Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
When Rory Reyes first moved to Florence to attend the prestige university, she was not exactly the charismatic, humorous girl she had been. Heartbroken, she was numb for a long time before she moved on, taking care of herself and focusing on her art. Eventually, she did make a few friends. A lot of them were international students as well, from all parts of the world, prodigies and geniuses. Sometimes she felt like a downright idiot compared to them.
She usually ate lunch with her new friends in some local cafe. If there was one major reason why she chose Florence, it was the food. Glorious, delicious food. There were so many places to eat and try everything she had gained back her depression weight in no time.
"Rory," Kaito, an architecture student from Osaka, Japan, and Rory's former roommate until he came out as male and transferred to the male dorms, grinned at her. "Your new boyfriend is cute, but I never see him around campus-what's he studying?"
As sly as Alec could be when he wanted, he had been seen coming and going from her room a few times over the last month since he found her. They had even been caught on a midnight stroll to the corner-store once by one of her friend's when she wanted a snack. She had been hoping her friends wouldn't want to push her on who he was a little more, but there was no getting out of it without alarming them.
Cynically, she thought if Alec was not as beautiful and attractive as he was, they would certainly think the situation was odd, when sometimes she came back with bruises-he played too rough, forgetting she was human a lot-and never talked about him or saw him in daylight.
"Alec is..." Well, the boyfriend excuse was a good explanation as anything to explain the gorgeous, mysterious stranger who inhabited Rory Reyes' dormitory only at odd hours of the night. "He doesn't go here. His family doesn't approve of me, so he sneaks over as often as possible." The lies fell from her lips as easily as it would him. They were half-truths after all.
Natalia, a prodigy cello musician, cooed at Rory's colored cheeks. "Oh, forbidden love, how romantic."
"You'll have to invite him out with all of us. There's that new club, Rosso, that's opening tonight," Kaito suggested excitedly.
They all wanted to meet the boy who had brought out a light in their foreign friend, who it taken months for them to get past her detached and emotionless wall, but only days for this stranger.
Rory didn't want to disappoint them, knowing it'd be impossible for them to ever meet Alec Volturi unless by misfortune. "We'll see."
The strobe light of the club flashed blinding amethyst and sapphire to the heavy beat of some Italian pop song. Rory could barely understand the rapid spew of Italian, Duolingo did not have a mode for that level of the language. She was lost to the music, another body in the compacted crowd, her pulse raced with adrenaline. All her university friends were there that night and she had been grinding against some hot, nameless girl when a pair of much larger, distinctly male hands gripped her hips.
