Zay Pov
If there is one thing I have learned about myself over the last twenty-four hours, it is that I am a master of self-delusion.
I spent the entire night reading ahead in my veterinary textbook, memorizing bone structures and muscle groups until my eyes burned. I was building my fortress. I was going to walk into our first laboratory session today, and I was going to be the most professional, untouchable, and robotic freshman this university had ever seen.
I was standing in front of the full-length mirror in my condo, adjusting the collar of my brand-new white lab coat. I buttoned it all the way up to the top, feeling like a knight putting on a suit of armor.
You are Zay Niall Earl, I told my reflection, pointing a finger at the glass. You are a future veterinarian. You do not get flustered by tall, athletic basketball players who happen to smell like rain and expensive wood. You are cold. You are distant. You are unbothered.
"Are you talking to yourself again, neighbor?"
I jumped about three feet in the air, my elbow smacking against the drywall. I spun around to find Pai standing in my open doorway. He was already wearing his lab coat,unbuttoned and flapping open, with a bag of potato chips in one hand and his anatomy textbook tucked under his arm.
"I am practicing my focus, Pai!" I huffed, rubbing my sore elbow. "And why are you in my apartment? How did you get in?"
"The door was unlocked, Zay. You really need to be more careful," Pai laughed, crunching on a chip as he walked inside and flopped onto my modern sofa. "So, are you ready for the big day? First real dissection lab. Smelling formaldehyde, looking at specimens, and... oh, right. Spending three hours in close proximity with your extremely handsome ex-situationship."
I felt my cheeks heat up instantly. "Oh shut up! He is not my anything, Pai! He is just a student from a different department who happens to be taking a science elective. Today, my 'Professional Wall' goes into effect. I am going to treat him exactly like a stranger."
Pai smirked, looking at me with pure amusement. "Uh-huh. Sure you are. I'll believe it when I see it. Now come on, if we are late, the professor will feed us to the medical leeches."
The Veterinary Medicine Building's basement was a completely different world from the sunny campus above.
The air down here was freezing, conditioned to a crisp temperature to preserve biological specimens. The hallways smelled sharply of chemical preservatives and sterile metallic surfaces. It felt real. It felt heavy.
Pai and I walked into Lab Room 4B. The room was massive, lined with heavy stainless steel tables. At the front of the room, our professor was already standing by a whiteboard, her arms crossed over her white lab coat.
"Find your partners!" the professor called out, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. "Tables are labeled by your enrollment numbers. Get to your stations, put on your gloves, and open your manuals to page forty-five. We are doing a surface examination of musculoskeletal structures today. No cutting yet, just identifying!"
I scanned the room, my heart doing a nervous little tap-dance against my ribs. I found my table near the back of the room.
Table 12.
And standing right next to Table 12, looking completely out of place among the metal trays and microscopes, was Kai.
He was leaning his hip against the edge of the metal table, his arms crossed. He had his white lab coat on over his black hoodie, but he hadn't buttoned it up. It hung open lazily, making him look more like a model doing a photoshoot than a student about to study animal biology. His dark hair was a bit messy, and he was staring down at his phone.
I took a deep breath. The Professional Wall starts now.
I walked over to the table, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead. I didn't smile. I didn't wave. I pulled a pair of blue latex gloves out of the wall dispenser and snapped them onto my hands with a loud, sharp POP.
"Good morning, partner," I said, my voice flat, cold, and robotic. I didn't look at him. I opened my heavy textbook on the steel table, flipping the pages aggressively.
"Today we are doing surface identification of the canine thoracic limb. Please turn your manual to page forty-five. I will handle the reading, and you can handle the labeling."
The silence that followed was heavy. I kept my eyes locked on the textbook, my vision blurring slightly from the sheer effort of not looking to my left.
"Good morning to you too, Zay," Kai murmured.
His voice was a low, smooth rumble that cut right through my artificial icy exterior. I could feel his gaze on the side of my face. He didn't sound annoyed by my cold attitude. If anything, he sounded amused.
"You buttoned your lab coat all the way to the top," Kai observed, his voice dripping with a lazy smile. "Are you cold? Or are you just trying to hide from me?"
My grip tightened on the edge of the textbook. I slowly turned my head, locking my eyes onto his. I kept my expression blank.
"It is standard safety protocol, Mr. Frasier," I replied, using his last name to draw a thick, heavy boundary line between us.
"Chemicals can splash. It is best to be protected. Now, do you have your manual open? We only have three hours to finish this module, and I do not intend to waste a single minute."
Kai tilted his head. He pushed off the table and stood up to his full height, towering over me. He slowly pulled a pair of latex gloves from the box and began pulling them onto his large hands, his eyes never leaving mine.
"Mr. Frasier," Kai repeated, testing the name on his tongue as if it were a foreign word. A flicker of something dark and intense flashed in his eyes, replacement amusement with something a bit more serious. "You're really going to do this? The polite stranger act?"
"It isn't an act," I lied, turning back to my book so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. My heart was pounding so violently against my ribs I was certain the entire classroom could hear it. "It's professionalism. Now, if you'll look at figure 3.1, we need to locate the scapula..."
I started reading from the textbook, my voice a monotone drone. I was reading fast, trying to drown out the sound of my own panic, trying to ignore the warmth of his shoulder just a few inches from mine.
I thought I was doing a great job. I thought my wall was holding up perfectly.
Until I reached for a metallic pointer on the table at the exact same time Kai did.
Our gloved hands brushed against each other over the cold steel table. It was just latex touching latex, but a jolt of static electricity seemed to arc between us. I froze. Kai froze.
I looked up. Kai was looking down at our hands, and then his dark eyes flicked up to lock onto mine. The noise of the busy classroom suddenly faded into a quiet buzz.
The icy air of the basement didn't matter anymore. All I could feel was the intense, suffocating pull of the person standing right in front of me.
The Professional Wall didn't just crack. It shuddered.
I couldn't breathe. My heart was thudding against my ribs like a trapped bird.
Our gloved hands were still resting over the metallic pointer on the cold steel table. It was just a thin layer of blue latex between us, but it felt like a live electric wire. I looked up into Kai's dark eyes. The amusement was gone, replaced by a heavy, unreadable intensity that made my knees feel dangerously weak.
Pull away, Zay. Pull away right now!
Remember the Professional Wall!
I tried to tug my hand back, but my muscles felt like they were made of lead.
"Table twelve! Let's see some progress over there!"
The sharp, commanding voice of our professor cut through the air like a whip.
I flinched violently, ripping my hand back so fast I accidentally knocked over a small plastic tray. It clattered loudly against the metal table, the sound echoing through the quiet lab. A few students from the neighboring tables turned their heads to stare at us.
My face burned bright red. I scrambled to pick up the plastic tray, my hands shaking.
"Sorry! Sorry, Professor!" I squeaked out, my voice jumping an octave.
The professor walked over, her heavy boots clicking against the linoleum floor. She stopped right at the edge of our table, her eyes narrowing as she looked between me and Kai. She adjusted her glasses, peering down at our textbook.
"You haven't even finished the first anatomical landmark, Mr. Earl," the professor observed dryly, checking her clipboard. "And Mr. Frasier... your lab coat is wide open. This is a level two biosafety facility. Button it up, or you can step out of the room."
Kai didn't blink. He didn't look flustered at all. He just nodded smoothly. "My apologies, Professor. I was just getting set up."
He casually reached up and began buttoning his lab coat. Because his hands were large and the buttons were tiny, he had to look down at his chest to do it. It gave me a momentary reprieve from his intense gaze.
The professor turned her attention to me.
"Since you are the Veterinary student, Mr. Earl, you should be taking the lead. Mr. Frasier is a Sports Science elective. He knows human biomechanics, but he needs your expertise for the quadruped anatomy. You need to work together. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Professor," I whispered, looking down at my hands.
"Good. I want to see you both identifying the scapula and the humerus when I loop back around in fifteen minutes." With a final, stern nod, she turned on her heel and clicked away to interrogate table thirteen".
The silence that returned to our table was heavy.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to get my racing heart under control. I leaned over the textbook, gripping the edges of the pages until the paper crinkled.
"Okay," I muttered, refusing to look at Kai.
"You heard her. We need to find the scapula. It's the shoulder blade. It should be right here on the model."
I reached out with my left hand, pointing to the plastic canine model resting in the center of our table. I was trying to focus on the plastic bone, but my vision was swimming.
"It's tilted," Kai said softly.
"What?" I asked, finally looking up.
Kai didn't say anything. Instead, he took a step closer to the table. He was standing right next to me now. He reached out with his large, gloved hand. He didn't touch the model. Instead, his hand hovered right next to mine over the plastic bones.
"The angle," Kai murmured, his voice low and calm. He leaned down slightly, his shoulder brushing against mine. The scent of his cedarwood cologne drifted over me again, warm and suffocating. "In humans, the shoulder blade sits flat against the back. In quadrupeds, it sits on the side. That's why you're looking at the wrong angle, Zay."
I blinked, looking down at where he was pointing. He was right. My panic was making me stupid. I had forgotten the basic rule of animal anatomy: everything is shifted because they walk on four legs.
"I knew that," I lied weakly, my voice barely a whisper.
"I know you did," Kai said.
He didn't pull away. He stayed standing right next to me, his arm pressed against mine from shoulder to elbow. It was a completely unnecessary amount of contact for a lab assignment. My brain was screaming at me to step away, to put distance between us, to build that wall back up.
But for some reason, my feet wouldn't move. Standing next to him felt terrifyingly familiar. It felt like two years ago, when we used to study together in the university library, leaning over the same books, sharing the same heavy silences.
"Let's do the next one," Kai whispered, his dark eyes flicking over to mine. He wasn't smirking anymore. He looked serious. "The humerus. Where is it, Partner?"
I swallowed hard, my throat dry. I looked down at the model, trying to find my voice.
"It's... it's the upper arm bone," I whispered, my gloved finger hovering over the plastic.
"It connects right here."
Kai's hand moved over the model, his fingers brushing against mine as he traced the outline of the plastic bone. It was a tiny, accidental touch, but it sent another wave of heat racing straight up my arm.
The Professional Wall wasn't just cracking. It was crumbling into dust.
The sharp, sudden ring of the overhead bell made me jump for the tenth time today.
"Alright, everyone! Wash your hands, wipe down your tables, and pack up!" the professor announced over the classroom chatter. "I want your preliminary lab notes submitted online by midnight tonight. See you on Thursday!"
The relief that washed over me was so heavy my shoulders actually dropped. We had made it. Three hours of shoulder-to-shoulder contact, accidental hand-brushes, and a suffocating cloud of cedarwood scent—and I was still standing. My "Professional Wall" was in ruins, but at least I hadn't cried or run out of the room.
I immediately stripped off my blue latex gloves, tossing them into the biohazard bin with a satisfying thwack.
"Good work today, Partner," Kai murmured from right behind me.
I stiffened, my hands gripping the edge of the sink as I turned on the faucet. I lathered my hands in soap, rubbing them together aggressively.
"It was fine," I replied, keeping my eyes on the bubbles. "We got the work done. That's all that matters."
Kai stepped up to the sink next to mine. He washed his hands slowly, his large hands moving methodically under the warm water. I couldn't help but look at them out of the corner of my eye. His hands were beautiful—veiny, calloused from playing basketball, and strong.
I shook my head, flicking the water off my hands and grabbing a paper towel. Stop it, Zay! Do not admire his hands! Focus on the exit!
"I'm going to grab a coffee at the campus cafe," Kai said casually, leaning his hip against the counter as he dried his hands.
"Do you want to come with? We can look over the lab notes together."
My heart did a hopeful leap, but the old fear of getting my heart broken paralyzed me.
"No, thank you," I said, my voice steady. "I already have plans with Pai. I'll just shared-drive the notes to you."
The easy smile on Kai's face faltered. For the first time all day, he looked caught off guard. "Zay—"
"I have to go, Kai," I interrupted him. I grabbed my backpack and walked out of the laboratory without looking back.
I pushed open the heavy double doors of the basement, stepping out into the bright campus hallway. Pai was right behind me, jogging to keep up.
"Zay, wait up!" Pai huffed.
But I didn't stop. Because standing right outside the lab doors, leaning against the hallway wall as if she had been waiting, was Amethyst.
She was a gorgeous senior, famous on campus for her influencer status. She had perfectly curled hair and a bright pink cardigan slung over her shoulders. She didn't belong in our freshman lab. She was just... there.
The moment Kai pushed through the doors behind us, Amethyst's eyes lit up. She completely brushed past me, her shoulder hitting mine as if I were invisible, and went straight to Kai.
"Kai! Oh my gosh, there you are!" Amethyst chirped, her voice high and melodic. She instantly looped her arm through his, leaning her head against his shoulder. "I've been looking for you all morning! Are we still on for lunch?"
Kai stiffened. He tried to subtly pull his arm back, his eyes snapping directly to me with a flicker of panic. "Amethyst, I told you I had lab."
"But lab is over now!" Amethyst giggled, finally looking at me. Her smile didn't reach her eyes. She sized me up in a second, looking at my messy hair and my oversized lab coat. "Oh, hi! Are you Kai's little freshman lab partner? Thank you for taking care of my Kai-bear!"
Kai-bear, that's so fucking cringe.
The nickname felt like a physical slap to my face. My stomach did a painful drop. So, this was why Kai couldn't commit two years ago. He already belonged to someone else. The campus heartthrob and the campus queen. It made perfect sense.
"Zay, it's not—" Kai started, his voice urgent as he tried to take a step toward me, dragging a clinging Amethyst with him.
"It's fine," I interrupted him, my voice cold and hollow. I looked at Pai. "Pai, let's go. We're going to be late."
I turned on my heel and walked away. I didn't look back. I didn't want to see them together.
I didn't stop walking until I reached the heavy wooden door of my condo.
My hands were shaking so violently it took me three tries to press the correct digits into the electronic keypad. When the lock finally clicked open, I threw myself inside, slammed the door shut, and turned the manual deadbolt.
I leaned my back against the cold wood, sliding down until my knees hit my chest and my sit-bones hit the hardwood floor. The silence of my apartment was a suffocating contrast to the noisy campus.
I buried my face in my hands.
"Stupid," I whispered to the empty room. "You are so incredibly, unbelievably stupid, Zay."
I had let my guard down for a single second during that lab. I had let myself believe—even if just for a heartbeat—that maybe Kai had changed. That he missed me.
But seeing Amethyst cling to his arm in the hallway was the ultimate reality check. She was a senior. She was beautiful, popular, and confident. She fit perfectly into his shiny world of sports scouts and campus fame.
And then there was me. A quiet, anxious freshman. I felt like the world's biggest idiot.
My phone buzzed violently in the front pocket of my jeans.
I flinched, pulling it out. The screen lit up.
💬 Kai: Zay, wait. That wasn't what you think it was.
I stared at the preview. My thumb hovered over the glass. A dangerous, hopeful part of me wanted to unlock the phone. I wanted him to tell me it was all a big misunderstanding.
But the louder, more protective part of my brain slammed the brakes. If I opened it, I would reply. If I replied, I would listen to his smooth, deep voice. And if I listened, I would forgive him.
Buzz.
The screen lit up again.
💬 Kai: Amethyst is just another senior. We're in the same athlete association. She does that to everyone. Please answer me.
I let out a dry, hollow laugh. "She does that to everyone?" I muttered bitterly to the empty room. "Right. Sure she does."
I couldn't do it. I couldn't go through the cycle again. I swiped the notifications away and aggressively flipped my phone onto Do Not Disturb. I stood up, walked over to the sofa, and tossed the phone face-down onto the cushions. I didn't want to see it blink. I didn't want to hear it buzz.
I walked into my kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, and forced myself to take slow sips. My reflection in the stainless steel refrigerator was a mess. My cheeks were flushed, my hair was wind-blown, and my eyes were glassy.
The Professional Wall, I told myself, gripping the cold glass. This time, it's made of titanium steel. No more eye contact. No more listening to his excuses. No more letting him in.
I marched over to my desk and flipped open my laptop. The bright screen illuminated my dark living room. I pulled up my Veterinary Anatomy folder and began typing up the lab report. I threw myself into the work with a vengeance. I focused on medical terminology and cold data to block out the image of Amethyst's perfectly manicured hand resting on Kai's forearm.
I typed until the tips of my fingers were sore. I read paragraph after paragraph about the canine skeletal system, forcing the clinical facts to drown out the sound of my own racing thoughts.
The sun began to dip below the horizon, painting my living room in deep shades of orange and violet. Across the room, nestled in the dark cushions of the sofa, my phone silently pulsed with invisible notifications. Missed calls, unread texts, unreceived explanations.
I ignored it all. I was drawing a heavy, permanent line in the sand.
And this time, I wasn't going to let Kai Alexandre Frasier cross it.
End of Chapter 3