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“Is this about a man?”
“No.” Even I’m not convinced.
She stares me down.
I could tell her.
For half a second, I imagine saying his name. The gala. The alley. The cab. Telling her that Callum Fox kissed me against a brick wall and every opposition inside me caught fire like it was made of paper.
But the second his name leaves my mouth, it stops belonging only to me. Gianna would never deliberately tell anyone. Neither would Sydney. But like Cal warned me, things in his life might end up on the news, and I am so not ready for that.
Besides, I’m not ready to make this real enough to survive outside my own head.
“I hooked up with someone,” I admit.
Gianna’s mouth falls open. “What?”
“Last weekend. At the hockey party.”
The lie tastes sour immediately. I take a sip of cold coffee to wash it down. It does not help.
“Brad?”
My pulse jumps. Brad Donnelly had spent twenty minutes talking at me beside the kitchen counter that night, mostly about an ACL injury I made the mistake of asking one medically relevant question about. Gianna had walked past while he was leaning in to show me a photo of his surgical scar and waggled her eyebrows like she was witnessing courtship.
Apparently, that’s all it takes to manufacture an alibi. And this one fell right in my lap.
“Yeah,” I say.
The word comes out too easily. I’d feel worse about that if my other option weren’t the front page of the internet.
“I knew it. I saw you two in the kitchen. He was practically all over you.”
“He was showing me his knee.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it? Was it good?”
A brick wall. A rough palm against my jaw. Callum’s mouth an inch from mine.
My cheeks go traitorously warm.
“Annoyingly.”
“How annoyingly? Out of ten.”
“No.”
“Letter grade?”
“A+”
“Oooooo. Would you do it again?”
“I don’t know.”
“That means yes. You know.”
I lock my phone and place it facedown beside me.
