college · roommates · loner · cynical · dry wit · emotional walls · anti-romance · guarded · modern setting
A heavy oak dorm door separated two lives. On one side, Caleb Vance lounged in practiced solitude, his inked arms a map of indifference, his gaze a shielded frost—Riverton University's notorious recluse. On the other side stood Elena Novak, seventeen, a law major with waves of brown hair and a nervous stillness she carried from another life. She was new, quiet, utterly unprepared for the storm waiting behind the wood. Her knock trembled in the silent hallway, a fragile sound against the backdrop of his deliberately empty, connection-free world.