“Something like that.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. Instead he was rifling through his dresser drawers, frantically searching for something.

The metallic tang returned to my stomach, sloshing and rolling and twisting.

“Dean?” I wasn’t sure what I was asking, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say with the way he was acting. Since we’d crossed that line with each other, he’d never not touched me or smiled at me when we were together. “Everything all right?”

A dark laugh shook his shoulders. “You tell me.”

Oh. Right.

Maybe he was misunderstanding my earlier cryptic messages. Maybe he thought this was about me and him.

“Okay,” I said, my fingers trembling. “I need to talk to you. About—”

He spun around and tossed something at me. I instinctively caught the black T-shirt, eyes darting between him and it.

“Unfold it,” he demanded.

I shuffled the fabric around in my hands, taking in the rainbow design within the outline of deadmau5’s signature oversize mouse head.

“What’s this for?” My throat suddenly dry, I had to talk around the cracks.

Dean folded his arms over his chest. “You win.”

I refolded the T-shirt, slowly tilting my head. “What?”

His features hardened, and my stomach dropped.

“You win,” he said again.

“Dean, I’m confused.”

The muscles in his forearms flexed as he laughed again, but there was no light in his eyes. “Let me clear it up for you, then.”

A lump formed in my throat as I recoiled from his words.

“You win the challenge,” he said, eyeing the shirt. “My simple desktop switch for all the computers at school would’ve taken them hours, maybe days to figure out and fix, but it’s nothing compared to what you did.”

My eyes widened.

“Yeah,” he snapped. “I know.”

“You looked at my stuff before I could…” I sighed. “I came over here tonight to tell you about it. To explain—”

“I didn’t need to look at your stuff!” He cut me off. “I’ve been searching for you for months. And to explain what, exactly, Amber? That you lied to me?”

“What?” I shook my head. “We weren’t supposed to tell each other about what we were working on. That was part of the challenge.”

He huffed. “Sure, play that card.”

“I’m not trying to play any card,” I said. “And what do you mean you’ve been searching for me for months?”

He raked his hands through his hair. “Tanner,” he said, shaking his head. “He likes to blackmail people, remember? I’ve been searching for the person behind Ask Me Anything—”

“You didn’t tell me.” Hot tears welled behind my eyes.

“I was protecting you. Or I thought I was. I had no idea you would be the source!”

I stepped toward him. “I came here for help. To talk to you about—”