“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper. The national anthem is starting, but I’m a dog with a bone, and I can’t let it go.
West looks down at me, a puzzled expression on his face. “Iwanted plausible deniability. If my story sucked, I never would have told you it was mine.”
“Butwhy?”
He shakes his head like I’m missing the point. “I was just trying to impress you, Mars.”
5
Present Day
I open thedoor to Old Main, and a whoosh of icy air-conditioning blasts me in the face. Goose bumps and nostalgia skitter across my skin. I close my eyes with my hand still on the open door, fighting the wave of nausea that swells in my throat. It’s the first weekend in March, and half the country is under a freeze warning, but not Tucson. Almost never Tucson. The high is eighty degrees today, and it’s during months like this, when New York is still sludgy and gray, that I miss the desert.
“Are you okay?”
I startle out of my homesickness for a place that was never really home and land back in the small administrative lobby, where a young woman is sitting behind a wooden reception desk littered with campus maps and conference schedules. While she stares at me over the top of her phone, with AirPods in both ears and a please-don’t-talk-to-me expression on her face, the anger simmering in the pit of my stomach slowly eases. In its place, uncertainty curls around my ribs. Now that I’m here, I’m not sure what to do.
I waver in the doorway, torn between the cool, quiet lobby and the warm, bustling festival. In the end, it’s not a choice. I can’t turn around and walk back down the Old Main steps, not when West might still be lurking, waiting to tell me how lucky I am because my mindless fans will read whatever drivel I put on paper.
I clear my throat as I approach the table. “Hi! I’m Mars, and I’m hoping to speak with the director of the conference.”
She blinks at me. “I don’t even know who that is.”
Not a surprise, but I’ve never been one to give up so easily. “Is there anyone you can put me in contact with?”
“I can give you a parking map.”
I crane my neck to see down the hall behind her. “Is there anyone in charge here?”
Her eyes travel over my shoulder, and somehow, I justknow.
“No one told me the Karen Convention is in town.” West’s deadpan voice scrapes my spine like gravel as his shadow falls over the tile floor.
“I need to report a stalker,” I say as blandly as possible.
His answering scoff sounds equal parts amused and annoyed. “She’s kidding.”
“She’s not.” I glare at him as he strides smoothly toward me. All my senses perk up at West’s sudden nearness, and it sends me into a nearly unbearable state of fight-or-flight. I shuffle back. “Why are youhere?”
He stops next to me—balanced on the line between close andtooclose—and reaches around me to pick up a conference schedule. Determined not to give him the satisfaction of my attention, I look down at the brown commercial carpeting. Straight ahead at the wood trim around the baseboards and doors. Up toward the recessed lighting in the ceiling. My hand clenches, fingernails leaving crescent moons in my skin.
His fingers drum a rhythm against his thigh as his eyes rove over the schedule, and it’s a trait so shockingly familiar that I can’t help but look. West’s eyebrow ticks up. “Okay, I have to know what Crock-Pot Romance is. Starts in ten minutes. Want to go?” He flashes a smile that gives shades of Fox the fae king. Teasing and irresistible. I hate him for it.
I straighten my spine and turn toward the reception desk. “This is urgent,” I tell the helpless undergrad. “I’m a presenting author, and there’s an issue with the schedule—”
“It’s me. I’m the issue.” West extends his hand across the table, and the girl’s eyes widen as she shakes it.
“No, he’s not.”
West angles his body and dips his head so that I have no choice but to make eye contact. “Thisisn’tabout a pretentious asshole being added to your keynote?” he asks with the mildest interest. He might as well be asking about my car’s long-term warranty.
I roll my eyes. “Not everything is about you.”
“But some things explicitly are.” He nods to the girl behind the table. “Ever heard of Fox Caldwell?”
I haven’t heard him say that name in years, and it sets off a red alarm in me that triggers all my nerve endings. It feels like pins and needles, with heat prickling at the back of my neck and pressure building behind my eyes.
“Mars Darling?” A voice booms across the lobby, saving me from certain mortification.
