“Outside, Cross,” Seb says.
Mason laughs once, not a real laugh. He lets go of Sloane’s ass with a small theatrical lift of his fingers, stepping back and holding both hands up in surrender to the room. And it’s hard not to notice him inching away from anyone on the team and toward his Pi Sigma grunts.
“Frigid bitch is all yours,” he says to me without looking at Sloane. Then he turns to Seb and looks him up and down. “Must be nice partying on someone else’s dime.”
Seb’s face does not change. It never changes. But I am close enough to see the hit about being a scholarship kid show in his eyes. It’s the smallest flinch, there and gone, before his face closes over it.
“Outside,” Seb says again. “Last time I’m asking.”
Mason laughs, turns, and walks through the circle toward the porch with his hands still up, performing it for the room. Seb follows at a pace that makes the point without making a scene.
The rest of the room watches them leave, then the attention shifts to me and my hand on Sloane’s arm. A girl near the stairs has her phone half-raised, convinced nobody else has noticed her.
I should let go, but I don’t, because for two or three seconds after Mason walks out, Sloane doesn’t move. Her breath goes fast and she leans toward me, barely, transferring the smallest amount of weight into my palm.
I feel it everywhere.
She looks up at me and the mask is gone. Her hazel eyes are wide, I can smell her hair, her lips are parted, and I’m thinking about nothing except the distance between her mouth and mine. It makes my chest ache so badly that I forget that half the room is watching.
She remembers first.
I see her register it — the fact that she just leaned, barely, toward a boy who is not her boyfriend in front of everyone who will be talking about it tomorrow — and the mask goes back on, hard and instant. Her eyes change and she steps back, my hand falling away.
“Sloane—” I say.
“Don’t.”
Her chin is up. Her eyes are bright. There is a flush high on her cheekbones and her chest is rising fast, and I hate myself because even now — even with her looking at me like that — my body will not stop aching for her.
“I’m sorry,” I say, even as my mind is doing its own loud, stupid arithmetic on the curve of her mouth and the rise of her chest when she breathes. “He was?—”
“I know what he was doing.” Her voice is low and even, but it is not the polished voice, and it is not the real voice I’ve heard a couple of times. It is a third one, for me, and it is cold.
“He had his hand on you,” I say. “You flinched.”
“And now everyone in this room saw a boy save me from another boy.” Her voice goes even lower, so nobody except me can hear her. “Tomorrow the story is Mason got handsy at Luca’s party, and Rowan stepped in. I become Sister Sloane and you become the hero. Do you know how that feels?”
“I just?—”
“I do.” Her voice cracks. “You don’t get to decide for me, Rowan.”
I open my mouth and shut it. “But you’re clearly fak?—”
“You don’t get to choose who I am because you don’t like what I’m doing.” Her voice is so quiet I almost lose it under the music, but it lands like a hit to the ribs. “He put his hand on me without asking. You put your hand on me without asking, too. I’m not pretending I don’t know the distance, but I didn’t ask you to do that and I didn’t give you permission to.”
“Sloane—”
“Don’t,” she says. “Excuse me.”
She walks toward the door, through the crowd, not looking back.
Every instinct screams at me to follow, but I don’t.
The party is loud again before the door has shut behind her, and Luca is already moving toward the center of the room, doing what Luca does — drawing attention back to himself, sparking the energy until it is a roaring bonfire again.
Through the front window, I can see Mason already laughing on the porch with two of his Pi Sigma brothers, no doubt retelling his version of what just happened, untouched as always. I watch as Seb watches him a moment longer, jaw set, then comes back inside.
“He’s a piece of shit,” Seb says behind me.
