“Come in,” I said, and nodded, though he likely couldn’t see me through the crack in the door. He entered slowly and, once inside, gently closed the door. The little click sounded so loud. So definite.

“You okay?” he asked, as he walked toward me, stopping a few feet away from the bed.

I sighed. “Yeah,” I said, shrugging, closing my book.

“So do you always read at parties?”

When he said that, it reminded me of a novel I was reading last year—an angsty good girl−bad boy trope. I had a love-hate relationship with those books, but was currently waiting for the next one in the series. So I was in love at the moment.

“I just . . . I don’t know. I got overwhelmed? That girl”—I raised my hand in the air, holding the book—“she heard me say that stuff, and now Austin’s being a dick and she probably feels like shit.”

Kael nodded. “You didn’t know she was going to walk up.”

“Still.”

“Try not to worry about it. I know you’re going to beat yourself up over it, that’s just who you are—”

“You know what?!”

Now he was the one who looked caught. It was clear that he hadn’t meant to say what he had. Or maybe he’d meant to word it differently. His mouth hung open a little.

“What do you mean that’s just who I am?” I accused. He’d better not have meant what I thought he did.

He took a breath. “I meant that I know you worry about a lot, and you put a lot of pressure on yourself. A lot of blame.”

I wanted to stand up, to tell him to get the hell out of my room, but I sat there, holding tight to my book, keeping my legs crossed underneath me.

“And you know that how?” I asked, not really wanting to know what he was going to say. I had already become this girl to him, the one he needed to check in on, maybe take care of. I despised the idea of that.

No way was that going to be me.

No way was that me.

“Come on,” he pressed me. He no longer looked unsure about what he had said or would say; he looked annoyed.

“You’re acting like you know me. You’ve been around for, what—a week? And half of that time you were MIA.”

“So you missed me when I didn’t come back?” he asked.

Why was he talking so much all of a sudden? And how could I get him to stop?

“That doesn’t matter. My point is that you don’t know me, so don’t say that I’m doing something or being a victim or whatever.” My voice sounded screechy and dramatic.