I pull my knees to my chest, locking my arms around them and glancing out toward the French doors. The view really is pretty, with the sun rising over the canopy of trees in the Cuyahoga Valley National Forest. I guess I hadn’t realized how far east we were when Dempsey drove us home last night.

“Maddie,” he reprimands, one hand tilting my chin toward him. “Answer me,” he insists.

I nod but stay silent. Not because I don’t remember. Or because I want to keep it from Dempsey. But I can’t repeat it and trust my voice not to tremble.

I lean over his lap, pick up my phone, and open the video I took last night. I hand it to him and hit play, then curl up into his side. Without hesitation, he wraps one arm around me. I close my eyes but listen intently as the video starts with me explaining assault charges to all those douche bags.

Dempsey tenses beside me at the threat Adley made when he approached me, then he squeezes the shit out of my shoulder when Adley addresses the crowd and tells them we’ve reached an agreement.

“Ow, Dem…” I mutter.

He loosens his grip, but I can still feel him seething beside me.

When Adley tells me to tell my friends I won’t need a ride home and that he’ll find me later, Dempsey pushes to his feet.

He paces the length of the bed: an animal trapped in an invisible cage. He’s holding my phone ridiculously close to his face, but I had forgotten I was still recording at that point, so there can’t be much to see on the screen.

The video ends and the room goes silent. There’s a heavy tension between us—that electric supercharge that’s always there, intensified by his fury now that he knows every graphic detail of last night’s confrontation.

Without warning, he turns and stalks toward me, throwing the phone on the bed before he takes my head in his hands.

“You stupid girl,” he huffs out. The words don’t match the reverence in his tone. “You stupid, wonderful girl.” He closes his eyes, as if he’s in pain, then presses his forehead into mine.

“Why would you do that for him, Maddie? Why?”

I close my eyes and ignore his demand. He knows why. He has to know.

“That’s why you wanted to get out of there and come home with us, wasn’t it? Because of Adley?”

When I don’t answer, he holds me a little tighter, his fingers wrapping around the back of my neck as if he can will me to answer him.

“That’s why you didn’t want to be home alone last night,” he guesses correctly.