His blue gaze fastens on me. “Your parents died in a freak boating accident four years ago. Your dad was an avid fisherman. You studied art for a year and a half at the University of Chicago. You used to take meds for ADHD, which you don’t have. You have a photographic memory. You superimpose shapes on things in your mind when you’re thinking. You never forget a face. Well, I guess you have now, huh?”

I go very still. For a moment there’s only the occasional whir of a car on the highway.

He nods toward my arm. “You have a scar on your right elbow where you crashed riding your bicycle. You were fourteen. You call it your salami scar, because you skidded on the pavement and it looked like salami. Still does, a little.”

I don’t move, except for my eyes, which turn toward my sleeve.

“There’s another scar on your right shin that looks like a dent, where the bike landed on you, pedal first. You haven’t ridden a bike since. You took martial arts as a kid. Swam in high school. Love eighties music—Devo especially, because you’re basically a nerd. You don’t like makeup. Hate black coffee . . .”

“Stop,” I whisper.

“You touch your hair when you’re nervous, used to have a dog named Attila. Your litmus test of a true history geek is whether or not they know Attila the Hun died of a nosebleed. You love mulligatawny but won’t eat soup unless it’s hot enough to scald—”

“I said stop it!”

My hands are shaking. But even as I tell myself I could have shared any of these things under the guise of friendship and that he’s conning me, I can’t help the fact that I am desperately clinging to a shard of hope that he’s not. Four days ago, I was considering that I could never be honest with anyone, that no one would ever really know me. That sense of despair only got worse as I listened to Rolan’s entire story about where I came from, what I am. Now there’s a person in front of me who knows it all, better than I do. Or claims to, at least.

“You said yourself you acted like my friend to find out what I knew. Any so-called friend would know things like that.”

“I said I got too close and became your friend.”

“Same thing.”

“It isn’t to me.”

“Then prove you’re no longer hunting me. Let me go, and leave.”

He crouches down in the open door in front of me. “I can’t do that. I promised I’d be here afterward. We made this decision together, remember?”

“No, I don’t remember!”