The radio is on, but neither of us acknowledges it. Some song hums quietly through the speakers, too low to drown out anything, too present to ignore. I keep my phone in my hand the whole time, checking it every few seconds like that alone might make Cheyenne or Maria appear sooner, or somehow shorten the distance between here and wherever I wish I was instead of trapped in my own car with him.
Spokehaven University spreads out in front of us piece by piece as we get closer. Brick buildings. Wide lawns. Students cutting across walkways with coffee cups and backpacks carrying the kind of normal Monday energy that makes my skin itch. Everything outside the windshield looks painfully ordinary, which only makes the inside of the car feel worse.
My stomach hasn’t settled since he handed me his schedule.
He hadn’t said anything when he passed it over. Just held the paper out, waited, and let me discover for myself that we share Creative Arts first period. Of all the classes on campus, it had to be that one. My elective. My quiet class. The one space that feltlike mine because no one in my life had ever managed to touch it.
Now he is in that too.
Tugging at the sleeve of my sweatshirt, I stare harder at my phone, trying not to think about how close his body is, how familiar the silence between us has already become, how much I hate that it does not feel like the silence of strangers.
He breaks first.
“Last night was a mistake.”
The words are calm when he says them, controlled in that deliberate way he slips into when he wants to strip all feeling out of something before he speaks it aloud. I turn toward him before I can stop myself. He is watching the windshield, not me, one hand on the wheel, his face unreadable beneath the brim of that cap.
My jaw tightens instantly. Looking away feels safer than looking at him, so that is what I do.
“I’m glad we can agree on that.”
The answer comes out colder than I mean it to, but once it is there, I let it stay.
He taps his thumb once against the steering wheel, then stops. “The alcohol made me do things I wouldn’t have done sober.”
That lands harder than the first part.
Not because I believe him entirely. Because some part of me had not wanted that to be the reason. Some part of me had been stupid enough to let last night sit in my chest like it meant more than a drunken unraveling between two damaged people who had no business touching each other in the first place.
“I get it,” I say, cutting him off before he can soften it further. “You feel guilty. Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”
The sentence sounds ugly the second it leaves my mouth, but I don’t take it back. He says he would not have done it sober. All I hear is the quiet confirmation that I was convenient.
His shoulders shift slightly against the seat.
“The scar on your cheek-” he says after a beat.
That does it.
“Stop.” The word snaps out of me before I can temper it. I turn toward him fully now, anger finally beating humiliation to the front. “Stop doing that. Stop speaking like none of it happened. Stop pretending you can pick and choose which parts of last night count.”
Letting out a short humorless scoff, he glances at me...really glances at me, and there is something in his face that looks almost offended by the accusation.
“Nothing important happened last night,” he says. His voice is still low, but the edge is there now. “What exactly do you want me to say, Octavia? That I needed it? That I let myself get carried away? You were at the wrong place at the wrong time and I was drunk enough to feed into biology. Don’t get angry at me because you decided there was something decent in that.”
The words slice cleanly.
For a second I cannot breathe around them. Then I laugh, because if I do not laugh, I might let him hear how badly that hurt.
“I should have stayed with Kadin,” I say. “I should have left you there and let the cops find you.”
“Maybe you should have,” he shoots back immediately.
There is no hesitation in it. That somehow makes the next thing worse.
“But we both know he would’ve needed hours to get out of you what I got in seconds.”
The whole car seems to constrict around us.
