair down, a shield of color. I ordered a black coffee and snagged a small table near the window, positioning myself so I could see the door. This was a strategic meeting. A forward march. Leo walked in at 10:02, a leather messenger bag slung across his chest, a faint smile on his face. He looked like a normal person. A person who hadn’t witnessed a public emotional demolition the night before.
“Hey,” he said, sliding into the chair opposite me. “You made it.”
“I said I would.” I took a sip of coffee. It was bitter, bracing. “Thanks for… last night. For playing along.”
He shrugged, unpacking a laptop. “Seemed like you needed an exit strategy. I was happy to be the designated driver out of there.” He paused, his brown eyes meeting mine. “For the record, the offer to talk about border policy was real. The coffee, too. You don’t have to perform for me, Nikki.”
The directness threw me. It was refreshing. And terrifying. “I’m not performing.”
“Aren’t you?” He asked it gently, without accusation. He opened his laptop and pulled up a PDF. “But that’s okay. We can start with posters. See where it goes.”
We talked for an hour. Actually talked. He showed me his paper, which was smart and nuanced and talked about fear as a visual language. I told him about my thesis idea, about haunted spaces in Latina Gothic literature, about how places can hold memory like a stain. He listened. He asked questions that weren’t just polite, but engaged. It was easy. It was nice. My shoulders slowly unhitched from around my ears.
My phone buzzed face-down on the table. Once. Then twice in quick succession. I ignored it.
“You can get that,” Leo said, nodding toward it.
“It’s nothing important.”
“The way you just stiffened says otherwise.” He closed his laptop. “It’s fine. Really. We can call this a successful first coffee. No bloodshed, no broken glass. A win.”
Guilt, warm and unpleasant, washed through me. “Leo, I—”
“Don’t apologize.” He stood up, slinging his bag back over his shoulder. “You’ve got stuff going on. I get it. I’d still like to see you again, when the dust settles a bit. But I’m not interested in being a prop in someone else’s drama. Even for someone as compelling as you.”
He said it with a kind finality, a boundary set without malice. He left money for his coffee on the table. “Text me if you want to talk about books. Or anything else. When you’re actually present.”
And then he was gone, leaving me with the sour dregs of my coffee and the crushing understanding that he was right. I’d used him. I’d sat here, my body at this table, but my mind was back in that frat house, on that staircase, locked in a silent war with green eyes. I’d brought the drama with me like a toxic cloud. I flipped my phone over.
Three texts.
Unknown Number: It’s Liam. We need to talk. Please.
Unknown Number: It’s about Harry. He’s in a bad way.
Unknown Number: He won’t talk to anyone. He left the house last night and hasn’t come back. Just answer me, Nikki.
A cold finger traced my spine. I stared at the words. He’s in a bad way. I saw the bottle shattering. The blood. The hollow, devastated look on his face as I turned my back. A part of me, the part that still remembered the boy from senior year who’d lent me his calculus notes, twisted in concern. The larger, angrier part screamed that this was just another manipulation, a play for sympathy through a mediator.
My thumbs hovered over the screen. I typed out a response, deleted it. Typed another.
Me: That’s not my problem, Liam. You’re his best friend. You handle it.
I hit send before I could rethink it. The response was immediate.
Liam: He’s my brother, yeah. But you’re the one he blew up his life for. He’s at the old spot. The quarry. I think he might do something stupid.
The quarry. A place from high school, a forbidden swimming hole out past the edge of town where we’d all gone one reckless summer night. Harry had driven, his hand resting on the gear shift between us, our fingers accidentally brushing. The memory was a physical ache.
“Damn it,” I whispered to the empty coffee shop.
I didn’t tell the girls where I was going. I just told Spencer I had to run an errand and borrowed her car, ignoring her suspicious frown. The drive to the quarry took twenty minutes, the scenery shifting from campus quaint to scrappy industrial fringe, then to dense, barren woods. The late autumn trees were skeletal, clawing at a grey sky. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
This was a mistake. A colossal, monumental mistake. Every logical cell in my brain shouted it. He’d made his choices. He’d told me to be a secret. He’d chosen the easy, polished path. His spiraling was a consequence, not my responsibility. But Liam’s text echoed. Do something stupid. The image of Harry’s bloody hand, the reckless fury in his eyes as he’d thrown the bottle—it wasn’t the anger that scared me. It was the despair underneath it. I knew that flavor of despair. I’d been tasting it for days.
I pulled off the dirt service road onto the overgrown lot. Spencer’s sedan bottomed out with a scrape that made me wince. Only one other vehicle was there: Harry’s black Jeep Wrangler, parked haphazardly, the driver’s door hanging open like he’d just stumbled out. The quarry lake stretched out below, its water a flat, gunmetal grey, reflecting the bleak sky. It was freezing, the wind biting through my sweater.
I saw him then. He was sitting on the jagged limestone ledge, the one we’d all dared each other to jump from years ago. His back was to me, shoulders hunched against the cold. He was just sitting there, staring at the water, a lone, still figure against the vast, empty landscape. He didn’t turn as my car door slammed. He didn’t move as my footsteps crunched over the gravel and frozen weeds.
I stopped about ten feet behind him. The wind whipped my hair across my face. “Liam texted me.”
He didn’t respond. His silence was worse than shouting.
“Harry. Get away from the edge. This is pathetic.”
That got him. His head dropped forward, a harsh laugh barking out of him that was swallowed by the wind. “Pathetic. Yeah. That’s the word for it.” His voice was raw, shredded.
“Get in your Jeep. Go home. This isn’t a scene from some movie.”
“What do you care?” He still didn’t turn. “You made it abundantly clear last night what I am to you. An old acquaintance. A stain on a nice carpet.”
“I care because I don’t want your death on my conscience!” The words tore out of me, louder than I intended, echoing slightly off the quarry walls. “Is that what this is? A guilt trip? You’re going to sit on a cliff so I have to come rescue you and we can have some big dramatic moment? It’s manipulative and transparent and I’m not falling for it!”
Finally, he moved. He pushed himself to his feet, slow and unsteady, and turned to face me. The sight of him stole the breath from my lungs. He looked wrecked. Truly, honestly wrecked. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, his face pale and stubbled. He wore the same grey hoodie from the library, now stained with dirt and what looked like dried blood. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his whole body trembling, though whether from cold or emotion, I couldn’t tell.
“You think this is for you?” His voice was a broken thing. “You think I’m out here for you? That’s the fucking problem, Nikki! Everything is always for someone else. For my dad, for the scouts, for the fraternity, for the goddamn picture-perfect narrative. I break a bottle and it’s a scandal. I feel something real and it’s a threat. I came out here because it’s the only place I could think of that wasn’t for anybody. Where no one expects anything from me. I came out here to be alone with the fact that I have ruined the only thing that ever felt real to me because I’m a coward.”
The confession hung in the frigid air between us, stark and undefended. No charm. No deflection. Just a naked, ugly truth.
“You did ruin it,” I said, my own voice trembling now. “You had me. In that alley. You had all of me. And you chose to call it a mistake. You chose to walk back into your curated life and tell me to be quiet.”
“I know!” he shouted, the sound raw and painful. He pulled his hands from his pockets. They were a mess. The cut on his thumb was angry and red, but his knuckles were worse—scraped and bruised, the skin torn. “I know what I did! Do you think I’ve slept? Do you think I can look at anything without seeing you? I got in my Jeep last night and I drove and I punched the steering wheel until I couldn’t feel my hands because feeling that was better than feeling what’s in my chest! It’s a fucking black hole, Nikki. And I put it there.”
I took an involuntary step forward. “Your hands…”
“They’re fine. They’re nothing.” He looked at them with disgust, then back at me. The anger bled out of him, leaving pure exhaustion. “You were right. About everything. I am stuck. I am a coward. I am so terrified of wanting you that I tried to destroy it before it could destroy me. And it didn’t work. It just destroyed me anyway.”
The wind howled across the quarry, a lonely, desolate sound. I wrapped my arms around myself. “What do you want from me, Harry? Absolution? Permission? You want me to say it’s okay?”
“No.” He took a step toward me, then stopped, as if afraid to come closer. “I don’t deserve okay. I want you to know it wasn’t a mistake. It was the least mistaken thing I’ve ever done. I want you to know that every time I’ve touched her since, I’ve felt sick. I want you to know that ‘everything’ wasn’t just a word I threw out in the library. It’s what you are. You’re everything. And I am so sorry that I’m the guy who’s too fucked up to handle it.”
Tears, hot and sudden, blurred my vision. I blinked them back furiously. “Your sorry doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t un-send the text. It doesn’t un-hold her hand in the quad.”
“I know.” Another step. We were close enough now that I could see the frantic pulse in his throat, the tear tracks that had cleared paths through the grime on his cheeks. “It doesn’t change the past. It can’t. But I’m telling you now, with no one else here, no audience, no expectations… I’m done being stuck. I’ll quit the team. I’ll drop out of the frat. I’ll tell my dad to go to hell. I’ll tell Kendall it’s over today, right now, publicly. I will burn it all down.”
“Don’t.” The word left my lips before I could stop it. “Don’t do that. Don’t make me the reason you torch your life. That’s not freedom. That’s just another kind of trap, and the guilt would eat me alive. I won’t be your ruin, Harry.”
He stared at me, his green eyes searching mine. “Then what?” he whispered, the question laid bare. “What’s left? If I can’t have you, and I can’t live that lie anymore… what’s left?”
I had no answer. The wind sliced between us, a physical representation of the impossible gap. The guy in front of me wasn’t the cocky star athlete or the frantic boy in the library. This was someone fractured, at the end of his rope, offering me the broken pieces with no promise he could put them back together. And the terrible, undeniable truth was that I still wanted them. I still wanted him.
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. My breath clouded in the air. “I need to go.”
He didn’t try to stop me. He just stood there, a monument to his own devastation, as I turned and walked back to the car. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped the keys twice before I could get the door open. I didn’t look back as I pulled away, kicking up gravel. In the rearview mirror, I saw him slowly sink back down onto the limestone ledge, his head dropping into his ruined hands.
The hollow feeling was gone. It had been replaced by a roaring, chaotic tempest—fear, pity, anger, and a longing so deep it felt like sickness. He’d offered to burn his world down for me. And the most messed-up part? A secret, shameful part of me had wanted to say yes.
I drove straight to Spencer’s. They were all there, the remains of mimosas and bagels on the coffee table. The conversation died when I walked in. They took one look at my face and knew.
“Where were you?” Spencer asked, her voice cautious.
“The quarry,” I said, my voice flat.
Hanna shot to her feet. “He asked you to meet him there? That emotional terrorist! I’ll kill him!”
“He didn’t ask. Liam texted. Said he was in a bad way.” I sank onto the arm of the sofa, all the energy draining from me. “He was.”
I gave them a clinical, abbreviated version. The open Jeep door. Him on the ledge. The shredded hands. The confession. I left out the part where my heart had felt like it was cracking open. When I finished, the room was silent.
“Shit,” Louis finally said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “He really went full Romeo.”
“It’s not romantic,” Emily said sharply. “It’s a crisis. He needs help, not an audience.”
“What did you say to him?” Aria asked softly.
“I told him not to burn his life down for me. That I wouldn’t be his ruin. And then I left.” I looked at my friends, feeling utterly lost. “Was that wrong? Should I have… I don’t know, thrown him a lifeline?”
Spencer sat down beside me, her logical demeanor softening. “There’s no right answer, Nik. You can’t be responsible for his mental health. You set a boundary. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“It feels cruel,” I whispered.
“It would be crueler to give him hope if you have none to give,” Zayn said from the corner. He’d been quiet. “He made his bed. He doesn’t get to make you lie in it with him out of guilt.”
The logic was sound. It was what I needed to hear. So why did every cell in my body feel like it was vibrating with wrongness? My phone buzzed again. A news alert. Then another. Hanna’s phone chirped. Then Spencer’s.
Hanna looked at her screen, her eyes going wide. “O