He looked out at the night again—but his heart was running a marathon in his chest. “You already know Nick was taking my tests for me.”

She cocked her head to the side and gave a little shrug. “That’s not even a secret. That’s like me saying, I have a deaf little brother.”

Gabriel shrugged. Truths were clawing at his lips, begging to escape. God, to tell someone.

No way. Like he could sit here, trapped on the tailgate, and spill everything. Gee, well, I can control fire. Oh, and those articles in the paper? They’re talking about me. And maybe I should mention that I’ve been thinking about your arms around me all day. Or how I’ve wanted to kiss you for days, but right now that would make me no better than Ryan Stacey . . .

Yeah, that would be great. He drew a choking breath and fought for words.

“How about,” she said, her voice careful, “I get a question, then you get a question.”

That made him smile. “Like truth or dare?”

She blushed and her eyes dropped. “I’ve never played that.”

“Come on, Layne, kids play that when they’re ten.”

“Not all kids.”

She could be so fierce one minute, yet so innocent the next, and it was seriously making him crazy. “All right, go. Truth.”

“I told you I don’t know how to play.”

Gabriel leaned in and whispered, “The name of the game might be a giveaway.”

Her eyes flicked up, sparking with defiance, and for a breathless moment he regretted not choosing dare.

“Truth,” she said. “Why did you start cheating in math?”

At least that slammed the brakes on his train of thought. “Because I stopped passing. In seventh grade.”

“When your parents died.” Her voice was tentative, but it wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. I’d never been an A student or anything, but after that . . . I didn’t even want to be at school, much less do any work.” He shrugged and leaned against the side of the tailgate to look at her. “I was in danger of being held back, and things were already so messed up. Nick started doing it for me, just to get us through the year.”

But Gabriel remembered that first week of eighth grade, when he’d decided he was done cheating, that he didn’t need his brother’s help. He’d struggled to figure out how to solve every problem. Losing three months to his family mess, then another three to summer hadn’t exactly set him up to start pre-algebra. But he’d been ready to put his brain to a task, to do something normal, something routine, when so much of his life wasn’t.

Then Nick had come into his room with an identical paper. “Here,” he’d said, and his voice had been almost proud. “I did your math.”