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“Says the guy who didn’t pass his class,” I point out. “I won’t let him make me quit, though. I want to stay. Besides, it’s prom soon.” He finishes cleaning up and bandaging my hand. “How long can you stay?”
“A while.”
I smile and climb under the covers, holding them open for him. He kicks off his boots and lies facing me.
As he traces love hearts on my good palm, I talk. “I thought you might have found a girlfriend, and that’s why you didn’t show up.” He shakes his head. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend? You’ll be nineteen soon, right?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly. So you should be dating.”
“Are you dating?”
I shrug. “No. But I’m not nineteen for another few months, so I still have time.”
“Is nineteen your cut-off age or something?”
“I dunno. I guess it just feels more grown up than eighteen.” We’re quiet for a moment. “You’ve been climbing through my window for four years, Odin.”
“And?”
“Don’t you think I should know your name? Or see your face? I mean … you haven’t even kissed me. All the girls I know are kissing guys.”
I think he frowns. “Are you kissing guys?”
“Are you kissing girls?”
“I’ve kissed a girl.”
“Well, I’ve kissed a guy.”
He’s glaring at me, I can feel it. “Who did you kiss? What’s his name?”
“Who did you kiss?”
“I didn’t kiss anyone. I lied.”
“Same,” I snap. “But it’s not like you’re kissing me, so you can just go out into the world with girls who see your face and kiss them.”
“I’m going to kiss you.”
My heart stalls, and my cheeks warm. “You are?”
“Yes. Do you want me to?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Then stop talking.”
I clamp my mouth shut, my skin suddenly vibrating with excitement. Anxiety swirls in my gut, and I hold my breath as he grips the bottom of his mask and pulls it up slowly, stopping it just above his top lip. His jaw is sharp, lips thick, and he’s clean shaven.
Four years and I’ve never even come close to seeing him. One Halloween night, I woke to him sitting in my room, and I’d been so beaten up from my training session, I thought I was imagining him. When he cleaned my split lip, and iced my bruised hands, I thought he was a guardian angel, or that I’d died.
Eventually, it became obvious that he was real.
For the first few months, he visited almost every night, but he only ever watched me. Quiet, unassuming. He was tall, lanky, and I just knew he was the same age as me. For so long, he didn’t move. Even as I wandered through the room talking about my day, folding my laundry, doing my hair, he’d sit and stare and say nothing.
Should I have screamed? Probably. But I was so desperately lonely that I didn’t want to scare him away. No one at school wanted to be friends with me because I was either bruised or wearing crappy make up to hide it, and the teachers for some reason never asked about the Crowe girl with the dark under eyes and the skinny frame.
