I burst into laughter, and Salem dives forward to cover my mouth with his hand. “Okay, I hadn’t considered that your laugh is louder than the zombie apocalypse,” he growls.

“Hmph.” I press my lips together to stop myself, but now I’m hyperaware that Salem and I are in his bed, touching, so close I can feel his body heat through my thin tank top.

I am not thrilled about noticing this, either.

Or that my next thought is that I could swipe my tongue out and lick his palm.

I don’t know if similar thoughts are running through his head—probably not, because unlike me, he is neither single nor deranged—but he releases me and backs away with a quickness, leaving me nothing to do but pretend to be offended by the entire exchange before we finally steer ourselves back to the conversation at hand.

“You did give an emo acoustic performance,” I point out, though I omit the fact that it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard in my life, because I don’t know how to begin to process that.

“I did,” he concedes with a sheepish smile, “but I honestly didn’t plan to at the time.” Now it’s his turn to furrow his brow at me. “Did any of this stuff with your sister have to do with why you ran out after it?”

God, it would be so easy to say yes, and even easier if it were the truth. Right now there are so many question marks in my brain and I really do not like where it leads when I try to come up with the answers.

Especially with this added shirtlessness component that’s making it a lot harder to ignore the creeping, inconvenient truth of my feelings.

But when school was just beginning, I talked myself into a stupid mistake with the wrong boy, and now Salem’s with the wrong girl, and this is why I cannot be trusted with my own heart, my own body, and God, are those tears, again? How am I not completely dehydrated already?

“Evie?” Salem reaches out to place a hand on my knee, and while words and my brain can lie to me, the lightning that travels through my entire body at that contact can’t. “Hold on, let me get you some water.” I watch him grab a bottle from their little dorm fridge, and when he heads back toward me, my savior with drink in hand, it hits me like a cannonball to the gut.

The Knight of fucking Cups.

I am so stupid.

I am so, so stupid.

I have to get out of here.

“Thanks for the talk,” I babble, leaping off the bed, “but I’m good now. I’m gonna go to sleep. I’m sure I’ll be just fine. I—”