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I nod, walking fast for the door. My panties are so wet that I’m certain the whole world can tell what I’ve done.

I could have stopped him at any moment. Instead, my head fell back to his shoulder, urging him to do more.

I drift through the crowded hallway as if I’m under a spell, as if a piece of him is somewhere inside me, taking root.

Kappy grabs my arm as I pass with a grin on her face, as if she knows what just happened.

“Guess who’s asking you to winter formal?” she demands in a stage whisper.

I guess she doesn’t know what happened.

I shake my head. “No one I’m going to say yes to—I already know that much.”

“Come on,” she pleads. “Everyone is going. Like...I literally don’t know a single person who isn’t attending.”

My head jerks toward her. “Even Ford?”

I’ve entirely lost my ability to act cool and casual about him.

She raises a brow. “Yeah, he’s taking Amanda,” she says, nodding down the hall toward his locker as if they stand there together now.

Oh.

This sudden weight in my chest is falling, falling, and taking all my hope with it.

He was messing with me minutes ago in the supply closet when he’s seeing someone else. And she’s the kind of girl he’s meant to be with: blonde, popular, a cheerleader. Of course he’s taking her.

I was ridiculous to have thought what happened meant something. I was ridiculous to have kissed him, to have allowed—no, encouraged—everything that happened today.

It’s precisely like my father warned: Ford saw me as a conquest, one too dumb to know that’s what I was. My virginity is a prized commodity. Maybe he thought he’d throw me off the scent by being the one to tell me while he played the long game, trying to win it for himself.

“So, what do you think?” urges Kappy. “Let’s go as a group?”

I’m not even sure what she’s been saying.

How could he do that to Amanda? How could he do that to me? How could I have so misunderstood everything?

Kappy elbows me. “Are you even listening?”

I run a hand over my face. “Oh...um, I’m not sure my dad will let me go.”

She rolls her eyes. “Your dad will be there. He’s chaperoning. That seems pretty safe.”

I press a hand to my stomach. I wish I could sink to the floor and weep. “I’ll ask,” I whisper. “I have to go. I’m not feeling well.”

“Do you want a ride?” she asks.

I force something that’s intended to be a smile though I doubt it is one. “Thanks, but I’ve got my bike.”

The bike he fixed. After he saved me in the locker room but before he kissed me.

Why? Why would he have gone to all that trouble if he liked someone else?

I remove Ford from my Calcul8 contacts at home, then I climb in the shower and try to wash him off me. I scrub hard, until my skin is red and has begun to sting. What happened today was disgusting and went against everything I believe.

I came close to turning into my cousin, to going down the worst sort of path, and I’m lucky I was set straight early before it went any further. I should probably thank God for showing me the error of my ways, but I am not grateful in the least.

All night in my dreams, Ford’s hands are inside my bra, and his teeth are on my neck, and his mouth is against my ear, and his hands slide, slide, slide over my stomach, inching toward the waistband of my panties as if something brilliant lies beneath. I wake flushed and sweaty and tortured. My hands go to my sleep shorts, and I let the waistband snap hard against my skin.