I’m hoping the questions are rhetorical. A part of me is really wondering, though. I don’t know her as well as I used to. Maybe I’m a fool for thinking she wouldn’t have instigated any sort of intimacy between us unless it meant something to her.

Cassia’s front teeth sink into her bottom lip, chasing away the pink until she releases it to speak and color rushes back. “So what if I do?”

“Now who’s lying?” I ask, unprepared to deal with the possibility she’s not.

Cassia shrugs. Indifferent. Maddening. There’s no trace of duplicity on her face, and it pisses me off to a degree I’m not expecting.

She’s not yours, I remind myself.

Never has been.

Never will be.

“And you always just walk away after?”

“Mad I stole your move?”

I inhale sharply, surprised she’s bringing that Halloween up. Am I proud of it? No. But I thought it was settled history. Part of the past. Irrelevant moving forward. “Cassia…that wasn’t—”

“I lost interest in an explanation four years ago, Holden. Don’t bother.”

Her tone is acerbic. Cutting. The complete opposite of uncaring, and a masochistic part of me wants to grin in response to that small victory.

“Yeah, clearly you’re over it, since you just brought it up.”

She sighs, long and irritated. “I’m cold and hungry and there’s no point to this conversation. If you didn’t want it to happen, you would have stopped it, since you’ve never had any issue being honest. It happened, it won’t happen again. Now you can go back to ignoring me.”

“Cassia…”

“I mean it, Holden.”

She turns and walks away from me.

Again.

Leaving me standing here, a whole lot irritated and just as conflicted.

Because, the problem is, I want it to happen again.

I can admit that to myself. I’m just not sure it’s anything I should tell her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CASSIA

I’m shoving the last of my books into my locker when Sydney appears.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” I reply, shutting the door and spinning the combination. “You ready?”

“Uh-huh.”

Most days, Sydney stays after school in one of her various roles as part of the theater elective she takes every semester. She’s never acted in any of the productions, but always takes on some sort of managerial position as a stagehand. I’ve tried to talk her into performing for years, but I’m not really one to talk. Most of the time, I hang out in my comfort zone right alongside her. The only reliable pull toward the uncharted in my life has been Holden Adams, and I can’t exactly pass that along to Sydney as solid advice.