He said it like it was a disease, and right then it really felt like one. “And I have a probation officer and a rehabilitated conscience. So we’re friends. That’s what we are. Friends. Us. Friends.”

“Yeah, I got it,” I snapped. I don’t think anyone had ever dropped more F-bombs in one sentence. He was practically semiautomatic with his spray of the obscene word. Friends. Friends. Friends. Friends. F-f-f-f-friends.

“Ser, I don’t want to be making promises I can’t keep. I don’t even know how long I’ll be here for. I care about you too much to do that to you.”

Care? That was right up there with “friends” in the things you never want to hear a guy say to you.

No matter how devastated I was about the f’ed up “us,” I tried to play it cool. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I totally overstepped. I freaked you out, didn’t I?” I caught the sad conflict in his eyes as they studied my face. “Oh, no, please don’t give me some bullshit line about giving me mixed signals.”

“No, I wasn’t—”

“Not the it’s-not-you-it’s-me line.” I tried to smile. “I’ve got my pride.” Well, what’s left of it.

“No, just you and me. You know, you’ve never really asked me about Kori.” His eyes wouldn’t meet mine all of a sudden. “Did she ever say anything about me?”

I could hear the warning in his tone. I wouldn’t like what he was about to tell me. “No.”

He stepped out of the doorway and sat on a stack of hay bales in the aisle. He focused on his hands. “I met her two years ago at this program. It was an alternative to juvie. A brat camp.”

My brows squeezed in confusion. “What?”

“She never told you?”

I thought back to that summer before eighth grade. I remembered the rumors about her being a slut, dropping E, cracking a Tiffany lamp over Chelsea Westad’s brother’s skull, getting arrested, spending the summer in rehab. “There might’ve been some rumors. That’s all they were, though. I don’t understand. Why would she have been there?”

“Officially, I think they diagnosed her with”—he made finger quotes—“rage control issues. But it was all bullshit. Self-defense was what it was and the guy was lucky all he needed was a couple of stitches. He tried to rape her and she beat the shit out of him.”

I looked down at my hands, took a steadying breath. Someone had tried to rape Kori? “I had no idea.”