---
CHAPTER SIX – Kiss Me While It Burns
Emily had grown up watching fires — real ones.
She knew how they started. How they danced.
And most of all, how they destroyed everything soft first.
It wasn't just the USB leak that set Crestwood on fire.
It was the fact that someone like her — poor, uninvited, unafraid — had lit the match.
They weren't used to someone like Emily Hale.
But they were starting to understand her name.
And fear it.
---
Luke wasn't at breakfast. Or at his lecture. Or at fencing practice.
Emily told herself it didn't matter. That she didn't need him.
But she checked her phone five times in an hour anyway.
Finally, a text.
> Luke: Meet me. Old chapel. Don't tell anyone.
The chapel was abandoned — long ago decommissioned and replaced by a glitzy meditation center. The doors were warped. The air thick with dust and secrets. But it was quiet.
And he was already there, standing by the shattered stained glass.
"You've been hiding," she said.
Luke didn't turn. "They brought in the board."
Emily stilled. "The school board?"
"They want heads. Mine. Yours. Maybe both."
She walked slowly toward him. "Let them come."
But Luke's eyes were distant. Haunted.
"My father," he said, "he's not like other people. When you embarrass him, he doesn't get mad. He gets even."
Emily swallowed.
"I'm not scared of your father," she said.
"You should be."
He finally looked at her then, and the flicker in his eyes wasn't love — it was warning.
"They're digging, Emily. They found something. About your dad."
Her heart dropped.
"What?"
Luke stepped forward. "They're going to release it. Say he wasn't framed. That he did it. That you're just like him."
"No," she breathed. "That's a lie."
"They don't care."
Silence.
Then Luke said something she hadn't expected.
"Come away with me."
"What?"
"Tonight. Before they can touch you. We leave Crestwood. You still have the files. We take them public. Go to the press. Expose everything."
Emily stared at him. "And run?"
"Survive."
She took a step back.
"I didn't come here to run, Luke. I came here to burn this place down."
He grabbed her wrist. "If you stay, they'll ruin you."
She pulled away. "Then let them try."
The tension between them snapped.
Not with anger.
With hunger.
He kissed her — desperate, messy, wrong — but it felt like salvation.
And when his hand slipped under her shirt, when her body melted against his, it wasn't about love.
It was about belonging — in a world that said she shouldn't.
---
That night, someone set fire to her dorm bed.
She wasn't there — thank God — but the flames took her clothes, her books, even her father's old journal.
Emily stood on the grass barefoot, watching it burn as the fire trucks roared in.
Brielle stood behind the crowd, sipping from a silver flask.
She didn't say a word.
She didn't have to.
Emily turned to the RA.
"I need a room," she said.
"There's none left."
Emily didn't flinch. She pulled out her phone and dialed Luke.
He picked up on the first ring.
---
Emily Hale slept in Luke Caldwell's bed that night.
No kisses. No touches. Just silence and breathing.
She curled up under the covers, clutching a jacket that still smelled like smoke and adrenaline.
"I'm not done," she whispered.
Luke lay beside her, staring at the ceiling.
"I know."
And maybe it was foolish.
Maybe they were both damned.
But in that moment, it felt like war could be survived.
If they survived it together.
---
By morning, the headlines were everywhere:
> "Crestwood Scandal Deepens: Disgraced Professor Tied to Former Student's Daughter."
"Anonymous Leak Suggests Hale's Father Was Guilty After All."
Emily slammed her laptop shut.
Luke read the room. "That's his doing."
"They're rewriting the story," she hissed. "Again. They always do this."
He reached out. She pulled away.
"I'm not a victim," she said. "I'm the storm."
And this time?
She wasn't warning them.
She was promising.
---