Chapters
Invisible
Simon has turned invisibility into an art. Yet the campus king's gaze finds him in any crowd — and one grey morning Jacob walks up himself.
The Spark
Jacob corners Simon again — but this time the prey snaps back. One word changes the hunt, and Priscilla hears something she was never meant to.
Shards
Jacob turns Simon's torment into a public spectacle, and a hundred phones go up to film it. Something in Simon shatters for good — and the boy who silently endured doesn't come back.
Heat
Simon retreats to the empty locker room to wash off the humiliation — but Jacob is waiting, and in the steam the line between hatred and hunger finally snaps.
Grip
Simon's kiss attempt detonates Jacob's rage. Pinned by the throat, his years-long secret dragged into the light, Simon learns the cruelest truth: no one would ever believe him.
The First Link
The secret is out — and each of them is left alone with it. Jacob decides to share his prize with no one, while Simon, at the very edge, finds the one thing worth waiting for tomorrow: a single conversation.
Downpour
Hollowed out after the cafeteria, Simon dreams of chains and total control over Jacob. When Ashley offers to get him expelled, Simon turns on her in fury: he will give Jacob up to no one.
Throne
Jacob is summoned before the director: Ashley's reports have him facing expulsion. Simon is called in to confirm the charges — but the one who appears is a different Simon, calm and unrecognizable, for whom this is no trial but a rehearsal.
Friends
Instead of sinking Jacob, Simon lies to the director's face: "We're friends." One word saves the king from expulsion — and makes him a debtor. Then Simon invites him over, and the prey agrees, of its own will, to enter the lair.
The Beast
Simon walks up to Jacob in front of everyone and asks for his car — a public test. When Craig hurls a slur, Jacob turns on his own to defend Simon, and Priscilla starts adding it up. Feeling nothing, Simon has already bought the sleeping pills and the chains: at six, the beast drives up to the trap of its own accord.
Desire
An hour alone in the car — the first of Simon's life. While Jacob calmly drives toward the country house, Simon drowns in a fantasy of his hands, and the memory of the locker-room rejection severs the last thread. If a god refuses the sacrifice, the sacrifice becomes the god.
The Lair
Simon drives Jacob deep into the forest, to an abandoned house he has 'prepared.' Instinct screams danger, but pride and a dark curiosity carry the king inside. A chair waits by the fire, chains wait in the bag, and a white powder already waits in his beer. Jacob ignores the voice that sounds like fear — and takes the first swallow.
Sweet Dreams
By the fireplace, Jacob finally tries to talk honestly — and touches Simon for the first time without meaning to hurt him. But the powder is already dissolved in his beer. As his mind goes dark, Simon holds him with a painful tenderness — and lays him down beside the chains waiting under the blankets.
Ask Me Nicely
Jacob wakes up chained to a chair before the fire. Simon cuts off his shirt and demands the truth: why him, for three years? The confession tears loose along with Jacob's cruelest lie — and Simon pulls not chains from the bag, but bottles of pills.
Swan Song
Simon schedules a message to Craig — a rescue for Jacob, but not for himself. After covering the chained man with a blanket, he swallows the pills in front of him. For the first time Jacob's orders do nothing, and the three meters to the fallen body turn out to be larger than the whole world.
The Guardian
Through Ashley's eyes: watching Simon get into the car willingly, searching for him all day, and hearing a father answer his son's disappearance with a promise to break his legs. Looking through the window of the forest house, she saw a world turned inside out — and made the call that started the countdown.
Only Mine
Simon wakes in a hospital — alive, against his own plan. Jacob gave a statement and lied to the police to shield him. Then he walks into the room without his jacket or his entourage, meets Simon's eyes for the first time, and says: now you're mine alone.
Daylight
The night's "you're mine alone" does not survive daylight. Jacob parks five minutes from campus, kisses Priscilla in front of everyone, and laughs along with Craig at Simon on the floor. Then, in an empty restroom, he pulls him close again — until the door opens.
The Crack
On the restroom floor something inside Simon goes dark room by room — and the crack never closes again. For the first time he looks down at Jacob, with pity. Jacob silences Craig with his father's leash, but the word "mine" turns out to be a collar with two ends. Simon blocks his number and walks to the director's office.
The Bite
Simon spends the day dodging him — but there is only one road home. In the rain Jacob hurls his bicycle into the ditch and kisses him by force, and for the first time Simon leaves a mark on someone else's body: he bites through Jacob's lip. Then he blacks out — and wakes somewhere that isn't his home.
Marks
Simon wakes up in a house nobody is throwing him out of — and stays. Each of them has his own way of shutting Craig down, and both ways have just stopped working. And that evening Jacob asks one question, and he would have done better to keep quiet.
