“No, it’s not.” My tone came out sharper than I meant. “Whoever’s doing them, they’re talented as hell. They should put their name on them or something.”
“Not really the point,” he muttered. “Maybe they’re not trying to get noticed.”
“Then why keep leaving them all over school?”
He hesitated. “You ever gonna admit you know they’re mine?”
I turned in my chair. “You ever gonna admit that guy with the cracked shield is me?”
Tru flushed hard enough to make me dizzy. “Wasn’t supposed to be,” he mumbled.
“Bullshit.” I grinned, reaching for him, tugging up the hem of his shirt. “Where’d you get all those muscles, Captain Firehands? Been hiding a gym membership from me?”
He swatted me away, flustered, which only made me want to try harder.
We were close now. Close enough for me to see the freckles under his left eye. The way his throat moved when he swallowed.
“You’re jealous,” he said softly.
“Yeah.”
“You shoulder-checked a guy.”
“Yeah.”
He took a step closer, like the air between us wasn’t enough anymore. “Why?”
I stood and tilted his chin up with my fingers. “Don’t let him talk to you like that again.”
“Like what?” he whispered.
“Like I don’t exist.”
We were breathing the same breath. My fingers still on his jaw. I didn’t think; I just kissed him. Hard. Fast. Full of possession and ugly green jealousy.
He gasped like it was the first breath after drowning, grabbed my hoodie, and kissed me back like I was oxygen.
When I finally pulled away, Tru was looking at me like I’d just rewritten his world.
He sat on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to keep pretending you’re not scared, too.”
“I’m not pretending.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then, without looking at me asked, “Are we ever gonna stop hiding?”
It fractured something open inside of me. Not because Ididn’t expect it, but because I’d been asking myself the same thing, every night, behind every wall I built to keep him out.
“I want to,” I said, voice low but steady. “I just don’t know how yet.”
Tru turned to me. “You don’t have to know everything, Dare. You just have to stop acting like you don’t feel anything.”
The words hit hard. I’d told my dad I wasn’t following in his footsteps, and it felt like the end of the world. But this—this felt even scarier.
“You think it’s easy for me?” he asked. “You think I don’t get scared, too?”
“I don’t want it to be hard for you,” I whispered.
“I don’t want to pretend you’re just my stepbrother,” he said. “I don’t want to walk past you in the hall and act like you’re nobody. Like you don’t know every version of me.”
