He was the only boy I’d dated since I moved here, since high school, when I barely dated at all. Making out with senior boys who didn’t know my name apart from “Austin’s sister” wasn’t exactly dating. Brien’s manipulative charm was addictive, and I had hoped that one day he would actually understand me and find me good enough for him and his parents, although that day never came. But now, after these few months, the spell had finally worn off and he barely crossed my mind anymore.

I rolled onto my back, sprawling my legs and arms out. I moved my arms up and down like I was making an angel in the snow. I should be grateful I get to have the whole bed to myself and I should stop thinking about men, in general. Not Kael, not Brien, not my dipshit brother, and especially not my dad.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I woke up with my cell phone on my chest. It felt like the heat was on. I checked the time: almost four in the morning. I had to be up at eight so I could run to the grocery store, get gas, and be ready for work by ten. Thinking of my to-do list was stressing me out in the middle of the night, making my brain too awake to go right back to sleep. I rolled my T-shirt up, turned my fan on high, and lay back down, letting the cool air fill the room and brush across my skin.

Opening Facebook on my phone, I went to Elodie’s friends list and typed in Kael’s name. Nothing came up, so I searched for him again. I changed my search to “Mikael Martin” and found a profile with fewer than one hundred friends, which seemed odd to me, but made sense for what I knew of him so far. I didn’t talk to 99 percent of the people I was “friends” with, but I still had almost a thousand. That seemed excessive, having a thousand people I never spoke to have access to me.

His profile picture was a group shot of Kael with three other soldiers. They were all dressed in ACUs and standing next to a big tank. Kael was grinning in the picture, maybe even laughing—that’s how bright his smile was. It was weird to see him like that, his arm around one of the guys. Maybe this was his level-ten smile that I had been wondering about? I zoomed in on it. My stomach tingled. I went back to his profile, but apart from his profile picture and Fort Benning, Georgia, I couldn’t get any information from his page at all. Everything was private. I almost asked to be his friend, but it felt stalkerish to send him a Facebook request while he was sleeping on a chair in my living room.