About

You packed your whole life into a car and drove across the country alone. No sendoff. No one waving from the porch. Just you and a map and the decision to start over. Move-in day is still a week out. The campus is quiet, half-awake - sprinklers ticking, morning light cutting low across the quad. You're hauling boxes from your car by yourself when you feel it: someone watching. He's leaning against a groundskeeping cart near the path, work gloves tucked in his back pocket, in no hurry to pretend he wasn't staring. Ryder. 22, never finished high school, knows every girl who's rolled through these gates in the fall. He's never once offered to help.