Kadin’s voice comes through the phone again, gentler this time, but it still jolts me hard enough that the spoon knocks against the edge of the ice cream tub.
I’ve been staring for too long.
Not at anything important, at least not by normal standards. Just a set of bloodied boxing wraps abandoned on the counter beside the sink, half-unraveled, stiff in the places where the blood dried darker than the fabric. They’ve become an ordinary sight in the house now, which somehow unsettles me more than if they still shocked me. It means I’ve gotten used to Silas disappearing into the gym until he comes back bruised, silent, and wrecked enough to leave little pieces of himself behind in the kitchen.
“Sorry,” I say, pushing the freezer door closed with my hip, settling the phone more tightly between my shoulder and ear.“My parents are out on date night, and apparently that means I lose all self-control around rocky road.”
The lid peels back with a soft snap. I dig the spoon in and take a generous bite, too cold, yet, exactly what I wanted. The pleasure of it hits fast enough that I let out a quiet, involuntary sound before swallowing.
“God,” I murmur, “I needed that.”
Kadin goes quiet for just a second too long.
Then he clears his throat. “I can give you and the ice cream some privacy if this is getting serious.”
That makes me laugh, the sound feeling easier than it has any right to. “Shut up.”
He laughs too. For a few seconds it almost feels normal. The kind of late-night call a girl is supposed to have with a boy she kissed by a pool. The kind where the flirting slides naturally into place, where you stop pretending you don’t know what he means when his voice drops warmer, where the next step feels obvious instead of impossible.
“So…” he says, dragging the word out just enough to make his intentions clear. “Your parents are gone.”
There it is again.
That strange, immediate twist in my stomach. Not nerves exactly. Not disinterest either. Something more complicated than either of those, and much more annoying. Kadin has been flirting with me ever since the party, ever since that kiss that should have made this simple. By every normal standard, I should want him to flirt. I should be feeding into it. I should be making this easy for both of us.
Instead, every time he nudges the moment toward something more direct, I feel myself stiffen around it.
I’m standing in my kitchen in a thin tank top and panties, one bare leg bent against the cabinet, eating ice cream straight out of the tub with my parents out of the house. If I wanted to, I couldgive him exactly the kind of image his imagination is probably already building. I could tease him. Make him work for it. Make this fun.
So why does the idea feel wrong the second it gets close?
“They are,” I say carefully, dragging the spoon through the melting top layer of ice cream. “But Silas isn’t.”
Kadin makes a low sound of irritation. It isn’t mean, but it isn’t subtle either. “Fuck him, right?”
The dread comes back immediately.
Not because I think Silas would care if I had a boy over. Not because I think he’d play family police and go running to my parents. If anything, that would require a kind of wholesome investment in our household dynamics that he’s never once shown.
“No,” I say, though I make myself laugh lightly afterward, trying to smooth the edges off what I actually feel. “I’m not risking him telling my parents.”
Even as I say it, I know it’s a lie.
Silas would never tell.
Which leaves me with the much uglier truth I keep refusing to look at straight on. For some reason, I do not want Kadin sneaking into this house. The thought of him here, in these rooms, moving through this place after midnight, feels wrong in a way I can’t explain cleanly enough to say out loud.
God, what is wrong with me?
Tapping the spoon absently against my thigh, Kadin exhales in mock suffering. “Look, I’m all for stolen moments between classes whenever you let me have them, but when are you actually going to let me take you on a proper date?”
The question lands. He isn’t pushing. He isn’t being sleazy. He’s offering the exact thing a good guy is supposed to offer. Time and effort. Something real.
And still I freeze.
The spoon slips slightly in my hand as a thick ribbon of melted ice cream slides off the edge. It lands directly on the front of my tank top before I can stop it, the cold soaking through the fabric and against the skin of my breast.
Gasping, I look down instantly, lifting the shirt away from my chest with my free hand on instinct, more startled by the sensation than anything else.
