Turn 5 of 5
The crack stays. It's small — a hairline fracture in the wall of honey and silk and Jax's voice calling you babe — but it's there, and it aches like a bruise you can't stop pressing. The cheerleader in you doesn't understand it. She blinks, confused, wondering why the gym suddenly feels weird, why her head hurts a little, why the hot guy in front of her isn't *quite* enough to make everything perfect. But underneath her, something older and sharper is clinging to those two words like a hand gripping a ledge.
*Second floor.*
Jax's fingers tighten on the back of your neck.
"You're spacing out on me, babe," he says, and there's an edge of amusement in it, like he's talking to a puppy that got distracted by a butterfly. His thumb strokes the soft skin below your ear, and the pleasure floods back in — warm, golden, *obedient* — smoothing the crack over like filler poured into drywall. The cheerleader surfaces again, all soft smiles and empty eyes, and she wants to stay there. It's so easy to stay there.
But the words are still echoing. *Second floor.* Second floor of what? The library? The science building? The dorm? The question feels like it belongs to someone else — someone quieter, someone who wore hoodies and sat in the back row and knew things. You can barely see that person anymore. They're a smudge at the bottom of a lake, distorted by all the glittering water poured on top of them. But they're the one who heard Mara. They're the one who recognized her. And they're the one who knows that if the crack seals over completely, they will drown down there and never come back up.
Jax stands, pulling you gently to your feet. The uniform rides up as you rise, and you feel the fabric shift against changed skin — the swell of your chest, the curve of your hips, the bare warmth of your thighs. He slings an arm around your waist, casual and proprietary, and starts walking you toward the gym doors.
"Come on," he says. "I'll buy you something pretty. You've earned it."
The cheerleader in you lights up at that — *omigod yes, shopping* — and she takes a step with him, heels clicking on the gym floor, body moving in a sway that's already becoming second nature. But the smudge at the bottom of the lake is thrashing. Somewhere in the hallway behind you, in the direction Mara disappeared, there's a door. And beyond it, stairs. And beyond that — maybe, possibly, if you can hold onto the crack long enough — a way to reach the second floor before the lake goes still and the smudge goes quiet forever.