He folds his arms loosely, not posturing, not trying to look bigger, just settling into the knowledge that he has found the one thing in the room stronger than my temper.
“And for some reason,” he continues, “that matters to you.”
The bathroom goes very still.
He doesn’t look smug about it. He looks almost grim, like figuring it out confirms something he had hoped wasn’t true. “I don’t know what your deal is with her,” he says, “but I know what I saw last night. I saw her go stiff when you got close. I saw her look rattled after the party. And now I know enough about your past to know you’re not exactly someone she needs entangled in life.”
My hands curl once at my sides before forcing themselves open again.
He notices that too, yet, he still he doesn’t retreat.
“If you really want to threaten me, go ahead,” he says. “But you won’t. Not if you care at all what she thinks of you.”
The room is small enough now that I can hear the tiny shifts in his breathing, the distant slam of a locker outside, the blood moving hard in my own ears. He has backed me into the only corner that matters, and we both know it.
Because he’s right about the worst part.
If I put him through the mirror, if I break his jaw, if I give in to the most familiar answer my body knows, she will look at me and see exactly what I’ve been trying not to become in front of her.
Or maybe she’ll just finally see what I’ve been all along.
Kadin holds my gaze for one second longer, then speaks more quietly.
“She’s had enough men make her life harder,” he says. “She doesn’t need another one just because he thinks his damage makes him different.”
The sentence sits there, ugly in its accuracy.
I don’t move.
He doesn’t either.
The tension in the room tightens into something that feels like it could still break either way, because now he knows exactlywhere to press, and I know exactly how much I hate that he’s chosen the one pressure point I can’t afford to ignore.
The word Brightside leaves my mouth before I can decide whether saying it is a mistake.
The second it hangs there, I know it is.
“She didn’t tell you about Brightside.”
Kadin catches it immediately. His expression changes in that quiet way people’s expressions do when they realize they’ve been handed a piece of something important without having to earn it. He does not smile. He does not gloat. Somehow that makes it worse.
“No,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “She didn’t tell me about Brightside.”
He lets the silence sit just long enough for me to understand that my question has answered something for him. Then he folds his arms loosely and adds, “Her friends are not exactly quiet. Especially when they’re drunk.”
Cheyenne. Maria. Of course.
I can practically hear them now, too loud over music and vodka, trying to protect her by turning her life into fragments and labels for anyone listening. Brightside. Dead mother. Stepbrother. Exchange student, except not really. Enough pieces for an idiot to start building a shape.
Kadin watches the realization settle in me and keeps talking, calmer now, more certain of his footing.
“How else do you think I figured out you weren’t some exchange student?” he asks. “Her adopted brother, of all things.”
The phrase lands like something rotten.
He takes a small step closer, not enough to crowd me, just enough to make it clear that whatever polite distance this conversation started with is gone now. He is looking at me differently. Less like a guy he ran into at a party, more like a problem he has finally gotten a good enough look at to name.
“And you want her.”
