We were sitting in his car, parked in my driveway. It was after midnight, but still bright in the car, thanks to the truly obscene amount of security lighting my parents have. Somebody tried to break in a few years back, and ever since then, my dad has been more than a little paranoid. But, I mean, if we didn’t have this big brick, ivy-covered house that pretty much screams, “HI! THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE ARE TOTALLY LOADED! PLEASE TAKE SOME OF THEIR STUFF! THEY’LL JUST BUY MORE!” he wouldn’t have to worry so much.

My crown was on the floorboard. I’d taken it off as soon as we’d left the school, even though Ryan had joked that he expected me to wear it 24/7 from now on. And then Brandon had made a joke about how I should wear it during sex, and said something about properly “saluting” the Queen, which, A) didn’t really make that much sense, and B) was dumb anyway.

“It’s just something I was thinking about,” I said to Ryan now. “Didn’t you write a paper on it for AP Psychology last year?”

Ryan blinked. In the dim light of the car, his hazel eyes were nearly black, and he’d loosened the hunter green tie around his neck and shed his suit coat. Normally, seeing Ryan all rumpled and disheveled sent a little thrill through me, but tonight, I was way too preoccupied to appreciate his hotness.

He slid off me and back into the driver’s seat, running his hand through his hair. “Um . . . yeah. Well, I mean, to be honest, I used one of Luke’s freshman psych papers.” Luke was Ryan’s older brother, currently off at the University of Florida. When I frowned, Ryan gave me one of those lopsided grins that usually made me smile in return. “Is this about the Committee for Academic Honesty?” he asked. “Because I’d hope dating the committee chairwoman, like, exempted me from that.”

“No, it’s nothing to do with CAH,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I just . . . wait, Ry, you used someone else’s paper? For an AP class?”

He sighed and leaned forward, folding his arms on the steering wheel. “It was right in the middle of basketball season, and I didn’t have time to write a paper on crazy people. And it wasn’t anyone, it was Luke, and since we’re brothers, that makes that paper, like, half mine anyway.”

He was joking, and I wanted to laugh, I really did. I rolled my lips inward, trying to stop the next sentence from coming out, but it was no use. “Ryan, playing basketball on quite possibly the worst team in Alabama is not going to get you into a good college.”

“Oh God,” he muttered, slamming his head back against the headrest.