Chapter 19

Aro

I stare at the old phone, scrolling through all the texts on one of the devices I’d found in Hawke’s desk drawer. There were several outdated phones and only two of them worked. The other had texts just as dark, but this thread feels different. I’ve read through it at least five times.

Do you see her?the sender asks.

The person who once owned the phone I’m now holding replies, I’m looking at her now.

What do you think?

Pretty,they say.

I’m so hungry for her.

I know you are.

I hold the device, navy blue and heavy, with a stubby antenna and no touch screen. There were several others in that drawer, different brands but all equally as old.

I hold it in both hands as I lean against the wall of his surveillance room.

I want her naked, the first says.

I promise, comes the reply.

Who are they and why is one helping the other? And who are they after? Did they bring her here? Hawke had these phones. He’d been hiding them. Why?

He’s also not been forthcoming about the story behind this place.

Sweating in my bed, and able to do nothing but take what I give her, the prick writes as his friend watches her.

She’ll like you.

Yes.

I read it, but I hear it as a whisper instead.

And then she’ll bleed for you.

Yes.

This text conversation is different than the others I read, because it feels like this conversation is happening now, and they’re talking about me.

This Saturday, his friend promises. Carnival Tower.

And the discussion ends. These must be burner phones, because in every one I read, the sender and recipient seem close, but there are barely any exchanges, and they feel like the same people talking from one phone to the other.

Carnival Tower. It sounds familiar.

Ringing pierces the silent room, and I know who it is before I even pull out my phone.

I answer, holding it to my ear as I look up and see him on the screen. He stands on the roof.

“Aro?” he says.

I watch him. He looks around him, nervous.

After I got back from the appointment with Dylan, I showered and thought about making something to eat for us. He was so nice with my brother and sister this morning.

I didn’t mean to find the phones. I just wanted to be somewhere he was. Look at his books. See what was happening around town on the screens. It was an accident.

“Aro?!” he yells.

“What’s Carnival Tower,” I ask instead.

He turns his head, looking straight at me through the camera posted to the air duct rising out of the roof like a chimney. I can tell by his silence that locking down the hideout might’ve been a good idea. He’s got a secret.

“How did…?” He breathes hard and then hardens his voice. “Open the door.”

“I found your phones.”

“You mean the ones as old as us?” he barks, yanking on the latch. “Open the door.”

“No.”

“Aro…”

“I like it here,” I tell him.

I’m surprised by how soft my voice is. It feels like I’m changing.

He goes quiet, unable to see me through the lens, but still, he tries.

“I feel safe,” I continue. “But it’s more than that. In a world full of people who prey and lie and stare and take—who force you to do things you don’t want to do—they don’t exist in here, do they?” I move toward the desk, looking at him and seeing the wind shake the trees behind him and the lights from below.

But it may as well be a million miles away. Nothing out there is real. At least not like it is in here.

“I can’t hear the traffic or their voices or their music,” I say. “I feel everything in here. It’s so quiet, Hawke.” I close my eyes, barely murmuring. “What is this place?”

He hesitates, but before I can open my eyes, he replies. “It’s Carnival Tower. I found the phones when I found it.”

As I thought. So the phones were left here. Did they succeed then? Was she here too? Whoever they were talking about in those texts…

“How did you find it?” I ask him, looking up.

He meets my eyes. “I looked for it.”

“Why?”

“Open the door, Aro.”

But I don’t. “What happened to her?”

He’s quiet for a moment. “She fell though the mirror,” he says.

The mirror. Carnival Tower.

Now I remember. Something about not leaning back into mirrors. A superstition in the area. They’re portals.

It’s bullshit. Mirrors aren’t dangerous. It’s nothing supernatural, like ghosts or parallel dimensions.

The phones exist. The texts are real.

This urban legend started with a true story.

“What happened to her?” I ask him again.

But he demands, “Open the door.”

Part of me is a little wary. None of this makes sense, and his part is unclear. What if that’s what Hawken Trent was after the whole time? Snatching me up to relive Carnival Tower.

Where did he go today? He’s been gone for hours.

“You’re not alone in there, you know?” he taunts. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you? Like you’re being watched and not by me?”

A smile pulls at my lips. Maybe.

But darkness does that to you.

“Open the door,” he whispers.

I reach up, my heart thundering inside my chest. I tap the screen, hearing the mirrors and the roof release their locks.

A moment later, the ceiling door slams to a close, and I know he’s inside.

“Where are you?” he asks in my ear.

I flip off all the monitors, killing the last remaining light in the place and shielding us in darkness.

“Somewhere,” I tell him.

He’s quiet, and I walk, turning left and up the short staircase to the great room and kitchen, but I don’t go there. I hear his footsteps on the iron grating as he descends from the roof, and I veer left, toward the mirror and Frosted. He doesn’t see me.

“The lights are off,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“You want to hear a bedtime story, is that it?”

I hold back my smile; but excitement, anticipation, and a sliver of fear fills my lungs and heats my blood.

I back up toward the bakery, keeping an eye on the tunnel.

“It’s one of our urban legends,” he tells me. “But as with most stories, it’s rooted in fact. Something that really did happen once. I didn’t start researching it until I noticed the unaccounted for space on the bakery’s blueprints. Once I found my way in and found the phones, pieces started to come together.”

His voice is sonorous—calm, gentle, and steady—as it drifts into my ear and through my head, like he’s close. Like he’s behind me.

“But stories change and take on a life of their own over time,” he goes on. “And every version is different every time it’s repeated. I can’t be sure what’s true and what’s not.”

This story can’t be that old. They had cell phones at least.

“Tell me,” I beg.

“Are you sure?”

My whisper is barely audible. “Yes.”

The hideout is so quiet I hear the clock chime in the square. The hair on my neck rises.

“One night,” he starts, “it’s always at night in these stories, isn’t it?” I hear the smile in his voice. “A babysitter was watching a kid in a big house. Secluded. All alone. Dark.”

“Is this the, ‘The call is coming from inside the house?’ one?” I tease.

“Close,” he replies. “It was Grudge Night, and her friends were off having the time of their lives. Pulling pranks. Drinking. Racing. Getting wild.”

I see a shadow pass the hallway ahead and turn my back to him, hiding the light of my phone behind my hair. His footsteps fade as he goes down toward the surveillance room and the bedrooms, not noticing me at all.

“But not Winslet,” he tells me. “She knew they’d come for her. She stayed put that night so that they could.”

I turn, heading back toward the great room that he had just left. “Who was coming for her?” I ask softly.

He’s quiet, and I pass by the couch, barely visible in the moonlight streaming through the windows above, but I spot the hoodie he was wearing laying across the arm. A white T-shirt lays on top.

It warms in my stomach, the thought of him getting comfortable.

“During this week every year,” he says in a low voice, “a group from the rival school in Weston broke into houses. Not for anything valuable. Just for fun. They called themselves the Marauders.”

I grin. “We did, did we?”

“Most of Shelburne Falls spent the night at parties,” he explains. “Together. In groups. Safety in numbers. But she wanted to be alone if they came.

“What did we do when we broke into houses?”

“Whatever we let you do,” he says.

A shiver shoots up my spine.

“The Marauders would come, in their ’72 Dodge Charger that was scarier than any mask, and when you saw it enter town, you knew what was about to happen. You just didn’t know to who,” he tells me. “Sometimes, they’d give chase. Sometimes, they’d tie some people up as hostages for an hour to humiliate them. Everyone would laugh. It was good fun.” He pauses before continuing. “Sometimes, they’d do other things if people were into it. Behind a closed door, so no one would see.”

He makes Weston sound a lot more interesting than it is. Or maybe I’ve just had my head up my ass feeding kids and paying bills for most of my teenage years.

“You don’t have these stories at school?” he inquires.

“I never paid much attention.” I open the door to the Rivertown tunnel and close it behind me, satisfied I’m hidden for now. “Kind of wishing I had.”

“Where are you?”

My skin feels like it’s vibrating. “I’ll let you know when you’re getting warm.”

I walk, hoping he hasn’t turned on the interior cameras, because that would be cheating.

“Winslet was the popular girl here,” he continues his story. “Stunning eyes, confident, money… The ultimate cool girl, living a charmed life, despite the parents who left her alone all the time with nothing but a housekeeper and a credit card.”

Sounds like me, except for the housekeeper and credit card. And the cool, charmed part.

“And that’s why she knew they’d come for her.” His voice sharpens with an edge. “Because of everything they lost that she didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Their best friend was dead,” he states. “He killed himself earlier that year…because of her.”

I stop. So, a Shelburne Falls girl rejected a Weston boy, and he lost it. I don’t know what started the beef between our towns, but that sounds as good a place as any.

“Some people say they were a couple,” Hawke adds. “They were in love, she broke his heart… Others say he barely knew her. He was just obsessed. Sick in the head with his madness for her.”

I approach the Rivertown entrance, seeing a girl on the other side. She faces me, smoothing her hair and ruffling her long bangs, and I step up close as Pirates fill the little caverns off to the side behind her, talking and laughing and carefree, because they’re only aware of what they can see.

I could flip the latch, grab her, and close the mirror before they even knew where she went. I mean, just for shits and giggles, of course. Being a Marauder must’ve been fun.

“Over the next several months after his death,” Hawke tells me as the chick applies lipstick. “She worked hard to escape the shadow of being the callous girl who’d driven a man over the edge. But she soon realized that in that shadow was exactly where she wanted to be. She became notorious. Powerful. Feared. She wasn’t letting his ‘stunt’ ruin her life, like I’m sure he hoped it would, when he blamed her in his suicide note, but…” A hint of pride laces Hawke’s voice. “She also wasn’t going to let anyone forget her part in it. She twisted it to use it.”

By making his memory a joke. “She threw him under the bus to save herself, didn’t she?” I turn and head back down the hallway, grazing the wall with my free hand as I go. “Made a joke of a sad guy. Must’ve made her school proud. Must’ve made Weston angry.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “On one occasion, she even invited her whole class over to her house for a party.”

I pass vacant rooms, too dark to see what’s inside, and even though I feel something crawl on my back, I press forward. It’s the dark. Fear is worse in the dark when you don’t know what’s there.

He goes on, “She’d made a pile consisting of every love letter and present he’d given her and joined them in fucking it all up.”

“I’m not going to like Winslet, am I?”

The guy was dead. There was no need to be cruel.

“They broke everything that was breakable,” Hawke explains. “Tore up every letter and smashed every trinket. And then threw everything into a bonfire in her driveway.”

“Do you think she was trying to provoke his friends?”

“It’s possible. His best friend wasn’t a lover like him. He had a reputation for being violent on the field. And in life. She knew Grudge Night was his. He would come for her to get revenge.”

“Now that she was of age, of course.”

I hear his quiet laugh. “Very good.”

Yeah. They waited until she was eighteen, because when it’s a minor, she was kidnapped. When it’s an adult, they can just say she ran away.

“Did he find her that night?”

The texts roll through my mind, thinking about them approaching the house? Did they wear masks? Face paint?

I leave the hallway, feeling him everywhere as I step back into the great room.

“She waited,” he whispers. “Made some popcorn with the kid. Watched a movie.” Wind rattles the windows above. “Put him to bed and then put on some lipstick in the hallway mirror.”

My skin chafes on my T-shirt, and the needles of carpet under my feet spread up my legs as I cross the room.

“Lipstick?” I ask. “Why?”

“Because she was a weapon he needed to fear.”

Hawke’s breath spills out of the phone and down my neck. A lock of hair sticks to my skin.

I look around, searching the dark corners of the room. The shadows. Where is Hawke?

“She walked through the house,” he murmurs, “feeling him. Feeling all of them. His friends.” I drift down the hall, knowing he’s here. He’s watching me. “In the wind against the doors. The creak from the second floor. The shift in the air from an open window she hadn’t left open.”

“What did she do?”

“She walked,” he says. “Slowly stepping past darkened doorways and billowing drapes, peeling off her sweater. And then her bottoms.”

Warmth trails down my arms, my head starts floating, and I feel it. Scared for him to catch me but needing him to come. My chest caves every time I exhale. I can’t catch my breath as I peel off my shirt, feeling the air hit my breasts.

“Did he have a moment when he was scared watching her?” I ask Hawke. “A moment when he didn’t know what to do?”

“He knew what to do.” His voice is like velvet, and I curl my head into it. “He wasn’t a fucking coward.”

I hear a step behind me, and I smile. “Getting warmer,” I tell him in the phone.

“His heart pounded,” Hawke tells me, “but his hands never shook. He wouldn’t be shaking when he touched her.”

A body covers my back, and I break out in goosebumps, gasping a little.

He takes my phone away from my ear, and the skin of my nipples tightens as his fingers graze my back and he sweeps my hair over my shoulder.

“What did she say when he cornered her?” he asks me.

He fists the back of my jeans and hauls me back into his body, burying his nose in my hair.

“‘Am I supposed to run now?’ she said.” I moan, arching into him.

He pushes me left, pressing me into the wall, the cement cold on my nipples.

“I’m not running from you,” I tell him, playing my part. “I don’t want to. You wanted this conversation.”

His fingers reach around, find the button of my jeans, and I gasp, curling my toes into the floor.

“A hunter appreciates its meal more than anyone,” he whispers.

“And a big game hunter needs help,” I taunt. “Is that why you brought your boys? I’m flattered.”

He snickers in my ear, and we’re them, but we’re also us. The rivalry and the river, and he hates so much about me, but he wants me.

“You have a big mouth,” he says. “But I’m so glad you’re not all talk.”

He pushes Winslet’s jeans down over her ass—my ass—and I let him do all the work. He glides them down off my legs, and I step out of them.

“How do you know?” I ask, making my way around the corner and into his room. “Been watching me?”

He’s quiet, but he follows. Is this what Winslet wanted? Him? Was he the one she really desired?

Is he the reason she acted out? To get his attention?

“What have you seen?” I press.

Was he a watcher like Hawke?

But he pushes me in the back, and I crash onto the bed. I pop out my knees to get myself up, but cool air hits me between the legs, and I feel his eyes down there.

When I try to flip over, he comes down on top of me, threading his fingers into my hair.

I whimper.

“Shhh,” he says in my ear, but it doesn’t calm me.

I fist his sheets.

“I saw some things that surprised me,” he says. And then he slips his other hand underneath me, covering my breast with his hand. “Some things I liked.”

My stomach quivers. Hawke…

He squeezes my flesh over and over, moving it around, and then…his hand leaves my hair and he’s yanking my panties down.

“And some things y…you didn’t,” I pant.

He takes my hand and pushes it down between my body and the sheets. A groan escapes before my fingers are even between my legs.

Lifting my knee to the side, I open myself up and roll my fingertips over my clit. He pants into my neck and squeezes the curve between my thigh and hip.

“And then he pressed her into the mirror…” Hawke says, and he thrusts himself behind me.

The hard muscle in his jeans rubs so close, and I’m wet on my fingers as he does it again and again.

“No one will question it.” He rolls his hips, dry fucking me as I play and grind my pussy into his bed. “You know that, right? Just a girl, overcome with guilt, joining the boy in death that she couldn’t love in life.”

“Will you hang me?”

He bites my neck. “If you leave a note, I’ll do it any way you want me to.”

Yeah, I don’t think so. I don’t think he killed Winslet at all. She was his match.

“Aren’t you scared?” he gasps, and I feel heat drip out of me.

“Always.”

He holds me so tight, one hand on my breast and his chest covering my back as he breathes in my ear.

“Hawke…” I moan. It almost feels perfect. There’s something I can’t reach, though. More. Deeper.

I whimper into the pillow. Hawke. I’m always scared, but I can’t think about anything else right now. Just more. And more and more and more.

“Kill me,” Winslet taunts him.

He squeezes my neck, and I can almost feel the mirror pressing into my body. She watched him on her. Every second of it.

“I want what you never gave him,” he growls low.

And I want everything you’ve never given to anyone else, Hawke.

“Watch me,” I whisper, begging.

He stops thrusting, rising back up, and I squirm on the sheets. I rub circles, feeling the heat of his gaze on my ass as he kneads the skin.

Hawke needs this. He likes a view, and I’m lost. Blissfully lost, fucking for him.

I feel a bite on my right cheek as he squeezes a fistful of my ass and sucks the skin.

I cry out.

“Pay me for my pain and suffering,” the boy breathes over my skin. “Pay me.”

Coming back down on me, he thrusts so hard—my cunt aching for him—and I know he’s right there. Trying to feel me and get inside me, but not ready to take off his jeans.

“Kill me,” Winslet begs.

He reaches down, taking over fingering me as he mimics fucking me, rolling his hips again and again. “I could never.” He bites my earlobe. “You’re far too pretty. I have other plans.”

I whimper, Hawke pumping on top of me, and I know I feel the head of his dick, but then his tongue comes down, trailing up and down my back, and I burst open, coming. I arch my ass up into him, needing everything, and then he groans, not holding back, because there’s no one here to disturb us.

His fingers slide inside me, deep, and I cry out as he thrusts them in again and again.

“Hawke,” I gasp, squeezing the sheets with my forehead buried in the bed.

I move into his hand, riding it out.

Oh, God.

He pulls out, gliding his wet fingers over the skin between my legs and lingering as his forehead rests on my shoulder. For a minute, we both catch our breaths.

“Was that okay?” I ask him. “You don’t feel badly about it?”

I wanted to tell him to get his clothes off. If he’d wanted me, I wouldn’t have stopped him.

As our orgasms ebb away, though, I’m glad for his control. He doesn’t want his first time to happen like this.

“No, uh…” He rolls off me and onto his back. “The story, maybe? I don’t know. It took me out of my head. It felt good.” Then his eyes dart over to me. “Are you okay?”

I smile a little, nodding. “Que cuerpazo te cargas.”

But I don’t say it in English, because he doesn’t need to know how attracted to him I am.

I can barely move, though. I’m tired. Slowly, I roll over, sweat covering my stomach.

Hawke’s abs flex as he stares at my body, and then he sits up, sliding a hand down my belly to my…

“It’s smooth down there.” He’s so gentle as he touches, and I want to turn away, a little embarrassed now. “Do you always keep it that way?” he asks.

I want to laugh. “Dylan helped me with something today.”

His eyebrows shoot up, and it’s amazing how he can go from hot to stern in less than a second.

“Don’t be mad,” I tell him. “I just wanted…” I look away. “You said you wanted to see, I just…”

“You did this for me?”

“No,” I reply, sitting up. “I wanted to feel you better. That’s all.”

I try to cover myself, but he just continues to touch, his fingers drifting over my center and inside my thighs, making the skin of my nipples tighten.

It was a good excuse, even if it wasn’t the truth. I can feel everything now.

I can’t stay here, though. I can’t get attached. I sit up and climb off the bed, and I see him still sitting there, staring at me as I get dressed.

“Leave your door unlocked tonight,” he says quietly. “In case I want to taste what my fingers touched.”

My stomach drops, thinking about his tongue inside me, but I steel myself and pull on my jeans.

“Baby steps, Hawke,” I tell him. “You still haven’t kissed me here.”

And I grin playfully, covering my tits with my arms and twisting in a little dance.

But he’s not smiling. He pushes up and comes over to the edge of the bed, taking my face in his hand. “And I still haven’t kissed you here.” And he brushes over my lips with his thumb.

I stare at him, my heart pounding so hard I hear it in my ears.

Oh. That.

I’m not sure he’s tried, but neither have I, and I think we both know why. It wasn’t part of our mutual ‘touching and let’s pleasure and distract each other’ agreement.

He doesn’t press, though. He backs up and rolls off the other side of the bed, grabbing his bath towel and some clean clothes.

I pull on one of his T-shirts. “He was behind the mirror, wasn’t he?” I ask him. “He was watching them.”

Hawke stops and looks over at me.

“He wasn’t dead,” I clarify. “The guy who was obsessed with her and prompted their revenge.”

It’s an urban legend, after all. There’s always a catch.

Hawke finally shrugs. “Some people say,” he tells me. “And others think he’s the one who fucked her.”

I widen my eyes. I hadn’t thought of that. If they wore masks, like thieves and criminals do, she wouldn’t have known.

Hawke just sighs. “I don’t know if we’ll ever find out which one pinned her that night and which one was watching.”

But we do know one thing. If he wasn’t dead, and his friend didn’t kill her, then the story didn’t end there.

He didn’t come into my room that night, but the next day, he wanted me with him nearly every minute.

“You should be safe here.” Hawke turns off the bike, and we both climb off. “You can walk around a little if you want, but keep your hat on and your head down.” He speaks extra slow like I’m five. “I’ll call when I’m on my way out.”

I nod once, a small smile spreading his mouth as he turns and heads for the administration building.

Or at least that’s what he said it was called.

College starts for him soon, and he needs to meet with his advisor, which he was tempted not to do, but we needed to get out of the tower. The silence this morning was awkward, after last night.

Has he never dry-humped anyone? Maybe it went too far. But I don’t think I should ask. I mean, it’s not like we can take it back.

And what did he mean by ‘You know you’re not alone in there, right?’ At first, I thought it was a joke, but after that story, I’m not sure what to think. Those phones are more than twenty years old, and Rivertown—or Frosted—could have easily been townhomes then. She could’ve been babysitting a family who lived there all those years ago, but there are so many questions. Was the hideout part of the house or something the owners didn’t know about? And if they didn’t know, how did the boys from Weston know about it?

Why call it Carnival Tower, and if these people are still alive, they’d only be in their late thirties or early forties, so are they still out there? Do they still think the tower is theirs?

Was that picture of the blonde on the wall in the tunnel Winslet?

And what does Hawke want with all of it?

I step onto the grass, the summer breeze rustling the leaves, and a few groups of students lounging on the ground and trying to catch some rays.

Maybe Hawke wishes it wasn’t me last night. Maybe that’s why he likes that story and it helped. Because Winslet is untouchable. He can idolize her, because he’ll never achieve her, and it’s a goal that he’ll never have to reach.

He’ll never be faced with failure.

Or maybe it’s me.

In my head, I know that’s stupid. Hawke’s not like that.

But some people have hang-ups they don’t realize. Mexican girls aren’t worthy, and girls who aren’t virgins are dirty. People wish they didn’t feel this way, but they do. I feel it when they look at me sometimes. It’s not how they look at people like his ex or his cousin.

I’m a body, built for service. His ex is a prize, built for position.

Maybe he wishes he’d never touched me. I can tell he doesn’t want to touch women he can’t picture honeymooning with. Or bearing his children. Hawke wants to love every woman he has sex with.

I stroll, keeping my hand tight around my phone in the center pocket of my hoodie. Which he insisted I wear to protect myself, in case we fell off the bike.

Pulling my hat down, I walk around the green, the bell of the clock above ringing and signaling it’s four in the afternoon. A few clouds dot the sky, a Bluetooth speaker plays “Dark Matter”, and I inhale, the air smelling different here.

We’re technically still in Shelburne Falls, but it’s like a different world. Still beautiful, but a community within a community. Without the Trents, the Caruthers, and High Street.

I enter the library, the tables sparsely filled with students in the summer session and the smell of books, coffee, and sad obligation lingering. Most of them don’t want to be here.

A guy pushes past me. “Sorry,” he calls back.

But I barely notice him as I stumble. I gape up at the mural on the ceiling and the solar system sculpture spinning over my head. So many books on the floors above.

I picture myself, dressed in a Clarke sweatshirt and carrying books back to my table, like I don’t have Matty and Bianca and I’m not completely broke.

I back out, slowly turning and leaving before I venture in any farther. A different life, maybe. I don’t think I would even know how to study anymore.

The building across the quad says Saber Science Building. I walk over and enter, letting myself forget for a minute like I do when I’m with him.

I let myself pretend.

Clarke University has an astronomy department, and I don’t know if this is the place, but I pass classrooms, some still empty and some filled with students. I climb one floor after another, stopping when I see a video of the Sun on an instructor’s board. I hide behind the door, peering in the window just enough, and watch the star flame and burn as it zooms in and out. Text appears on the screen, too small to read, and I wish I was in there. With my laptop and my ponytail and preparing for the work I want to do someday. Maybe Hawke is texting me as I sit in class and begging me to stay the night in a house he shares with some other guys.

What a life it would be, to only have to worry about my boyfriend unable to keep his hands off me.

“Hi,” a voice says.

I startle and step back, out of view of the door as a girl stands in front of me.

“Hawke meeting with his new advisor?” she asks.

What?

And then I see her lip, a cut hidden behind the makeup from when I kicked it.

I straighten my spine.

“Me too,” she replies, not waiting for me to speak. “And you? Getting your schedule, maybe?” She smiles, smug. “Books? Meeting your new roommate for lunch?”

I look at her, not giving her an inch. She’s in shorts and a T-shirt, but I see the red bikini strap tied around the back of her neck. The same one she was wearing in that Instagram picture.

The day Hawke let her kiss him.

“I’m excited,” she says. “My parents think that since I’m so close to home, I’ll be back all the time, but I think as the weekends go on, more of my life will be on campus. I won’t want to miss study sessions, parties, athletics…”

Like Hawke, she’s telling me. I won’t be here with him, and he’ll eventually move on, making a life here.

“I don’t think I’ll be back to town much at all, once school starts,” she muses.

I’ll be here with Hawke and you won’t, she doesn’t have to say it out loud for me to understand.

She leaves, descending the stairs, and I stand there frozen for a minute. Hawke isn’t my boyfriend.

We’re not dating, and we’re not falling in love.

I should’ve just told her that, so she knows I’m not losing anything.

But for some reason, I don’t want her to know all that.

I follow her out, seeing her on the grass, T-shirt gone and tanned body playing in the sun as water balloons fly in the air among her and her friends.

Water splashes, and she laughs before they notice me.

They exchange looks, whispers, and I feel like my clothes are ten times too big or wrong or…

“Aro?” Hawke says.

I look up to see him on the motorcycle.

He holds his helmet in his hands, his gaze flashing between them and me. “Get on the bike,” he says.

I stand there.

Why did he bring me with him? I could’ve stayed at the hideout. Why’s he showing me all this?

He stares at me, and I know he knows where my head is going. He gets off the bike, I back up, and he grabs me, pulling me into him. His lips press into my forehead. “Let’s go,” he whispers.

A lump stretches my throat, but when I look ahead all I see is his chest. A white T-shirt of the softest fabric, and a chest I’ve kissed nearly every inch of.

I let him take my arm and pull me back to the bike, both of us climbing on.

I put on the helmet, wrapping my arms around him, and I’m not even tempted to look at her as we drive off, speeding down the highway.

She’ll get him in a couple of weeks when they’re alone at school together, but for now, I just want to enjoy a few more minutes. A few more days.

Hawke hits the brakes, coming to a stoplight, and I only hesitate a second. “I don’t want you talking to her while we’re messing around,” I tell him. “It’ll make me feel bad.”

He turns his head just a little, and I feel stupid for asking this, but he’ll be hers soon enough.

“It’ll feel like I’m not important,” I say. “I know I’m not your girlfriend, but we’re friends, right?”

He nods, so quiet. What is he thinking?

“Just not while we’re doing whatever we’re doing, okay?”

“Okay.” There’s a crack in his voice, but it still sounds firm.

The light turns, and he puts his foot on the rest.

“Aren’t you going to tell me not to mess around with other guys?” I ask, holding him close.

He revs the engine. “I already know you won’t.”

He speeds off, the bike jerks, and I tighten my arms, whispering, “Because you know you’re the one I like.”

Great.

I gave it all away right off the bat, didn’t I?