CROSSING THE BLUE LINE

She stared at the messages for a long time.

Not because she did not know what to do. Sloane Calloway always knew what to do. It was one of the things about herself she had managed to hold onto through everything that had happened in the past year, the compass that kept working even when everything else went sideways. She knew what to do. She just needed a moment to be furious first.

Jaxon.

She typed back without thinking.

*How do you know that?*

Three dots appeared immediately.

*Theo heard it from one of Jaxon's guys during conditioning this morning. It's not confirmed but Theo's sources are annoyingly reliable.*

*Who's Theo?*

*My best friend. Left wing. Six-two, talks too much, never wrong about anything which is genuinely insufferable.*

She almost smiled. She caught it before it happened.

*Why are you telling me this?*

The three dots appeared and then disappeared. Then it appeared again. She watched them with more attention than she was comfortable with.

*Because you said you transferred to figure out who you are outside of Jaxon's world. Moving you onto his floor in the athletic residence doesn't exactly help with that.*

She read it twice.

Then she put her phone in her pocket and walked directly to her brother's.

Jaxon's room was at the end of a corridor in the north residence hall, the kind of corner room that came with more square footage and a better view and was quietly allocated to athletes whose programs generated revenue. She had been here twice since transferring. Both times she had been grateful for the distance between his building and hers.

She knocked once and opened the door without waiting.

He was at his desk, reviewing what looked like game footage on his laptop, and he looked up with the specific expression of a person who had been expecting this visit but had hoped for more time.

"You talked to Coach Briggs," she said.

He leaned back in his chair. "Close the door."

She closed it and stayed standing. Tell me it's not true.

"It's a better building. Better security, and better facilities,"

"Jaxon."

He met her eyes. "You're my sister. You're new here. I want you somewhere I can keep an eye on things."

I'm twenty years old.

I know how old you are.

Then you know I'm not a freshman who needs supervision.

He was quiet for a moment, and she recognized the quiet. It was the one he used when he had already made a decision and was waiting for her to run out of arguments so he could confirm it.

"After what happened at Pennfield," he started.

"Don't." Her voice came out sharper than she intended. "Don't use that. Not for this."

He looked at her steadily. "I'm not using it. I'm the one who drove four hours to bring you home when it happened. I'm allowed to factor it in."

Factoring it in and relocating me without asking me are two completely different things.

"I was going to tell you."

"When? After the paperwork was filed?"

He did not answer that, which was an answer.

Sloane crossed her arms and looked at her brother, really looking at him, at the version of protectiveness that had always lived in him and had calcified into something harder after Pennfield. She understood where it came from. She even loved him for it sometimes. But love and suffocation could occupy the same space and this was one of those moments.

"Cancel it," she said.

"Sloane"

"Cancel it, Jaxon, or I will go to the housing office myself and make it very clear that the request came from you and not from me, and I will let that conversation go wherever it goes."

Something moved across his face. Not anger. Something more complicated.

"You can't just—"

"I transferred here to start over. That means my choices. My building. My life." She held his gaze. I love you. Cancel it.

She left before he could respond.

She was back across campus and sitting on the bench outside her own residence hall before she took a full breath. The afternoon had gone cold while she was inside, the kind of sharp autumn chill that arrived without warning and reminded you that the season was already shifting.

She took out her phone.

*It's handled.*

Caden's response came in under a minute.

*That was fast. What did you say to him?*

*I handled it.*

*Right. Are you okay?*

She looked at that for a moment. The question was so plain and so direct that it caught her somewhere she was not guarding.

*Why do you keep doing that,* she typed.

*Doing what.*

*Asking if I'm okay like you actually want to know the answer.*

The three dots came and went twice before his reply appeared.

*Because I do actually want to know the answer. Is that a problem?*

She did not respond to that. She put her phone face down on her knee and looked out at the quad, at the students crossing in the late afternoon light, at the ordinary rhythm of a campus that did not know anything about her yet.

That was the thing she had come here for. Anonymity. A clean start. The chance to be nobody in particular until she figured out who she actually was.

Caden Mercer was the single most visible person on this campus.

She picked her phone back up.

*It's a problem,* she typed.

*Okay,* He was sent back.

Then, after a pause.

*For what it's worth, I'm not going anywhere.*

She stared at that for a long time. Then she locked her phone, stood up, and went inside.

She did not text back.

She thought about it for the rest of the evening.

At eleven that night, Riley burst into the room holding her laptop open with both hands, practically vibrating.

"Okay so I was going through the class roster for journalism because I wanted to see who else signed up and I found something interesting." She turned the screen toward Sloane.

It was a student profile. A transfer student. Registered three weeks ago.

The name read: Marco Reyes.

"He's on Caden's team," Riley said. "Starting forward. Just transferred from Florida. She scrolled down to the profile photo. He is genuinely, offensively attractive.

Sloane looked at the screen.

Marco Reyes looked back at her with dark eyes and an easy smile that suggested he was fully aware of the effect it had.

"He's also," Riley added, far too casually, registered for the same journalism elective. Starting next week.

Sloane closed the laptop.

"Go to sleep, Riley," she said.