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Jane’s eyes flew open at the contact. Once again, she saw how wonderfully clear she was within his spotlight. “Duh,” she replied lightly, hoping he couldn’t see her pulse racing.

She followed him toward the back corner of the large room. If she hadn’t been watching, she would have completely missed it—a small nudge Aiden gave to the oak bookcase that held a variety of alumni memorabilia, until it seamlessly slid to the side.

Before them was a tunnel.

“And suddenly we’re in a Nancy Drew novel,” Jane teased, peering around curiously into the darkness.

Aiden laughed again and laced his fingers through hers as if it were the sort of thing they did all the time. “Come on,” he said, tugging her inside.

She glanced over her shoulder at the empty basement before following him.

“Would you mind holding this?” he asked while handing her their bottle of liquor; it currently had only around a quarter of whiskey left, though she couldn’t imagine taking one more sip.

Aiden reached out his free hand into the darkness and grabbed onto something. Then she heard the strike of a match before he shifted to light several small candles with dried wax bleeding down the sides.

Jane tensed as the trick bookcase behind them slid back into place, the light from the main basement room no more than a thin sliver at the bottom. The tunnel itself was small and shallow, likely intended to be no more than a crawl space. But as Jane’s eyes adjusted to the dim candlelight, she finally saw it.

Covering the walls were hundreds of names scribbled in Sharpie, and along the dusty concrete floor were various stain marks and footprints. The smell of mildew and sweat wafted through her nose, twisting poorly with the amount of alcohol in her stomach.

“The frat has been using this tunnel for decades,” Aiden said. The shadows of candlelight that flickered along his face made him look momentarily like he was wearing a mask. “It’s kind of a secret tradition.”

Jane went to cross her arms when she remembered her hand was still cuffed to his. “Using it for what?” she asked.

Aiden smiled as his hand located her hip. “I know it’s not the cleanest,” he said, and the dimple appeared in his cheek as he leaned in closer. “It’s kind of hot, though, right?”

He kissed her slowly at first, keeping one hand firmly placed on her hip, where she could feel the heat of his palm through the thin silk of her dress. When he pushed her back against the wall, Jane tried not to think of how gross whatever she was touching was and instead focused on his lips—how soft yet claiming they were and how perfect he was.

How much she wished he didn’t taste like whiskey.

When she finally pulled away for air, he shifted his mouth to her neck and began trailing kisses downward to the top of her shoulders. The smell of mildew wafted through her nose again, and she suddenly pictured spiders dropping down from the ceiling on sticky webs, landing in her hair.

“Aiden, wait,” she told him, pushing him back slightly. “I don’t want to do this down here. This place is like a walking STD.” She tried to laugh, wanting to keep cool despite how nauseated she was beginning to feel.

But he met her lips again, hard and far more sloppy. “Just go with it,” he whispered against her cheek. “It’s tradition.”

“You keep saying that,” she said, pulling her cuffed hand from his and bracing it on the wall behind her. Suddenly her fingers groped across something starchy, then another material that felt like lace. She glanced down, squinting through the dim light to find an array of delicate fabric pinned onto the wall. It took her a few seconds to realize she was looking at women’s underwear.

“Is that—” she began to ask, but Aiden just kissed her again.

“Part of the tradition,” he replied in a low voice.

The hair rose on the back of her neck as she became terribly aware of how far down they were, how far away from all the drunken partygoers and her friends, and she felt breathless, wishing for nothing more than clean air and to be above ground again.

“I really don’t feel good,” she told him. She’d been so nervous for their date that she’d barely eaten anything before the party, and now she could practically feel all the liquid sloshing around inside of her like a storm threatening to capsize her.

Aiden’s fingers dropped from her cheek down to the length of her torso, where she was sure she was starting to sweat through her dress. “The cool air in here will make you feel better soon, trust me,” he replied.

She tried taking in several deep breaths, but it all felt like old air, like she was inhaling every particle of the people who’d been there before her. She realized that she was still clutching onto their liquor bottle in her right hand, and she let it drop, feeling the glass shatter around their feet.

Aiden placed a kiss on her cheek, brushing back a strand of her long hair that she had spent a half hour trying to style into perfectly effortless waves. “Whoops,” he laughed, twining his fingers through her hair firmly enough that it tugged at her scalp. “God, you’re crazy hot, you know that?”

Jane turned her face from him and looked at the wall of underwear again. She felt the panic within her reach a fever pitch, and yet she couldn’t will her limbs to work.

Move, Jane, she begged somewhere deep inside her brain. Please, move.

But her muddled mind took on a sound of white noise, until she was no longer in her body. She was simply standing to the side, watching Aiden’s much taller, much stronger form press against her frozen one.

Words came out of her mouth again, but they swiftly disappeared into the cobwebbed darkness, until finally she closed her eyes against the blur of her vision and instead focused on the feeling of the brick scratching her back.