My own Granny won’t even let me go home. And now this . . . this guy, is going to take away the only opportunity I have left? Like I don’t matter?

There’s a roaring in my ears, a giant wave crashing all around me.

I won’t be shoved around. I can’t be invisible. Not anymore. Even if it means embarrassment and shame and acting a fool. I’ve already gone through all that for the last five years and look where that got me.

Slamming against the door with more force than intended—which is a terrible idea because it takes me a full five seconds to realize it’s pull and not push—I eventually make it through and down the sidewalk after Fitz.

My heart thumps in time with my feet slapping the pavement as I race to keep up with his loping stride. It’s afternoon and there aren’t many students walking around so I don’t have any problems spotting Fitz’s lanky form up ahead on the sidewalk.

He stops suddenly and turns to face me, shrugging his backpack up further on his shoulders.

“Why are you following me?” he asks, voice rough.

I’m worse than a deer in headlights. I’m a mole. A muskrat. A bat that’s lived in a cave alone for so long it can’t comprehend the screech of fellow mammals. I mentally pry my tongue from the roof of my mouth and clench my anger like a weapon.

“You can’t take the whole flyer,” I manage without sounding like a loon. Progress. Maybe if I keep the sentences short and to the point, then my brain won’t get off track.

“Looks like that’s what I did.” He turns and keeps walking.

I continue to trail behind him.

“Stop following me,” he calls over his shoulder, speeding up even more.

“Maybe there will be more than one room.”

“If there isn’t, I’m getting it.”

“But I need a place to live.”

He turns down the next street, legs eating up the sidewalk. “So do I.”

“I have nowhere else.” I push the words out in between panting breaths. I’m running to keep up with his stride. A bead of sweat rolls down my back.

“Me neither.”

“I’m a girl!”

He stops to face me. “That’s sexist.”

He’s right. I shouldn’t have played that card. Also, I’m not really a girl, am I? I’m a woman. My face heats.

Darn it all to Hamlet.

At my silence, he heads up the sidewalk toward a one-story brick house.

This must be the place. It looks like the kind of house a little old lady would live in. Not an old lady like my granny, who makes moonshine and threatens her granddaughter with death and dismemberment, but one who makes cherry pie every day and has a million cats and calls everyone “sweetie.”

There are clean white shutters and a bay window, which from the outside looks like it could be the perfect reading nook.

The place is well maintained, with its neatly mown grass and perfectly trimmed hedges. It all fits the little-old-lady theory except for the two garden gnomes placed in a compromising position in the flower bed. Oh, and the keg on the porch.