The horses didn’t care that she had what?

She didn’t want him to ask—that much was clear from her posture. “You ride after school?”

She shook her head. “In the mornings. If I cut through the woods, I can walk to the farm in ten minutes.”

They had to be at school by seven forty-five. “You must get up early.”

She shrugged. “I like being the first one up. I can forget everyone else exists, and it’s just me and the elements.”

Gabriel smiled. “I know what you mean.”

She gave him a wry glance. “Please. I bet your alarm goes off at seven-forty.”

“You’d lose that bet.” He looked at the horses again, touching the next one in the row. It wasn’t his first time in a girl’s bedroom, but usually, the only talking they did was to shut him up before a parent heard. Here, alone with Layne, simply talking suddenly felt more intimate than anything he’d ever done with any random girl.

“I wouldn’t figure you for a morning person,” she said.

He brought his eyes back to hers. “I usually go for a run before the sun comes up.”

He liked running in the dark, before sunrise, when the sun couldn’t feed him energy. That always felt like cheating. It was one of the few things he did without Nick.

She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. He wanted to reach out and undo the elastic at the end of her braid, to let her hair come loose, to see what she looked like when she wasn’t hiding behind this wall of I don’t care.

Layne was looking at him expectantly.

Crap. She’d said something.

This was ridiculous. He cleared his throat. “What?”

Her cheeks sparked with pink. “I . . . ah . . . asked if you wanted to go back to the kitchen to work on the trig stuff.”

He really wanted to stay right here and figure her out.

But this wasn’t why she’d asked him in. She wasn’t flirting with him. She hadn’t even asked him up here—he’d asked for the tour and had practically strong-armed his way into her bedroom.

He was being an idiot, standing here thinking about her hair.

Gabriel stepped back. “Sure. Whatever.”

The air in the hallway felt cooler, fed by the new distance between them. It reminded him of Nick.

He didn’t like that.

Gabriel touched her arm. “Hey.” He paused. “Thanks. For trying to help.”

She looked up at him, her eyes shadowed in the darkened hallway. “Thanks for helping Simon.”

He could hear her breath, as quick as his own.

Then he could hear a key in the front door.

He instinctively jerked back—not like he’d been doing anything.

Layne’s eyes went wide. “Crap. It’s my dad. Come on.” She grabbed Gabriel’s hand and tugged.

He jogged down the steps behind her, but there was no way they’d make it to the kitchen before her dad came through the door.

“Layne,” he said. “Christ, just relax. We weren’t—”