So, yeah, I knew why I was sitting on the edge of Jax’s bed, unable to go downstairs and face my friends. I was going to stay up here, surrounded by the scent of Jax’s cologne and the images of all the naughty things we’d done in here, on the bed, the floor . . . the bathroom.

Yep, I was just going to stay up here forever. Sounded like a decent, legit plan. Maybe I could talk Jax into bringing me food at least twice a day. If so, this plan was totally getting better.

“Calla?”

Lifting my head, I twisted toward the open door. My back straightened. Teresa stood in the doorway. She wasn’t alone, either. Avery was with her.

“Jax told us we could come up here,” Avery explained as Teresa nudged the door farther open with her hip. “So we totally just didn’t roam up here.”

Figured that Jax had done that. God knows I’d been up here for a while. “Sorry,” I said, focusing my attention to my toes. “Time got away from me.”

“It’s understandable. You’ve had a crazy night,” Avery said softly.

Teresa walked in and plopped down on the bed beside me. “Apparently, you’ve had a crazy life.”

I winced.

Avery sent Teresa a look that pretty much flew right over her head. “You’re hiding up here,” Teresa said.

My lips twitched, and the movement kind of hurt. When I looked in the mirror earlier, a faint bruise was forming on my jaw, and my lower lip was cut near the right corner. “Is it that obvious?”

She shrugged. “Kind of.”

I drew in a deep breath. Since I wasn’t going to be able to hide up here, I needed to woman up. Doing so sucked. “I’m sorry, guys. I know I’ve lied to you all, and I really don’t have a good reason for doing so.”

Teresa cocked her head to the side as Avery hovered by the edge of the bed, her slim fingers fiddling with the bracelet along her left wrist. “So . . . you’re not from around Shepherdstown, are you?”

Mortified, I shook my head. I hadn’t felt this way since I was six years old and had thrown bubble gum in the hair of a girl who was about to go onstage before me. I hadn’t meant to toss it in the mass of brown curls, but Mom had been standing by the front of the stage and when she’d realized I still had gum in my mouth, she had gotten a crazy stage mom look on her face and I’d panicked.

“I’d been at Shepherd since I was eighteen, and to be honest, it does feel like my only home,” I said, glancing at Teresa. She was watching me closely. “I know that doesn’t justify lying, but I just . . . I never thought of here as home, at least for a long time.”

Teresa nodded slowly. “But what about when you said you went to visit family for break? From what I gathered earlier, you haven’t been back here in years.”