“Huh?” I ask him.

“Willa told us that’s why you weren’t in the workshop this morning. She said she pulled you for a little one-on-one rehearsal time with her.”

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. It was good.” I don’t like lying to Lex, and it worries me how easily the dishonesty rolls off my tongue. “Really good.”

Val is staring at me, but she doesn’t say anything. And I remember how Cole said she found him asleep on the cabin porch this morning. How she woke him up and told him I wasn’t in my bed. How he probably took off like a wild man.

I follow Lex and Val to the cafeteria and fill my tray with spaghetti and salad. But I can’t really eat any of it. I feel so disconnected from everyone and everything. Like I’m floating through the day.

Val pulls me aside after dinner. “What the fuck’s going on?” she asks me. We’re standing in the hallway outside the cafeteria, next to the big whiteboard with ITALIAN NIGHT written in blue block letters. Her long, dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and I watch it swing behind her as she stares at me.

“I’m trying to figure that out,” I say. “I really am. But right now, I don’t have a clue.”

Val nods, like she can accept that. But then she says, “You don’t have to figure everything out by yourself, you know.” Her hand is on my arm. “If it’s shit with Cole, you can talk to me. I know a thing or two about complicated relationships.”

And I wish so hard that’s all it was. Trouble with some boy. But this goes so much deeper, and I can’t find the words, or the will, to explain it all. So I just nod and promise Val that I’m good.

But I know that’s a lie. And judging from the way she looks at me with those cat eyes, Val probably does, too.

Cole greets me outside the barn before rehearsal, and when he slips his arms around me, I tense up. I keep hearing those words from my dreams.

Look at the stars.

Cole’s words. How could I not have known that?

He takes my hand and turns it palm up. He touches the place where I pulled the splinter from my flesh. “Everything okay?”

It almost strikes me as funny. Cole Culver’s ability to ask the most loaded questions is pretty much unparalleled.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. And it’s the most true thing I’ve ever told anyone.

Cole’s forehead is pressed to mine. I feel his breath against my eyelashes. The firmness of his lips against my cheekbone. “We have to be honest with each other, okay? No censoring. Or hiding.”

“Yeah,” I promise. “No hiding.”

But I’m hiding so much right now.