The tracing paper is already sweating under my palms when the room goes quiet.
Not quiet like focus, like everyone’s in the zone. Quiet like a storm just walked in wearing expensive shoes.
I don’t look up right away. My pencil is halfway through a line that’s pretending to be a cantilevered balcony, and if I lift it too fast, the lead will skid and take the last two hours of my life with it.
The door clicks shut. Studio chatter thins into whispers.
“Holy shit,” someone near the windows breathes. “He actually came back.”
Him.
I shade in the balcony, count my breaths, and only then let my eyes stray past the edge of my desk.
There he is.
Damian Cross is taller than the rumor, which is annoying. Rumor had him as a six-foot myth with a trust fund and cheekbones sponsored by God. In person, he’s more dangerous: navy shirt rolled at the forearms, dark slacks that definitely cost more than my rent, black hair pushed back with the kind of carelessness that only happens when you’ve never had to worry about impressing anyone.
He scans the studio like he owns it. Technically, his family probably does.
The Cross Developments logo is etched on half the campus buildings. I’ve washed enough dishes in the alumni lounge to memorize it.
Professor Hartman stands by her desk, arms folded, watching the class watch him. There’s a faint, satisfied curve to her mouth that means someone is about to be sacrificed.
He gives her a nod—cool, practiced—and sets his portfolio case down with a soft thud that still manages to sound like money.
I lower my gaze back to my drawing. Ink smudges my middle finger, my wrist aching from the night shift I just crawled out of. There’s a smear of marinara sauce on the cuff of my thrift-store cardigan; I noticed it in the bathroom mirror this morning and didn’t have time to change.
We exist in parallel universes, and the only place they overlap is right here, in this fluorescent-lit battlefield of chipboard and caffeine.
“Alright, architects,” Hartman says, snapping the silence in half. “Since the panting over Mr. Cross is disrupting oxygen flow, let’s recommence consciousness. We’re starting with pin-ups.”
The groan is collective. No one is ever ready for Hartman’s pin-ups, even if they think they are.
She glances down at her roster. “We’ll go in reverse alphabetical order today. Moore, you’re up.”
My stomach drops so fast I almost hear it.
“Already?” I mutter.
“Is there another Moore hiding under your desk?” Hartman’s gaze narrows. “You want the competition, Ms. Moore. That means you want the critique.”
Right. Competition.
The elite annual design competition. The one that could hand me tuition and a lifeboat or sink me for good. The one with the panel of outside jurors and internship offers attached like shiny bait. The one where Cross Developments has “kindly” agreed to sponsor the prize.
I slide my board onto the pin-up wall, fixing it in place with bulldog clips that have lost their spring. My hands are steady out of sheer stubbornness.
The concept is raw but honest: a community arts center retrofitted into an abandoned warehouse, punched with light wells and stitched into the street with wide, welcoming steps. It’s not perfect; the perspective on my section is a little off, and I had to choose between rendering and sleep.
Sleep lost.
I step back. Thirty pairs of eyes and one pair more scrutinize the paper like it owes them money.
Hartman gestures with her pen. “Walk us through the intent, Ms. Moore.”
I clear my throat. “The brief asked for ‘adaptive reuse responding to urban neglect.’ I took that literally. This site is two blocks from where I grew up. There’s an existing steel frame worth saving, and instead of erasing the history, I’m amplifying it. The circulation—” I trace the path with the side of my hand “—is centered on these light wells that also act as thermal chimneys for passive ventilation. The main hall—”
“Why so low?”
The voice cuts through, smooth and male, like it has a right to interrupt.
I don’t have to turn to know who it is. My spine reacts before my head does.
Slowly, I pivot.
Damian stands a little apart from the others, arms loosely crossed, expression neutral bordering on bored. His gaze is locked on my elevation.
I lift my chin. “I’m sorry?”
He steps closer, nodding toward the sketch. “Your roofline. These heights.” He taps the corner of the board with a knuckle. “You could go another two, three stories. That area’s zoned for higher density. You’re wasting vertical potential.”
There’s a rustle of interest around us. Of course the golden boy opens his mouth and it’s about height and zoning.
“Maybe I’m not trying to build a monument,” I say. “It’s a community center, not a luxury condo tower.”
His mouth curves, almost amused. “You can serve the community and still not be afraid of the sky. Right now this looks… provincial.”
Provincial.
Heat sears up my neck. I hear someone suck in a breath.
Hartman’s brow lifts, but she doesn’t intervene. Of course she doesn’t.
I force a laugh that tastes metallic. “And I suppose your idea of community is a rooftop infinity pool?”
A few people snicker. Damian’s jaw tightens just a fraction.
He glances back at the board. “If your ‘community’ has to fight for every square foot of usable space, why would you arbitrarily cap it here? Your light wells are eating volume without offering much in return. It’s… street-level thinking.”
Street-level.
He says it like a disease.
My hands curl at my sides. “Street-level is where people actually live.”
“People also live above the first floor, last I checked.” His tone is maddeningly calm. “Formally, it’s timid. You’re hugging the ground like you’re afraid of taking up space.”
My heart pounds once, hard. I look at my drawing—the careful brick texture, the open steps, the tiny figures I scribbled in at 3 a.m. so the jury would understand that this wasn’t just an object, it was a place.
“My project,” I say, each word clipped, “isn’t afraid of height. It’s aware of context. Add three stories and you’re throwing shadows on the only public park within walking distance.”
“Shadows move,” he replies. “Your opportunity won’t if you don’t reach for it.”
There’s something in the way he says it—like he’s not talking about my building anymore—that makes my breath snag for half a second.
Then I remember: this is Damian Cross. The prodigal son of a company that’s buying up half the city like it’s a game of Monopoly.
I look him dead in the eye. “Some of us don’t have the luxury of forgetting what’s already on the ground.”
Silence. A stiffness runs through the circle of students.
Damian’s gaze flickers, just once. His fingers tap against his bicep, then still. “I’m talking about design, Moore, not morality.”
“Funny how, in architecture, those two things keep sharing a wall.”
Hartman finally steps in, her heels sharp against the concrete. “Enough.” She doesn’t sound angry. If anything, she sounds entertained. “Mr. Cross, since you’re so eager to demonstrate your insight, you can put your work up next. After Ms. Moore finishes.”
A low chuckle rolls through the room. Someone whispers, “Welcome back, man,” under their breath.
I swallow, redirecting my focus to the board. Hartman asks a few more questions—about structure, code, a detail I already know is weak. I answer, defensive edges smoothed into something that sounds like professionalism.
But my skin is buzzing.
Provincial. Street-level.
As I take my drawing down, I feel a presence beside me. Not close enough to touch, but close enough to register.
“Your line weights are good,” Damian says quietly.
I blink. “Wow. High praise.”
He ignores the sarcasm. “You could push the section cut deeper. Expose the trusses. It’d make the spatial sequence stronger.”
“Didn’t realize my street-level brain could handle such sophisticated concepts.”
His lips tilt, then flatten. “That’s not what I—”
“Moore, sit,” Hartman calls. “Cross, wall.”
Saved by the tyrant.
I retreat to my seat, my cheeks still hot. As Damian moves to the front, I catch Zoe’s eye across the aisle. She mimes stabbing herself in the heart with a pen.
I suppress a grin, but it flickers, brief and traitorous.
Because as much as I want to hate everything about him, there’s no denying the electricity in the air when we argue. It’s like the lines on the page and the lines between us catch the same current.
His boards go up on the wall. Of course they do, smoothly, like they’ve rehearsed this pose a hundred times.
The studio leans forward.
His concept is a sleek, glass-and-steel intervention grafted onto a crumbling warehouse, the original brick shell stripped back to frame a luminous atrium. The roofline he accused me of timidly hugging? He’s launching off it, a stepped tower twisting with terraces and louvers.
It’s… bold. Probably illegal in half the city. Striking enough to be on the cover of a magazine if you don’t ask who gets displaced in the process.
“He’s such a show-off,” Zoe mutters under her breath when she slides into the empty stool beside mine. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I tap my pencil against my sketchbook, trying to ignore the tightness in my chest. “Just fantasizing about dropping a wrecking ball on his cantilever.”
She snorts. “That’s not the part I thought you’d want to wreck.”
I give her a look. “Zoe.”
“What? I’m just saying, if you ever want to hate-make-out with anyone, he’s—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
At the front, Hartman begins her surgical critique, slicing into Damian’s perfect axonometrics without blinking. “Your structure here is magic. Unless Cross Developments started manufacturing anti-gravity beams while I wasn’t looking?”
A ripple of laughter. Damian takes it with a practiced half-smile, but I see the way his shoulders notch slightly inward. For a second, he looks less like a golden boy and more like a guy trying not to flinch.
Interesting.
Still, I tell myself, he started it.
By the time class ends, my brain is fried and my stomach is a hollow drum. The clock over the door insists it’s only eleven, but my body swears it’s three in the morning.
“Announcement before you escape,” Hartman says as people start shoving sketchbooks into bags. The room stills. No one ever actually escapes.
She steps to the center of the room, small but somehow filling it. “As you know, this studio feeds directly into the annual design competition. This year, administration has decided to make it ‘interesting.’” The way she says interesting makes my skin prickle. “They want collaboration. So, your competition entries will be done in pairs.”
The collective groan is almost operatic.
I go cold. Pairs. No. No, no, no.
“I work better alone,” I blurt.
Hartman pins me with a look. “You work well under duress, Ms. Moore. Not the same thing.”
Someone in the back raises a hand. “Do we get to pick our partners?”
She smiles a shark’s smile. “Of course not. That would defeat the pedagogical sadism.”
Nervous laughter.
“I’ve taken the liberty of assigning pairs based on complementary strengths and glaring weaknesses.” She lifts a stack of papers. “Listen for your name.”
My pulse ratchets up with every duo she rattles off. Ethan with some first-year prodigy. Zoe with a quiet guy from the other section who she immediately side-eyes like he might be contagious.
“And finally,” Hartman says. “Moore.”
My fingers clench around the strap of my bag.
“Cross.”
The world narrows, everything else fading into a dull hiss. Someone whistles, low. Someone else mutters, “Oh, this is gonna be good.”
I feel his gaze before I see it.
Slowly, I turn. Damian stands a few desks away, arm freezing halfway through sliding a roll of trace into his tube. Our eyes lock across the mess of models and coffee cups.
His expression is unreadable for a beat, then it shifts into something coolly resigned. Like he’s used to being volunteered for things he didn’t ask for.
My stomach flips—a disorienting mix of dread and something sharp and bright I refuse to name.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.
Hartman arches a brow. “Problem, Ms. Moore?”
“Several.” I can hear my own voice shaking, so I pitch it flatter. “Our approaches are… incompatible.”
“Excellent. Growth potential.” She glances between us, like she’s measuring some invisible line. “This competition isn’t about building a pretty object. It’s about navigating power structures. If you can’t collaborate with someone you dislike, you won’t survive in this field.”
Damian speaks up then, his tone carefully polite. “With respect, Professor, partnerships at this level are usually voluntary for a reason.”
“With respect, Mr. Cross, your father doesn’t get to pre-select your teams in my studio.” There’s a flash of something almost vindictive in her eyes when she says father.
Damian’s jaw ticks. “I didn’t say—”
“Good.” Hartman cuts him off. “Then we’re done. You two are partnered for the remainder of the term and for the competition entry. You will share credit and blame. If one of you drops out, the other is disqualified.”
The words hit like a punch.
Disqualified.
My lungs seize. She might as well have chained us together at the ankle.
“Studio dismissed,” Hartman says, already turning back to her desk.
Chairs scrape. Conversations explode in little pockets around me: gossip, speculation, sympathy. I stand there, clutching my bag, feeling the floor tilt.
“Lila.”
The way he says my name—like it’s unfamiliar, like he’s trying it on for size—pulls my attention whether I want it or not.
I pivot slowly.
Damian has closed the distance between us to a few feet. Up close, he smells like some understated cologne and expensive coffee. There’s a faint line between his brows that wasn’t there during his critique.
“Before you say anything,” I start, “I’m not thrilled either.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “I was going to suggest we talk logistics. But noted.” His gaze flicks over my shoulder to where Zoe watches like a hawk. “Can we…?” He gestures toward an empty stretch of table by the windows.
Every instinct screams no. Every bill in my mother’s mailbox screams yes.
I exhale slowly. “Fine. Five minutes.”
We move to the windows. Outside, the campus is washed in late-morning light, students drifting between buildings like they have all the time in the world. Must be nice.
I set my bag down, crossing my arms over my chest—not to shield myself, but to keep from fidgeting.
“So.” I tilt my head at him. “Logistics.”
He leans against the table edge, casual, but his fingers grip the wood a little too tightly. “We don’t have to like each other to win.”
“Wow. Motivational poster material.”
A hint of a smile. “We both want the same thing. The competition. The exposure.”
“Exposure doesn’t pay my tuition.” The words slip out before I can stop them.
His eyes sharpen. “The scholarship?”
“That and rent and helping my mom not lose the house, but sure, let’s call it a scholarship and keep it cute.”
Something in his posture shifts, a shadow crossing his features so fast I almost miss it.
“Look,” he says quietly, “I’m not your enemy.”
I bark out a laugh. “You called my work timid and provincial in front of the entire studio.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “I called your roofline timid. The project has potential.”
“Such generosity.”
He exhales, a thread of patience fraying. “You do this thing where you turn every critique into a character assassination.”
“You do this thing where you talk like a press release.”
We stare at each other, the air between us tight with everything unsaid.
He’s the first to look away, glancing at my roll of drawings. “You’re good,” he says, voice low. “Better than most people here, including some who won’t admit it. I’m not trying to screw you over.”
My heart does that inexplicable stutter again. I hate that it does.
“And yet,” I say, “here we are.”
“Here we are.” He meets my eyes again. “We can spend the semester trying to sabotage each other, or we can treat this like… a merger.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I’m allergic to corporate metaphors.”
“Fine. A truce.”
I search his face for the angle. There’s always an angle with rich boys. With Crosses.
“What’s in it for you?” I ask.
“My own work gets better when someone pushes back.” He shrugs, the movement loose but not careless. “You’re obviously not afraid to do that.”
“Translation: you like having someone to fight with.”
His lips twist. “Do you?”
The question hangs there, more loaded than it has any right to be.
I look away first, out the window at the patch of sky framed by brick.
“I like winning,” I say.
“Then we’re aligned.”
The confidence in his voice grates and pulls at me at the same time.
“Ground rules,” I say. “We divide tasks. We’re clear about credit. You don’t override my decisions without talking to me first.”
“Agreed. And you don’t shut down every suggestion just because it comes from me.”
I bristle. “I shut down bad suggestions regardless of the source.”
His eyes glint. “We’ll see.”
We stand there, the outline of something like a partnership sketching itself between us in faint, fragile pencil lines.
Somewhere deep in my chest, a warning siren goes off.
“Fine,” I say again, softer this time. “Truce. For now.” I hold out my hand, more challenge than offering.
He looks at it, then at me, and for a heartbeat, I swear I see something almost like relief flicker across his face.
His palm is warm when it closes around mine, his grip firm but not crushing. The contact sends a jolt up my arm, surprising enough that I forget to let go for a second.
His thumb shifts—barely, like he’s resisting the urge to adjust his hold—and my pulse jumps.
Architects believe in forces, in loads, in stresses. No studio lecture prepared me for this kind of current.
“We should meet tonight,” he says, releasing my hand. The air feels cooler where his skin was. “Start sketching. My place or yours?”
I snort. “That’s not happening.”
One dark brow arches. “Studio, then. Seven?”
Seven means I can squeeze in my shift and come straight back. It means another night in this stale, buzzing room instead of my creaky mattress. It means standing closer to him than is probably good for my blood pressure.
“Seven,” I say.
“Try not to redesign my entire portfolio before then,” he adds, gathering his things.
“Try not to call anyone provincial in the meantime.”
He gives me a half-smile over his shoulder as he walks away. “No promises, Moore.”
I watch him go, irritation and curiosity tangling in my chest.
Zoe materializes at my elbow like a summoned spirit. “So,” she says, eyeing our still-warm handshake distance. “How does it feel to be chained to the enemy?”
I swallow, my gaze lingering on the door he just disappeared through.
“Like standing under a half-built bridge,” I say. “You’re not sure if it’s going to carry you or collapse on your head.”
Zoe whistles low. “That’s… a lot for day one.”
I sling my bag over my shoulder, my fingers brushing the smudge of ink Damian commented on.
“Day one,” I echo, heart thrumming with a cocktail of dread and something dangerously close to anticipation. “We’ll see how long it takes before someone falls.”
