“Sloane,” he says, finally.
“Yeah?”
“You can do whatever you want, but you don’t have to hide from me.”
I sit with that for a while.
“Okay,” I say, eventually, my voice a whisper. “I’d like that.”
The cold has gotten into me now, and I start shivering.
“You’re cold,” he says.
“You’re observant.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. Barely. But it’s so small and so tired that I put my hand over his and leave it there. His expression changes, eyes narrowing as he looks down at my hand — still shivering — covering his. Then he looks at me, and his eyes are wide.
I don’t kiss him. But I want to.
“Go inside,” he says.
“Stop trying to fix me.”
He laughs at that.
Fuck you, Halden Girl. I can still make people laugh.
“Bellamy’s open late,” I say. “I have reading to do, and you can study too.”
“Thought the loud one was out tonight.” His mouth curves, slow and pleased.
“What?”
“The one you told me about wouldn’t pick the most boring building on campus…”
“It’s warm there.” I take my hand from his and punch him in the arm.
“See, there she is,” he says.
He picks up his bag, the strap wet at the end where it’s been in the grass. He shoulders it and stands, waiting for me to stand too, and when I do, I stumble. His hand comes out to catch me and his fingers close around my arm, warm and steady.
He holds me there, and I feel his thumb shift against the inside of my arm, in almost the same spot as at the toga party. Then he lets go, and right then, I’m conscious — still — that I said no at the party.
Well, things change.
As we start across the quad toward Bellamy, we walk close enough that our sleeves bump twice on the path. He doesn’tmove away when they do, and the third time my hand brushes his, I take it.
Cold fingers lace through cold fingers, and we don’t say a word about it.
eleven
ROWAN
I tacklethe same paragraph four times, but I still can’t explain what a pegged currency is.
That’s because Sloane is sitting opposite me at a table on Bellamy Library’s second floor. She’s bent over some article Professor Moreno gave her, and she has no idea how damn good she looks.
As she concentrates, I keep stealing glances: the pencil moving in and out of her mouth, her eyebrows pulling together, her lips silently repeating a sentence back to herself before she frowns at the page and underlines something with force.
