The World We Were Never Meant to Know

Chapter 1: The Boy She Couldn't Give Up On

New York had never been particularly gentle in the morning. Even before the sun had properly settled over the city, the streets were already alive with the familiar chaos of people rushing toward wherever they needed to be, taxis weaving impatiently between lanes, buses stopping every few blocks, and coffee shops filling with customers who looked as though they had been awake for hours despite the dark circles beneath their eyes. The city had a rhythm of its own, fast and relentless, as if slowing down for even a moment meant falling behind everyone else.

Cornell University was no exception. By eight in the morning, the campus was already crowded with students moving between buildings, some carrying laptops beneath their arms, some walking with their friends while discussing assignments they had forgotten to finish, and others simply holding coffee cups with both hands as if the caffeine inside them was the only thing keeping their souls attached to their bodies. There were always people everywhere, but there was one particular place on campus that attracted a strangely consistent crowd almost every morning.

The ice hockey training facility.

It was almost comical how many female students gathered around the place whenever the hockey team had practice. Some of them genuinely loved the sport, of course, while others claimed they were there because they enjoyed watching the university's athletes train. Nobody really questioned the distinction. There was nothing particularly strange about a group of young women wanting to watch handsome, athletic men skate around an ice rink at eight in the morning.

Sienna Orion Bloodvern was one of them.

She entered through the university gates with a large backpack hanging from one shoulder and a neatly packed lunch bag dangling from her other hand. Judging from its size, anyone would reasonably assume that she had prepared enough food for herself to last until the afternoon.

Unfortunately, that assumption would have been completely wrong.

She had barely crossed the courtyard when someone stepped directly into her path.

"Sienna."

She stopped and looked up.

Carmen stood in front of her with her arms folded across her chest, her expression carrying the unmistakable exhaustion of someone who had already seen enough nonsense for one morning.

Carmen was, in many ways, the exact opposite of Sienna.

She was bright, expressive, naturally sociable, and somehow managed to be popular without ever appearing to work particularly hard for it. People simply liked her. She could walk into a room knowing absolutely no one and somehow leave twenty minutes later with three new friends, two invitations, and someone's Instagram account.

Sienna had never understood how she did it.
More importantly, she had never understood how Carmen had decided that Sienna was worth becoming friends with in the first place.

Sienna was quiet, although quiet was not quite the same thing as shy. She could speak to practically anyone when she needed to, and she was surprisingly good at communicating when the situation called for it. She simply had a habit of keeping her interactions brief, rarely lingering in conversations unless she had a reason to. People often noticed that about her.

Sienna could be standing somewhere on campus one moment, only to be nowhere in sight the next, and then reappear several hours later with the same calm expression as if she had merely gone to the bathroom. Nobody really understood how she moved around so quickly without attracting attention.

Most people simply assumed she was the sort of person who walked fast and moved smoothly enough that nobody noticed her leaving.

Carmen, however, had known her long enough to recognize the real reason she had stopped Sienna that morning.