“No.”
“That was less certain than it should have been.”
“That was an answer.”
“That was a lie.”
“Add it to the list. You’re good at keeping one.”
I looked back at the road, my grip tightening around the wheel. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re driving the wrong direction.”
“Address.”
He stared at me long enough for the light to turn green and the car behind us to lean on its horn in one long, impatient blare. I didn’t move. I sat there with my foot on the brake and my eyes locked on his profile until he finally rattled off an address on the south side of town, the numbers spat out like curses.
The car behind us honked again, longer this time.
I drove.
Campus disappeared behind us block by block, the neat brick buildings and manicured lawns giving way to cracked sidewalks, boarded windows, and streetlights that looked like they had given up asking to be replaced, their glow sickly and weak. Easton stayed silent while I drove past a liquor store with half its neon sign dead, a laundromat fogged from the inside, and a gas station where two men in hoodies watched my car like they were deciding whether it was worth their time.
I pulled into the lot behind a three-story brick apartment building that looked like it had lost every argument it had ever been in. Rust crawled down the outdoor stairs like a weeping wound. The security light above the back entrance flickered like a horror movie with budget cuts, stuttering on and off. Someone had dumped a stained mattress beside the chain-link fence, and a shopping cart sat tipped near the dumpster with one wheel spinning lazily in the wind.
I stared through the windshield, my grip still tight on the wheel. “This is where you live?”
Easton unbuckled his seat belt, the click loud in the quiet. “Careful, Clarke. You sound disgusted.”
“I am disgusted.”
His hand paused against the door handle.
I turned on him before he could weaponize it. “Not because it’s cheap. Because you moved into a building that looks like it eats tenants and spits out security deposits when you have a mansion available to you for free.”
“Rent’s low.”
“So is the bar.”
He shoved the door open and got out without another word. Cold air punched into the car, sharp and smelling of wet concrete and garbage, and I followed because letting him walk away with blood soaking through his hand and possibly crackedribs would have been easy, and apparently I had lost the ability to choose easy the second he punched Maddox.
“Why?” I demanded, slamming my door hard enough for the sound to echo across the empty lot. “Why are you here?”
Easton didn’t slow, his boots crunching over broken asphalt. “Go home.”
“Why aren’t you at Hockey House?”
He reached the first metal stair and turned so quickly I almost ran into him. The flickering light cut harsh lines over his face, making the bruise near his jaw look meaner and his eyes almost colorless, like chips of winter sky.
“Fuck, because I hate my own mind, Clarke. Does that answer your question?”
The words hit hot and fast, but I refused to step back. “No. It makes you sound insane.”
“I moved because I was tired of walking into rooms full of you.”
I laughed, a short, brittle sound, because the other option was letting that split me open. “Rooms full of me?”
“The couch where you used to sit with your legs tucked beneath you while you acted like you weren’t waiting for me to look. The kitchen where you stole my coffee and told me I made it wrong, then drank all of it anyway. The back porch. My bed. My sheets. My fucking bathroom counter with your lip-gloss stain on it that wouldn’t come off no matter how hard I scrubbed.”
