I cringe. “The whole party cheerleader thing isn’t really my scene. You?”
“No, the skirts never fit right.”
My laugh breaks the quiet night air and I brush my fingertips over my lips. “You know, I still don’t know anything about you.”
I catch his smirk—a cat playing with its meal. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Where are you from?”
“Such a generic question,” he says. “I’m disappointed. Come on, Ella, ask me something unique.”
“Fine.” I purse my lips, studying the shadowed columns stretching across the sidewalk, broken by rings of amber streetlight. “What makes you happy?”
He stares at me for a moment, and the smile on his face dissipates. His gaze drifts somewhere over the buildings in the distance. “The ocean. Anything in water, really,” he sayseventually. “Swimming, sailing, surfing. There’s something about it that makes me feel… free.”
“That’s how I feel when I’m reading. I love the escape. Being able to jump out of my head and into someone else’s. Or drawing by the river. It’s peaceful. It’s like, I can shut everything else out and just focus on one minute detail at a time.”
He nods in agreement. “What do you like to draw?”
Silas’s dark brows flash through my mind, the tortured intensity in his blue irises. “People. Their features. If I don’t understand something about a person, I’ll try and capture it.” I laugh. “But if I can’t perfect it, I get really frustrated.”
“Is that your favorite place? The river?”
I nod. “Beneath the flame trees. You?”
“There’s this place I—”
Rose mumbles something and Parker winces, our brief reprieve broken. We continue the rest of the walk in silence, only stopping beneath the spiderweb-draped archway of Bromley House while I select the entry code.
“There’s a key in her back pocket,” Parker says once we’re standing in the corridor between our apartments. He shifts Rose’s weight. “Can you grab it?”
I pull the key from her black jeans and spend five minutes trying to unlock the door. Finally, it opens and I step aside for Parker to enter. Their apartment’s smaller than Anna’s, and it lacks warmth—empty of personal objects, no books filling the barren shelves or photos on the walls. There’s an empty space where a lounge should sit, and aside from some papers stacked on the dining table, the place appears unoccupied.
I follow Parker to the sole bedroom and hover in the doorway. Two single beds are positioned on opposite sides ofthe room, separated by a small desk bearing a clunky laptop. Parker eases Rose onto one of the beds as if she’s made of glass and brushes the dark brown hair from her face.
“Okay, thanks. I’ve got it from here,” he says, ushering me back into the living room. He hovers in the bedroom doorway and glances back to Rose.
My cheeks flush. I’m being dismissed, but now’s my chance to confront him, or at least try to understand my abnormal dreams and unhealthy infatuation while Rose is indisposed. I doubt I’ll get another opportunity.
I sit at the dining table and turn to catch Parker exhaling. “What kind of work are you doing with Professor McGregor?” I ask. He crosses his arms over his chest, and my eyes snag on the bulge of his biceps. “Is it for your PhD or something?”
“No. I’m not studying.” Parker moves toward the front door, but I’m not leaving without answers.
“Why were you in McGregor’s lecture the day we met?”
Parker smiles, but his gaze darts back to the open bedroom door. “I told you. Professor McGregor is helping us with something.”
“What?” I’m fiddling with a loose piece of paper on the desk when it dawns on me—Rose must be a psychology patient of McGregor’s. My stomach clenches. It’d explain why the topic makes him so uncomfortable. And here I am pressing him like an insensitive idiot.
I push my chair away from the table, disturbing the papers littering its surface. My own neat handwriting pokes out from the bottom of the pile, and I freeze. Lowering my head toward the table, I push the papers aside and frown at a photocopy of—
“My schedule?”
“I can explain that.” Parker steps toward me, his eyes wide.
Why would Rose and Parker have a photocopy of my class schedule?
He runs a hand through his short, dark blond hair, and an unnerving feeling of déjà vu courses through my body. I abruptly stand. “I’ve met you before, haven’t I? I mean, before McGregor’s lecture.”
