Except the thing I can’t outswim is Rowan and how he made me feel.
I keep telling myself I’m angry at him, but the anger keeps springing leaks. Because I remember his hand on my arm, his thumb finding my pulse like he knew where to look, and the moment my whole body leaned into it.
And for a traitorous half second, I didn’t fight it. Then I pulled away.
Because Ican’tenjoy it, not with someone who so clearly sees through my defenses.
Because leaning in — feeling and trusting and loving with all of myself — is how I got hurt last year. It’s why there are photos of me out there, sent to exactly one boy, and no way of knowing whose phones they live on now.
Frustrated, I pull myself out of the pool at 6:58, towel off, change, and walk back to Sterling House with my hair still dripping. When I get there, Ivy is still in bed, duvet pulled up to her chin, phone in hand. She’s staring at the screen, and she looks up when I come in.
“He still hasn’t texted back,” she says, eyes puffy, telling me she hasn’t been awake long.
I hang my wet bag on the hook. “And a very good morning to you too.”
“Three days, Sloane.” She drops the phone face down, then she catches my look. “I’m not obsessing. I’m… confirming my phone works, which it does, so the problem is him.”
“Tell me about it,” I say, taking advantage of the opportunity to work the wide-tooth comb through my hair, because this is going to take a minute.
The story so far, for those keeping score: Sebastian Kade, the Ravens’ enforcer and a third-year history major, wore Ivy’s drink for approximately forty-five seconds before peeling his shirt off with the calm of someone who has survived worse.
“He was so calm about it, not a wince and not a word,” she says, with a note in her voice that might just be attraction. “It’s crazy, or hot, or crazy hot. Who does that?”
“A sociopath or a saint,” I say. “It’s hard to know.”
“I know!” She huffs. “But he hasn’t responded to my text.”
“Maybe he’s busy?”
“Nobody is three-days busy. The president isn’t three-days busy.”
I knew she texted him a few days ago, but I didn’t know she was obsessing this much. She holds her phone face out, like I haven’t seen this screen every morning for three days, but I take it anyway and confirm the absence of a response.
Ivy: hey it’s ivy, sorry you wore my drink, lmk if i owe you a shirt
Read receipt, three days ago, and that’s the whole thread.
“Maybe he’s chill about it?” I shrug. “Maybe he didn’t like the shirt anyway?”
“Hereadit,” she says. “I literally gave him the chance to ask me out, and… nothing!”
“Did you think about asking him out?”
She stares daggers at me, then she groans like a wounded animal and buries her face in the pillow. Because the truth is, Ivy seems used to putting herself out there and guys drooling over her enough to achieve her desired goal.
Then she resurfaces, quieter. “Anyway, he’s dead to me. Banished.”
And that word snags on someone else who was banished.
I remember Mason’s hand at my waist, then the little slide south and the squeeze that saidminewithout asking. Then Rowan crossing the room, putting his hand on my arm, his voice going quiet in a way that made Mason’s hands disappear.
They were two different touches, and my body knew the difference before I did. That’s the part I can’t swim away from. Not what happened, but how I responded, and the look on his face when I put him in the same sentence as Mason.
“You’re spiraling again,” Ivy chimes in. “Who is it this time, Mason or the mystery man?”
“Neither, and I am not,” I say, refusing to look at her as I move toward my bed, glad she hasn’t put two-and-two together about the mystery man being her brother.
“Liar,” she says, shaking off thoughts of Seb with visible effort. “Time for the postmortem. Go.”
