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“Fine.” I roll my eyes. “I told you last time we talked that it’s going fine, and I haven’t even had my third session yet. Can you relax?”

“When it comes to you?” Alessia hums. “No.”

I’m sitting at the kitchen counter, indulging in a bowl of sugary marshmallow cereal for dinner while chatting on the phone with Alessia. It’s an adjustment, but I feel . . . calmer. Happier in my own skin, a feeling I’ve chased away for years now.

“What about swimming again?” she asks.

“Oh . . . no, I haven’t,” I confess, swirling my spoon in the now-colorful milk.

“Maybe you should.” There’s a long pause before she huffs a sigh. “Talk to Dr. Sutton about it, yeah?”

“I already did,” I mumble. “She said I should.”

“Then you should, Paloma.” She sighs again. “You can’t deprive yourself of joy like this anymore. That’s one of the rules.”

“I think you just made that up—”

“Maybe,” she says. “I’m just looking out for you. Now that you’re letting me.”

There’s a smile on my lips that she can’t see. She’s the only one on this earth who knows everything. The good, the bad, the messy. The depths of my self-hatred and anger and fear. She saw me at seventeen—lost and scared, half dead in the eyes. And she never let go of my hand.

It was me who pushed her out.

“Maybe we can get dinner or something next week,” I offer, feeling all at once shy and excited.

“Yeah?” I can hear the smile in her voice. “I’d like that.”

We hang up soon after, and I settle comfortably at the table, opening my laptop to do my assignments due tomorrow.

The front door opens, hitting the wall with force.

“You’re not the boss of me.”

The sound of my roommate’s annoyed yell—followed by our front door slamming—jolts me from the book I’m reading at the kitchen table.

“Wanna fucking bet?”

I swear I know that voice. I peek around the corner—only to be shocked by the sight of Toren Kane in my apartment, fuming mad, cornering my roommate in our living room. I step toward them, but neither one looks up from their heated standoff.

“Back off,” I snap.

His ring-adorned hands tighten to fists at his sides as he towers over her.

Only, when I shove into him to push him away from my roommate, Lily grabs his wrist with both her hands—keeping him there, looming over her.

“Stay out of this, Blake.” Toren snaps, eyes never leaving my roommate. She’s not scared, matching his huffing anger breath for heated breath. “This is between me and Lily.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she spits. His eyes lock down across her body and back up.

Toren’s in his usual all-black ensemble, tattoos on display with a short sleeve shirt and jeans. A large black motorcycle helmet is at his feet like he dropped it there, with a faded sticker of swirling blues and yellow on the back. Lily, on the other hand, is dressed in a tight navy zip-up and leggings, an elastic headband keeping her auburn hair back in the slouching ponytail it’s currently tied in. With her cheeks still pink from the cold, or exertion, it’s clear she was doing something athletic.

“Like hell I can’t. You’re running around a busy-ass town with your headphones in blaring,” he snaps, but his words are still quiet. Where Lily shouts, Toren doesn’t raise his voice a notch over speaking volume.

“So?” I ask, crossing my arms, still halfway between them even if neither of them wants to look at me.

“So?” Toren laughs, but there’s no humor in it. He turns to me then. “Lily can’t hear out of her goddamn right ear, and she doesn’t wear her hearing aids.”

My eyes flare. “What?”