Chapter 4: What Priya Saw
The walk back to Henderson Hall should have taken twelve minutes. Maya made it in seven.
She didn't remember most of it. The campus blurred past her in fragments—a flash of red brick, the wet gleam of fallen leaves, the distant thump of bass from someone's dorm room window. Her legs moved on autopilot, muscle memory carrying her through the quad and past the library while her mind stayed trapped in that lecture hall, pinned beneath the weight of what had just happened.
Her jeans were still damp. She could feel it with every step, a slick, mortifying reminder that she had come apart in the back row of a biochemistry lecture while Professor Lanahan explained allosteric inhibition. Her underwear was ruined. Her notes were a disaster. And somewhere in the chaos of her escape, she had grabbed Jaxon's pen instead of her own—a cheap black ballpoint with teeth marks on the cap, tucked behind her ear like a trophy she hadn't earned.
The elevator was broken. Of course it was.
Maya took the stairs two at a time, her backpack slamming against her spine with each stride. The hallway on the third floor stretched before her like a gauntlet, and she could already hear the muffled thump of Priya's music through their door—some Bollywood track with a driving bassline that usually made her smile.
She didn't smile now. She fumbled for her key, dropped it, cursed under her breath, and finally shoved the door open.
Priya was exactly where Maya expected her to be: cross-legged on the bottom bunk, a fan of tarot cards spread across the duvet like she'd been waiting for this moment her entire life. Her waist-length black hair was loose around her shoulders, and her bangles jingled as she looked up.
One glance at Maya's face. That was all it took.
"You look like you just got fucked in a library," Priya said flatly.
Maya's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"Or a classroom. Lecture hall, maybe." Priya tilted her head, studying her with the clinical precision of a psychology major who had seen too much and judged too little. "Your glasses are fogged. Your ponytail's crooked. And you've got that thing happening with your neck where you look like you're trying not to cry or come again."
"Priya—"
"Spill."
Maya dropped her backpack on the floor and collapsed onto the desk chair. It creaked beneath her weight, and she buried her face in her hands, and for a long moment, the only sound was the tinny echo of the Bollywood track and the distant hum of the fluorescent lights.
Then she told her. All of it.
The tiramisu. The bike ride. The way Jaxon had looked at her in the parking lot, his voice rough and honest and devastating. The lecture hall. His hand on her knee. His fingers sliding past her waistband while Lanahan droned on about feedback inhibition. The slow, patient circles that had shattered her composure. The curl of his fingers inside her. The way he'd lifted his hand to his mouth afterward and sucked it clean like he was savoring the last bite of something sweet.
She left out the part where she hadn't stopped him. Where she hadn't wanted to stop him.
Priya listened without interrupting, which was unusual. Her bangles had gone still, her hands folded in her lap, and her dark eyes tracked every word with the focused intensity of someone cataloguing evidence.
When Maya finally fell silent, Priya let out a long, slow breath.
"Holy shit."
"I know."
"No, I mean—" Priya shook her head, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Holy shit, Maya. That's the most action you've gotten in the entire time I've known you, and it happened during a biochem lecture. That's not just chaos. That's art."
"It's a disaster."
"It's a masterpiece." Priya scooped up her tarot deck and began shuffling, the cards whispering against each other in a rhythmic cascade. "You're telling me this guy—this tattooed, motorcycle-riding, bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold guy—showed up at your date, scared off the most boring man on campus, fed you tiramisu, and then finger-fucked you in front of three hundred people while you tried to take notes on metabolic regulation?"
"He didn't—we didn't—" Maya's face burned. "It wasn't in front of anyone. We were in the back row."
"Semantics." Priya pulled a card from the deck and laid it on the bed. The Tower. Lightning striking a crumbling spire, figures falling into the abyss. "That boy is a wrecking ball, Maya. And you're standing right in his path."
"I didn't ask for this."
"No one ever asks for the Tower." Priya tapped the card with her fingernail. "It just shows up and destroys everything you thought you wanted."
Maya stared at the image. The lightning. The chaos. The people tumbling into darkness.
"That's not—" She swallowed hard, her throat tight. "That's not what happened."
"Isn't it?" Priya's voice softened, losing its teasing edge. "You had a plan. Kyle was part of the plan. Stable, kind, academically driven—the whole future-proof package. And now Kyle's gone, your notes are ruined, and you're sitting here with Jaxon's pen behind your ear like you forgot it was there."
Maya reached up. Her fingers brushed the ballpoint, still warm from her skin. She'd forgotten. She'd completely forgotten.
"I didn't stop him," she said quietly.
Priya went still.
"In the lecture hall. I didn't stop him." Maya pulled the pen from behind her ear and stared at it. The teeth marks on the cap. The cheap plastic clip. It smelled faintly of motor oil. "I could have. I could have pushed his hand away or moved seats or walked out. But I didn't. I just sat there and let him—"
Her voice cracked. She pressed the pen to her palm, hard enough to leave a dent.
"I wanted it, Priya. I wanted him to do it. And that's the part that scares me."
The silence stretched between them, filled only by the music and the hum of the lights. Priya set the tarot cards aside and leaned forward, her dark eyes serious.
"Okay," she said. "New question."
Maya looked up.
"Not how do you get rid of him," Priya said. "Because clearly, you don't want to get rid of him. You've had a hundred chances to shut that door, and you keep leaving it cracked open."
"I don't—"
"Shut up, I'm not done." Priya held up a hand. "The question is: what are you going to do when he comes back for more? Because he will, Maya. That boy is not the type to take one taste and walk away. He's going to want the whole meal."
Maya's stomach flipped. The whole meal. She thought of Jaxon's eyes in the lecture hall—dark and hungry and utterly unrepentant. She thought of the way he'd whispered against her ear, his breath hot on her neck. Taste amazing, straight-A.
She thought of what he'd look like on his knees.
"I don't know," she whispered.
"Good." Priya leaned back against the wall, a small smile playing at her lips. "That means you're finally being honest with yourself."
Maya sat in the desk chair until her legs stopped trembling. Then she reached for her planner—the color-coded one, the one that mapped out her entire semester in neat squares of blue and green and red. She flipped to the current week and found Friday's entry.
Dinner with Kyle. 7 PM. Trattoria Bella Vita.
The words looked pathetic now. Optimistic. She stared at them for a long moment, then crossed them out with a red pen, pressing hard enough to tear the paper.
The Tower. A wrecking ball. Standing in the path.
She closed the planner and set it aside. Somewhere in the hallway, someone laughed. The music changed—something softer, slower, a melody that wrapped around her like a question she couldn't answer.
Maya pulled out her phone. No texts from Kyle. No texts from anyone. She hadn't expected any, but the emptiness of the screen still stung.
Then she noticed it. A notification she'd missed in the chaos. An email, flagged as high priority, from the university registrar.
Subject: Update to Your Student Account.
She tapped it open, and her heart stopped.
Dear Ms. Bennett,
This is a reminder that your transfer credits from Northfield Community College have not yet been fully processed. To ensure your standing in the biochemistry program, you must submit the requested documentation by Monday at 5 PM.
Please contact the Office of the Registrar immediately if you have any questions.
Maya read it three times. Then she read it a fourth time, just to be sure.
The documentation. The transcripts she'd mailed three weeks ago. The ones that had been sitting in her dorm room for a week before she'd finally sent them, because she'd been so busy, so overwhelmed, so distracted by the chaos of a boy on a motorcycle who didn't know how to leave her alone.
She checked the tracking number she'd saved in her notes app. The package had arrived at the registrar's office on Wednesday.
It had been signed for by someone named R. Delgado.
But the email said the credits hadn't been processed.
Maya stared at the screen, and the cold knot in her stomach tightened into something harder. Something worse.
She'd mailed the transcripts. She was sure of it. The confirmation email, the tracking number, the signature—it was all there. So why was the registrar saying otherwise?
A memory surfaced, sharp and unwelcome. Wednesday afternoon. She'd been rushing to meet Kyle at the library, balancing her coffee and her notebook and her phone. The envelope had been sitting on her desk, stamped and addressed, and she'd grabbed it on her way out.
But she hadn't gone straight to the mailroom. She'd stopped at the coffee cart near the science building. And then she'd run into someone—someone with jet-black hair and a crooked grin and a leather jacket that smelled like rain.
Jaxon had been leaning against the cart, drinking something that looked like black coffee, and he'd asked her what she was in such a hurry for.
She'd told him. For the transcripts. For the registrar. For the whole future-proof plan.
And he'd laughed.
"Always a plan, straight-A," he'd said. "Always a checklist. You ever think about what happens when the checklist runs out?"
She'd ignored him. She'd walked away. She'd dropped the envelope in the mail slot and gone to meet Kyle.
The envelope.
The mail slot.
Maya's blood turned to ice.
She pulled up her notes app and scrolled to Wednesday's entry, her fingers shaking. And there it was, in her own neat handwriting: Mail transcripts to registrar. Done.
Except she hadn't written "Done."
She'd written "Mailed."
And now, staring at that single word, she realized she hadn't actually watched the envelope hit the bottom of the mail slot. She'd been distracted. She'd been annoyed. She'd been thinking about Jaxon's laugh and the way his eyes had tracked her across the quad.
She'd dropped the envelope. But she hadn't seen it fall.
Maya grabbed her backpack and started tearing through it. No envelope. She checked her desk, her drawers, the pile of papers on her side of the room.
Nothing.
She checked the trash can. Empty, because Priya had taken it out yesterday.
She checked under her bed, behind her bookshelf, in the pockets of every jacket she owned.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she nearly dropped it. A text message from a number she didn't recognize.
But she recognized the area code. Local. A 917 prefix she'd seen before, scrawled on the corner of a receipt from the bike shop where Jaxon worked.
The message was short.
"Looking for something, straight-A? Check your mail slot. I think you missed."
Maya stared at the screen. The words blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again.
Jaxon hadn't just sabotaged her date. He hadn't just distracted her at the coffee cart.
He'd taken her transcripts. And he'd known exactly what that would do to her.
The cold knot in her stomach melted into something molten. Something furious.
"He took them," she whispered.
Priya looked up from her tarot cards. "What?"
"He took my transcripts. My transfer credits. He—" Maya's voice climbed. "He stole my mail. He sabotaged my entire semester. For what? For fun? To prove some point about how I'm too uptight?"
"Wait, back up. Jaxon stole your mail?"
"At the coffee cart. On Wednesday. I told him I was mailing my transcripts, and he—" She broke off, remembering the way he'd laughed. The way his eyes had flicked to the envelope in her hand. The way he'd called her a "checklist girl."
The mail slot. He'd been standing right next to it.
"He took them," she repeated. "And now the registrar's saying they never got them. Which means I could lose my standing in the program."
Priya set down her cards. Her expression had shifted from amusement to something sharper. Something protective.
"That's not just chaos," she said quietly. "That's sabotage."
"Yes."
"Are you going to confront him?"
Maya stood up. Her legs were steady now. Her hands were steady. The molten thing in her stomach had hardened into something like resolve.
She grabbed her jacket. "Where does he work? The bike shop?"
"Cole's Custom Cycles. On Fifth." Priya raised an eyebrow. "You're going now?"
"I'm going to get my transcripts back."
"And then what?"
Maya paused at the door. The pen was still in her hand—Jaxon's pen, the one with the teeth marks on the cap. She shoved it into her pocket.
"Then I'm going to decide where I stand."
She stepped into the hallway, and the door clicked shut behind her. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Somewhere in the distance, someone was playing the same Bollywood track she'd heard in the dorm, muffled and distorted.
Maya walked toward the stairs, and she didn't look back.
The cold air hit her face like a slap, and Maya welcomed it. She cut across the quad at a pace that bordered on a jog, her sneakers slapping against the wet pavement, her breath fogging in the October chill. The campus was quiet for a Friday night—most students were holed up in their dorms or already drunk at the bars on Fifth Street—and she was grateful for the emptiness.
She didn't want witnesses.
Cole's Custom Cycles sat at the corner of Fifth and Monroe, wedged between a laundromat and a pawn shop that had been "going out of business" since before Maya transferred to Ridgewood. The storefront was all black metal and grimy windows, with a hand-painted sign that had faded to a dull rust color. A single bulb burned above the door, casting a sickly yellow glow over the sidewalk.
Through the window, she could see him.
Jaxon was bent over a motorcycle—not his Ducati, but something older, something with chrome pipes and a dented fuel tank. He wore a gray hoodie with the sleeves shoved up to his elbows, and his tattooed forearms were streaked with grease. A wrench dangled from his fingers, and he was humming something under his breath, some tuneless melody that she couldn't quite hear.
He looked up when the door chimed.
For a fraction of a second, his face was open. Unguarded. That crooked grin spread across his mouth like he'd been expecting her, like he'd known she'd come.
"Straight-A," he said, straightening up. "Didn't think I'd see you so soon."
Maya crossed the shop floor in six strides.
She didn't think. She didn't plan. She just let her hand swing, hard and fast, and the crack of her palm against his cheek echoed through the empty garage like a gunshot.
His head snapped to the side. His wrench clattered to the concrete floor. For a long, suspended moment, the only sound was the hum of the overhead lights and the distant rumble of traffic on Fifth Street.
Then Jaxon laughed.
He laughed and touched his cheek, where a red mark was already blooming, and his eyes found hers with something that looked dangerously close to delight.
"Damn." He worked his jaw, testing the damage. "I thought making you come would've got a different reaction. But I like your kinkiness, straight-A. Guess I should've known you'd be a scratcher."
Her vision tunneled. White-hot at the edges, narrowing to the shape of him.
"You think this is funny?" Her voice came out low and shaking. "You think any of this is a joke?"
He tilted his head, still grinning. "Depends on the part."
"The transcripts, Jaxon." She stepped closer, close enough to smell the oil on his skin and the cigarettes on his breath. "Where are they?"
His expression flickered. It was subtle—a micro-shift, a tightening at the corners of his eyes—but her whole body had tuned itself to him over the past few weeks, and she caught it.
"Transcripts?" He reached down and picked up the wrench, turning it over in his hands. "What transcripts?"
"Don't." Her voice cracked on the word. "Don't you dare pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. You took them. At the coffee cart on Wednesday. I told you I was mailing them, and you—" She broke off, her throat closing. "You followed me to the mail slot. You distracted me. And then you took my envelope."
He didn't answer. He just watched her, turning the wrench over and over in his grease-stained fingers.
"I got an email from the registrar today." She pulled out her phone, shoving the screen toward his face. "They never received my transfer credits. I'm at risk of losing my standing in the biochemistry program. My entire future, Jaxon. Everything I've worked for. And you—" Her voice broke again, and she hated herself for it. "You did this. You did this on purpose."
The grin had faded from his face. Not completely—the ghost of it still lingered at the corner of his mouth—but something serious had crept into his eyes. Something that looked almost like respect.
"You really think I'd steal your mail?"
"I really think you'd do anything to prove a point."
He laughed again, but it was softer this time. Less sharp. "Fair."
"Where are they?"
His gaze drifted past her shoulder. Toward the workbench on the far wall, cluttered with tools and rags and a half-dismantled carburetor. Maya followed his eyes, and her hand closed around the first heavy thing she could reach.
A hammer. Rubber grip. Steel head. She didn't think about what she was doing. She just lifted it, held it over the dented fuel tank of the motorcycle he'd been working on.
Jaxon went very still.
"Whoa." His hands came up, palms out. "Easy, straight-A."
"Where are the transcripts?"
"Maya—"
"Don't 'Maya' me. Where are they?"
He took a breath. His eyes flicked from the hammer to her face to the hammer again, and something in his expression shifted. The playfulness drained out of it, replaced by something harder and more honest.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay. I have them."
The room tilted. She'd known—she'd known—but hearing it confirmed was something else entirely. Something that made her grip the hammer tighter until her knuckles went white.
"At my place." He kept his hands up, kept his voice low and steady. "I was going to give them back. I swear."
"When? After I lost my scholarship? After I got kicked out of the program?"
"Let me take you." He took a step toward her, slow and careful, like he was approaching a wounded animal. "I'll drive you to my apartment right now. You can get them back, and I'll take you home. No games. No bullshit."
"No." She lowered the hammer an inch. "Bring them to me. You get them, and you bring them to my dorm. Tonight."
He tilted his head, and that damn smirk flickered back to life. "You really trust me to bring them back to you? To show up at your door with the envelope and not... I don't know, burn it? Tear it up? Drop it in a puddle?"
Her jaw clenched. He had a point—and he knew it.
"You think I'd do that?" He spread his hands. "After everything?"
"I don't know what you'd do." Her voice was raw. "That's the problem."
Silence stretched between them, thick and charged. The hammer was heavy in her hand. The lights hummed. Somewhere outside, a car horn blared.
Jaxon let out a long, slow breath.
"Okay," he said. "Okay. New deal. I take you to my place. You get your transcripts. I drive you home. I don't say a word the whole way. I don't touch you. I don't even look at you."
"You can't not look at me while you're driving."
"Then I'll look at the road." A faint smile. "Mostly."
She wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him to bring the transcripts to her, to drop them in her mailbox, to never speak to her again. She wanted to go back to the dorm and delete his number and forget the way his fingers had felt inside her.
But she also wanted to see where he lived.
The thought surfaced before she could stop it, and she hated herself for it. For the curiosity that bubbled beneath her fury. For the part of her that wanted to know what his apartment looked like, what posters hung on his walls, what kind of sheets he slept on.
"Fine," she said.
She set the hammer down on the workbench. It landed with a heavy clunk.
"Take me to get them now." She crossed her arms over her chest, and her chin came up. "And then you drive me home."
Jaxon grabbed his jacket from a hook by the door. He didn't bother with the helmet, just swung his leg over the Ducati and kicked the engine to life. The roar filled the quiet street, echoing off the buildings.
Maya climbed on behind him.
She didn't hold on as tight this time. But she held on.
And when they pulled out of the parking lot, the wind stinging her cheeks and the streetlights smearing gold across the asphalt, she closed her eyes and let herself feel it. The speed. The cold. The warmth of his back against her chest.
She didn't know what she'd find at his apartment. She didn't know what she'd do when she got there. But for now—for this single, reckless moment—she was done making plans.