IN BETWEEN

Prologue

"The deadline of your paper is on Friday. Class dismissed."

The heavy thud of the professor's textbook closing signals the end of the lecture. Instantly, the lecture hall erupts into a symphony of rustling notebooks, zipping backpacks, and sliding chairs.I don't move. I just stare down at my laptop screen, where the blinking cursor mocks me from a completely blank Google Doc. The essay prompt is simple enough for a second-year Psychology major: Analyze the psychological triggers of emotional dependency.

It feels like a sick joke. I know the theories. I know the diagnostic criteria by heart. I'm practically a textbook man-hater to anyone who asks, routinely advising other girls to dump their toxic boyfriends without a second thought. Yet, my own fingers are trembling over my keyboard because of a single notification sitting on my phone screen.

Mark Villafuente:  Where are you? Come to the court. Now.

No greeting. No manners. Just the casual arrogance of a third-year Business Administration heir who knows his family's wealth and his status on the basketball varsity team make him absolutely untouchable. He is a walking red flag—a hazard sign painted in the brightest, loudest shade of crimson. I know it. My brain screams it at me every single day.But my heart is still trapped in the space in between knowing he is destroying my sanity, and remembering who he used to be when we first started.

"Kei, look at this. He didn't reply to my morning text, but he just viewed my day."A heavy sigh sounds right beside me. Gwen Alicia Macaraig slumps onto the wooden desk, her cheeks flushed and eyes already welling with tears. Gwen is a brilliant Psychology student who can decode anyone's mind except her own, but she is hopelessly blind when it comes to love. She's a hopeless romantic trapped in a cycle of endless heartbreaks, always crying over boys who don't deserve a single second of her time.

I finally snap my laptop shut, my expression hardening into my usual defensive mask. "Because he's a jerk, Gwen. Block him."

"I can't," Gwen whines, wiping away a stray tear. "What if he has a good reason?"I feel a bitter, painful pang of irony. Here I am, giving the exact right advice as always, while actively ignoring my own.

Stepping out of the air-conditioned building into the humid campus air, I adjust my heavy bag strap. Across the courtyard, I see him. Mark is surrounded by his teammates, laughing loudly, exuding the effortless entitlement of someone who has never been told no a single day in his life.

As if sensing my presence, Mark looks up. His dark eyes lock directly onto mine, asserting a familiar, suffocating control over my movements.

I stand completely frozen on the steps. I'm not his girlfriend anymore, but I'm nowhere near free of him either. I am stuck right in the middle of a war between my survival instincts and my unresolved feelings.

Right there, in between who I am and who I desperately need to become, I realize the hardest thing I will ever have to study is how to walk away.