I’ll do that. Then maybe find a pub where I can get wasted, and—

“Well,” Conor says. “Fuck.”

Something about the word—the slight accent, maybe, or the hushed quality of it, has me snorting. “Indeed.”

“I don’t know what the hell to do with this information.”

“That’s the exact point I was trying to make, you prickhead.” I’m too emotionally exhausted to charge the insult with any heat, but it still reverberates between us—until I hear a deep, rich chuckle.

Unlike everything else about this conversation, it’s warm and it feels a little like…not a hug, no, but a hand rubbing soothingly up and down my spine.

So I laugh, too. Even as he says, “I am willing to concede that ‘load of inconsequential shite’ might not be the most accurate description of your predicament.”

“Yeah?” I tilt my chin up. Smile at the blackening sky. “How magnanimous.”

“Is there anywhere else you could stay for a while? With a friend?”

My friends are the ones I’m trying to run from, I don’t say. My heart is already too close to breaking. “A park bench. Does that count?”

He scoffs. “I’m going to book a hotel for you to stay at. And pay for it.”

“That’s nice, but…money is not an issue.” Eli has always made sure of that. Being financially independent from him is a priority of mine, and I’m here on a scholarship, work a part-time job. I try not to touch the funds Eli provides for emergencies, but I could book my own hotel.

Conor’s words, though, resurface a faint memory. Wasn’t Conor the one who paid for my travel, back when I was fourteen and did an internship with that California local news station? And the next year, when Eli left for a work trip, didn’t he drive me back and forth from school for a whole week?

Hang on. Didn’t Conor used to date Minami, too? Yeah, he did. And it feels…wrong. Minami was as close to a mother figure as I got after Mom died, and I will forever worship her. So I might be biased, but…how did Conor Harkness, supreme asshole, manage to pull someone like her?

“Where are you, anyway?” Conor asks. Something seems to occur to him. “It’s slowly coming back to me. You moved to Europe for uni, right?”

“So you do know that. Did you think thirteen-year-olds went to college in foreign countries?”

“Can’t say I ever thought about it. Where are you, precisely?”

“I’m not telling you, a stranger, where I live.”

“Come on, Maya. It’s not like I don’t have the resources to find out.” A tapping, rhythmic sound. Like he’s typing, or drumming his fingers. “Let’s see. You mentioned Tunnock’s. Probably for sale anywhere in the world, but particularly popular in Scotland.”

I exhale. Too loudly.

“Ah.” He sounds obnoxiously pleased. “St. Andrews? University of Edinburgh?”

Motherfucker, I mouth.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out. Back to the topic at hand—I’m not going to berate you for your choice in friends and roommates.”