Some people don’t need to raise their voices to be dangerous. Their presence alone is enough to make a room go silent. And sometimes, the most unpredictable person in the room… only listens to one voice.
Before winter break, the new transfer student kept “accidentally” running into my childhood sweetheart.
First she “twisted” her ankle. Then she “couldn’t” understand the homework. But Roman? Roman is a possessive, volatile germaphobe. So when the new girl in front of me hiked her skirt up and pretended to fall into him, Roman simply stepped aside.
He watched her tumble straight into the swimming pool and come up sputtering, mascara streaking, arms flailing for attention.
His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t even change.
“If you hate consequences,” he said coldly, “then don’t throw yourself into them.”
My childhood sweetheart Roman can’t stand anyone touching him except me. At his worst, he’d flinch if someone got too close—sometimes even his own parents. And the only thing that ever kept his temper from snapping the world apart was me.
We met in eighth grade.
I was the housekeeper’s daughter, attending an elite prep school on scholarship and sheer stubbornness. Roman was the “young master,” the heir everyone tiptoed around like he was a sleeping weapon. On my first day, I walked past the gym in my uniform skirt, and some idiot whistled at me.
Roman picked up a metal folding chair like it weighed nothing and hurled it.
It didn’t hit the boy—Roman wasn’t sloppy—but it crashed close enough to make the message clear. At a school full of entitled brats, Roman was on another level. Red-eyed, unhinged, ready to take on the entire lacrosse team without blinking.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t run.
I just said his name once.
“Roman.”
He froze.
Like a switch had been flipped, the wildness drained out of him. He turned and looked at me with an expression that wasn’t rage at all, but something raw and wounded—like he’d been waiting for someone to call him back from the edge.
Mad dog to good dog. Just like that.
By the end of the week, the rumor had spread across campus: the unhinged school prince had been tamed. A new saying followed.
If you made Roman angry, Sienna might be able to save you.
If you made Sienna angry… you’d better start apologizing to the universe.
It was cringe. It was also true.