Chapter Twenty-One

There's no denying it now. No way around it. No happenstance that someone else on this campus might call me by my last name. Nowhere else to go.

All roads lead to Three.

I've been so terribly, horribly wrong. It's the only coherent thought I can form as I stare back at him.

His hands twitch, his expression softening. A small crease forms between his eyebrows.

I can feel everyone else watching us.

I don't know what to do, or what to say. I'm not sure I could speak even if I wanted to.

But I don't want to. I'm too full of thoughts to reasonably let one out. I don't know which will break free first. So I shoulder my bag and turn, taking the long way around the table so I don't have to pass him.

Maybe if I walk fast enough, he won't catch up. I could lose him in the crowd.

"Are you kidding me right now?" I feel the heat of him at my back before his words reach my ear. "You're making me chase you?"

"I'm not making you do anything." I'm shocked to hear my own voice, leaden, like someone dropped an anvil in my chest.

"Wyn."

I don't know if it's the warning in his voice or the fact that he uses my first name, but as I step out into the cold, I turn to face him.

"What? What do you want?" I back up a few steps, distancing myself from the clumps of people outside. "God, are you messing with me? Is this your last big—"

"No! No. I'm not messing with you." He steps toward me slowly, like he's afraid I might bolt. His voice turns gentle. "Where's your coat? It's freezing."

"I left it in Sabina's car."

He sighs, shrugging off his own coat.

"Don't—" I bite off the word as he drapes it over my shoulders.

It hangs there, heavy and warm, begging to be snuggled into. But I know if I tried to fit my arms into it, it'd be snug. Probably even too small. It definitely wouldn't button.

It's amazing how one bad thought can multiply. Like mold growing on a slice of bread. It doesn't take long—not at all. The way "fat," just a word, just an adjective, not a bad thing—it's not, it's not—can suddenly feel… so gross. Shameful.

I glance back toward the bar. The people gathered outside are looking at us while trying to seem like they aren't, and it's the feeling of their eyes all over me that really starts to burn. It begins behind my own eyes—the worst possible place. What are they thinking right now, looking at us? What judgments are they making of me?

I swallow down my tears, knowing that if I cry right now, especially in front of Three, I will never recover. I've let him see so much of me, I refuse to let him see this too.

He's watching my face so closely, I have to angle away as I force all my bad feelings back down. He never fails to remind me about my terrible poker face, and I don't want him reading me.

While I collect myself, Three puts a hand on my back, steering me toward the curb. There's a white SUV double-parked with its flashers on, and I'm startled when I realize he's leading me to it.

I dig my heels in. "No."

"Give me five minutes."

I turn swiftly to face him, and he catches his coat before it falls. Holding the lapels in both hands, he's effectively cut off my escape.

"I think I've given you enough." My voice comes out sharp and cold, like every bad feeling has dripped off the edge of me, forming a deadly icicle. "I don't even owe you thirty seconds of my time."

A muscle tics in his jaw. "I'm not saying you owe me anything. I'm asking you."

"You didn't ask."

He drops his head and sighs. His hands hang heavy on his coat, keeping me in place.

Someone honks, and when I peer past him, it's a cop parked behind the SUV.

Three looks from the cop to me, something frantic in his expression. "Please. Can you give me five minutes?"

I don't know if it's the look on his face or the way he says "please" or if there's a small, stupid part of me that wants to know what this all means. "Five minutes," I say, tugging the coat out of his hands. "You can drive me home."

I try not to notice the relief that washes over him as he reaches for the door, popping it open for me. It's so polite, I want to scream.

I cannot reconcile these manners with his usual arrogance.

Inside, the SUV is still warm. He's climbing into the driver's seat when it dawns on me where the car came from.

"Your parents are here."

He glances over at me as he shifts into drive and eases into traffic. "Yeah."

"This is their car."

"I don't want to waste my five minutes talking about my parents."

"Where do they think you are right now?"

"Wyn."

"I don't really care what you want to talk about. It's my five minutes. We'll talk about whatever I want."

His jaw tightens. "They don't know where I am right now."

"And they're cool with that. Cool enough to let you borrow their car."

"No, when they find out I left and took their car, I don't think they'll be cool with it."

"So we're in a stolen car right now. How comforting."

"I borrowed—" He breaks off, huffing out a frustrated breath. He yanks at his tie with one hand, finally loosening it enough to pull it over his head. He tosses it into the back seat. I wish I weren't watching. "I don't want to talk about my parents or what's waiting for me when I get back. None of that matters. I want to talk about us."

A laugh scrapes out of me. "Us? There is no us." His hands tighten on the wheel, and in the glow of the streetlamps, I watch his knuckles turn white. "I can't believe you'd even think— What did you think? That I'd be happy?"

"I thought I'd have a little more time to ease you into it."

"To ease me into it." I twist toward him in my seat. "How long have you known it was me?"

His Adam's apple bobs. He tugs at his collar, popping open another button. "A while."

"Quantify that for me."

He lets out a heavy breath. "Since that night with the edibles."

I stare at him as I do the math. That was before Thanksgiving. Which means he knew when he stayed at my house, and when we broke into Sigma Rho, and when he followed me upstairs at that frat party, and when we kissed. He knew all of winter break. When he asked me about what I did over Thanksgiving. When he asked about my grades. When he brought up meeting, over and over again. He knew all that time.

"You were baiting me. Asking me all those things—about my Thanksgiving and if I liked someone. What—what the fuck, Three?"

"That's not what I was doing—"

"You were!" My voice comes out high and sharp. "You were egging me on. You were bringing yourself up in a roundabout way to—to what? To get an edge on me? To find out how I feel about you?"

"That's not why I was doing it. I was trying to get you to think about me. To put the two together." He turns a corner, and I lose his expression between one streetlamp and the next. "To realize there wasn't all that much difference between Hayes and me. I didn't know there was someone else. I thought you—that we—" He breaks off, shaking his head.

There wasn't,I almost say. There was only Hayes, and if there was ever someone else, it was Three—not Lincoln. He was the one who made me hesitate. But I can't give him that right now.

I feel cold all over, and his borrowed coat is useless against it. This comes from inside me, like my blood has turned to ice. I'm covered in goose bumps, and my teeth start to chatter. "I told you things." My voice cracks with the effort it's taking not to cry in front of him. "I told you stuff I would have never said—never in a million years—if I knew I was talking to you."

"Why?" He pulls to the curb outside my building and turns to me. His expression is pained. "Why is it so different because it's me?"

"Because I don't trust you!"

He opens his mouth, stops, then forces out a harsh breath. "I know I haven't given you any reason to, so maybe I deserve it. But that one hurt." He rubs his chest, tipping his head back against his seat.

"You don't get to do that either," I whisper. "You don't get to make me feel bad about this. You lied to me."

"I didn't—"

"I'm not going to sit here and explain to you how this was lying!"

He shuts his mouth, his teeth coming down hard on his lower lip. Our five minutes are up. They've been up. I've watched each singular minute tick off the clock.

I should go.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I ask instead, prolonging this torture. "When you found out. Why didn't you just say it was you? That's why you disappeared for a couple of days, right? I remember—after the edibles thing. I remember Hayes—you—didn't respond for a while. You were planning to ghost me, weren't you?"

"I wasn't planning anything," he says quietly. "I was thinking."

"Thinking about how you could best use this against me?"

"Honestly, it never crossed my mind."

"And why should I believe that? You're clearly an accomplished liar."

"I was worried!" He thumps his head back against the seat, huffing out a frustrated breath. "You said a lot of stuff that night in your dorm, and I was worried about you. And who you'd talk to if you didn't have Hayes." He runs a hand down his face and swears.

I stare at him, realization dawning. "Because I said I have no friends?"

He drops his hand and looks over at me, his expression softening. I hate that I see pity there. I hate that he can look at me like this.

"You were worried about who I'd talk to, because Hayes was my only friend." I let out a small, disbelieving laugh. "Wow. That's amazing, Three."

I feel his gaze on me as I reach down and grab my bag.

"You're not leaving like this," he says, but it's not an order, and it's not a question. It's something else entirely—a plea.

I unbuckle my seat belt and twist toward him, reaching for the door behind me. "That early on, losing Hayes would have sucked, but I would have recovered. I could've moved on. But instead you gave me everything I needed, until I couldn't get out of it without getting hurt." I shove the door open and climb out, leaving his coat pooled on the seat. I turn back to deliver a final blow. "I'm done. You win."

"Win what?" he asks.

I shut the door, rounding the front of the SUV. Three climbs out after me.

"What did I win?" he says again, following me across the road.

"This!" I whirl on him, motioning between us. "This—whatever this is. I can't fight with you right now!"

His frown deepens. "I'm not trying to fight with you. I'm trying to tell you I like you. So I don't know what you think I'm winning, because if you're walking away right now, then there's no way I just won anything."

Something balloons in my chest. Something I have no idea what to do with right now. I liked Hayes. Enough that I thought that meant I liked Lincoln. And I'm clearly attracted to Three. But do I like him? Can I like him, after everything?

When I don't speak, Three says, "This isn't how I wanted this to go. I wanted—I mean, I didn't want to have this conversation in the street, for one thing."

"Right," I say disdainfully. "You wanted your perfectly controlled environment, so you could have the best advantage."

He's shaking his head before I finish speaking. "All I wanted was the best chance I could give myself."

"For what?"

"For you! For a chance with you."

I take a moment to drink him in. Lit by the streetlamps and the glow of the headlights, he's windswept and cold-flushed and wound tight in frustration. His suit is in disarray—collar hanging open, shirt half-untucked. Even as the frigid January wind blasts down the street and it takes all the strength in my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering, he doesn't so much as flinch. I bet he's burning hot right now. He looks like a movie. He looks like a dream.

I start to shiver, and I don't know if it's my nerves or the cold finally seeping into the deepest parts of me. My voice shakes when I finally speak.

"I can't do this right now. And I won't say I'm sorry for walking away, because I'm not. You—god, I'm so mad at you."

He watches me, and while I expect the usual, composed Three mask to slide into place, instead the corners of his mouth pull down and his eyes soften and he looks… sad.

"Don't look at me like that."

He throws his hands up, shaking his head as he turns away. "Okay." He stops when he reaches the SUV. "Can you go inside? So I can leave and go not look at you somewhere else?" Anger has crept into his voice, and it pinches at something in my chest.

"You don't get to be mad right now!" I lob back at him. "You don't get to sound annoyed at me. You did this! This is your fault!"

"Yeah, I get it!" He falls back against the door, scrubbing his hands over his face. "I know." There's a thread of defeat in his voice. It should make me feel better, because I'm winning for once. He's not the one running me in circles.

But it doesn't feel good. It feels worse than losing.

I turn away, hugging myself for warmth as I head up the front walk to my door. I fumble with the key card, my fingers stiff and aching from the cold.

When I finally make it inside and turn back, Three is right where I left him, waiting, head tipped back to the sky but his gaze on me so burning hot, it nearly cracks my layers of ice.

When I push into my room, I immediately strip off my freezing-cold clothes and pull on my fuzzy robe. I can hear Madison in the other room, practicing her audition song for roughly the ten thousandth time. In the bathroom, I stand under the stream of hot water until I feel warm again, listening to her high, tinkling voice. She sounds exactly how you'd expect when you look at her—like a fairy princess.

"Wyn?" Dara knocks on the bathroom door during a break in Madison's practice. "Did you just get home?"

I shut off the water. "Yeah." My voice comes out weak, exhausted from arguing. "One second."

I'm dried off and back in my robe when I open the door, letting out a waft of steam.

Dara waves it away, her eyes widening when she finally sees my face. "What happened?"

Madison appears behind her, mouth pulling down in concern. "Are you okay?"

"I met Hayes."

They follow me back to my room, where I climb into bed. The room is drafty, and I pull my blankets up around my shoulders, burrowing inside. My wet hair begins to chill.

"And yet, you don't seem happy," says Dara. "What happened? Please don't tell me he turned out to be an asshole."

"Not just an asshole," I reply. "The asshole."

Dara and Madison exchange looks of confusion. Then Dara gasps, slapping a hand over her mouth. It muffles her shout. "No!"

Madison's head swivels between us. "What? What is it?"

Dara drops her hands, mouth hanging open. "Was Hayes… Three?"

I start a slow clap beneath my blankets. "Ding. Ding. Ding," I say, each one dull as a funeral toll.

"Three, the guy you hate?" Madison asks.

"She doesn't hate him." Dara gives me a knowing look. "You don't hate him." Whatever she sees on my face makes her scoff. "Wyn! You kissed him!"

"Wait, you did?" Madison's attention swings to me again. She looks mildly scandalized, but like she's enjoying it a little.

"I don't get how this isn't a good thing," Dara says. "You're clearly into him. You talk about him all the time, so I know he's on your mind, and I don't think it's all about this little game you have going with him."

"Our little game." My mouth twists in a false smile. "Yeah, he really played me, didn't he?"

Dara's brows pull together. "What do you mean?"

"He knew it was me. He's known it was me for a long time—since before Thanksgiving."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Madison hesitates. "Maybe he was nervous to tell you."

I snort. "Three doesn't get nervous. I don't know why he waited so long, but I suspect it was for his own personal gain, as always. He gets all this time to lead me on while he figures out how he feels about me, and I get five minutes in the car to decide if I trust him." I scrub my hands over my face and into my hair, smoothing it back in a slick wave.

"And how does he feel about you?" Dara asks.

"He claims he likes me!" A sound wheezes out of me, a half whine. "I can't believe he did this. I didn't even need Hayes to be that for me. I just—I just wanted a friend." I bury my face in my hands. "I made one friend at college, and somehow he found a way to ruin that too."

In the quiet that follows, I hear only my own breathing. It takes me a moment to sense that something is wrong.

"One friend?" Dara says.

I lift my head, frowning. "What?"

"You made one friend at college?" She looks at Madison, then at me. "What about us?"

"Well… I…" I glance between them. A headache pricks behind my eyes. "You guys have your own stuff. Your own friends. You know?"

Dara's expression softens, but not in understanding—in disbelief. "Seriously?"

"Of course we're, like, friends, but you're—you're my roommates. It's… You don't think of me as… I mean, it's because I'm here. It's not like we're… you know… eating all our meals together or hanging out, really. We do sometimes, but…"

"I thought that was being friends," Madison says quietly.

Dara scoffs. "Wow."

"Wait, I'm not making sense right now."

"No, you are." Dara moves to stand in front of Madison, like she has to… protect her from me. "I get it. We're good enough to listen to your problems and come running when you need us. But since you aren't the center of our world, we can't possibly be your friends."

"That's not what I meant."

"We're allowed to have our own lives and other friends, Wyn," Dara says. "And we can do that and still be your friend. Not just your roommates." She lets out a heavy breath. "And maybe the reason you feel like you've only made one friend in college is because you're not a good friend."

She turns away, crossing swiftly back to her room. I stare after her, stunned.

Madison clears her throat lightly. "I think we should talk about this sometime. But—well, I feel very hurt right now. So I'm also going to go."

"Madison—"

She holds up both hands, giving me a tight, watery smile. Then she turns and leaves too, shutting the bathroom door behind her.

I slump back against the wall, stunned. Dread settles in my stomach, and any warmth I gained from my extra-hot shower steams off me as the cold seeps back in.

I glance toward my desk, where I left my phone, but I stop before I make any move to grab it. My first instinct was to message Hayes, but now he's gone.

I have no one to talk to. It's like last semester all over again. Those first couple of months of sheer, utter, piercing loneliness. It's back and sharper than ever.

And I have no one to blame but myself.