Jaxon's POV
The new girl hated me already.
Not that I blamed her. Amelia Carter though she introduced herself as Lia, which somehow fit the stubborn set of her jaw walked in here with her luggage, her optimism, her laminated list of rules and probably a life plan that stretched the next ten years.
I didn't need to know her to know her type.
The do-gooder. The overachiever. The one who sat in the front row, raised her hand too much and thought the world was a neat line of checkboxes just waiting to be ticked off.
And then there was me.
The kid parents warned their daughters about. The one who'd been on campus posters under Disciplinary Review Board Hearing Today more times than I could count. I wasn't exactly the poster boy for stability.
But if she thought I was just chaos in a leather jacket, well… I wasn't planning on correcting her.
"Do you always play that late?" she asked the next morning, standing in the kitchen in her neat T-shirt, clutching a mug like she needed caffeine just to deal with my existence.
I poured cereal straight from the box into my mouth and shrugged. "Do you always make lists for strangers?"
Her eyes narrowed. "They're not strangers when you share a lease."
"That so?" I smirked. "Because you still don't know my name."
"I do, actually." Her tone was clipped, prim. "Jaxon Reed. I Googled the housing assignment."
I froze mid-bite. She had Googled me?
Ballsy.
"And?" I asked, leaning closer, just to watch her fight the urge to step back. "What did the almighty internet say about me?"
She lifted her chin. "That you've been suspended twice. That you barely passed last semester. That you—"
"That I what?" I prompted, amused by the faint blush rising in her cheeks.
"That you have a reputation."
I grinned, savoring the word on her lips. "Sweetheart, reputations are earned."
Her nostrils flared, and for a second, I thought she might hurl her coffee at me. Instead, she turned on her heel, muttering something about immaturity.
What she didn't know what nobody knew was that I'd been up all night replaying the same song, fingers raw against the keys.
Not because I wanted to keep her awake. Not because I liked breaking rules.
But because music was the only thing that still made sense when the rest of my life didn't.
And as much as I told myself to leave her alone, to let her wall of rules and routines stand
I already knew I wasn't going to.
Because the look in Amelia Carter's eyes when she heard me play last night?
Yeah. That look was dangerous.