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Dedication

To all the characters who refuse to be forgotten, and all the writers who refuse to forget them

Chapter One

THERE SHOULD BE A RULE that if your parents name you something like Everett Owen Riley, they should have to double—nay, triple—check things like, say, whether your new boarding school has put you in the correct dorm.

Right about now is where mine would be hearing from my lawyer.

“But you’re a girl,” Archibald Buchanan says for the millionth time since I showed up with a duffel of extremely scary bras.

“Well, I’m glad to see Camden’s education is as stellar as promised.”

He blinks at me. And I blink back. And it’s a good old-fashioned standoff, except that I’m on the wrong side of the door, and he’s on the side where I’m supposed to be, and somehow not one person has come to address this situation.

I try again. “Look, Archie.”

He winces.

“Do you not go by Archie?”

“I do, it just sounds so … ugh coming from you.”

“Now I see why they paired us up. They must’ve known that we were soulmates.”

Looks can’t kill, right? I know “If looks could kill” has been a saying for a long time, and the implication is that they can’t, but Archie looks like he has a whole lot of money, and I don’t know if quirky little sayings apply to people like him.

The ability to pinpoint the exact moment when the light goes out of his cold green eyes and he gives up entirely is what makes me an excellent poker player, and it’s because I see this happen that I manage to wedge my foot in the door before he can close it in my face completely. “Look. I obviously don’t want to be sharing a room with you either, and given they don’t have coed dorms in this place, I’m not really worried about that happening. But I would like to put my stuff down while we wait for someone to come fix this mess. So can you please let me in, and then you can call the cops or whatever rich people do when they catch a glimpse of the poors?”

I’m definitely getting “Let’s be friends” vibes from his scowl. Or, at least, it’s enough to get him to let me all the way inside.