“Do what?
“You know what.” I lowered my voice. “You paid for my car.”
“Well,” Orion said matter-of-factly. “You shouldn’t have said yes to going to the Halloween festival with Xander Ford.”
My heart stopped, then took off at a gallop.
“What?” I breathed.
“You heard me.”
“You… You wanted to go to the festival with me?”
“Indeed.”
“But you didn’t ask me.”
“I was going to ask you, but you’d made your declaration that we could only be lab partners. Which I honored, until I decided it was bullshit. By then it was too late.”
“So…to get me back, you paid for my car.”
“Yes.”
I blinked. “Your timeline doesn’t even make sense.”
Orion shrugged again. “Neither do you and Xander, but here we are.”
I stared. Every word coming out of his mouth stole my breath, and I went hot and cold all over. It was too much to process. I didn’t know what to do with it all, and Langford was going to walk in the door any second.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “They bully me. They torment me for even talking to you—”
“And if it happens again, I’ll make them pay for that too.”
“You’llwhat?”
Orion swiveled to face me, his eyes hard. “Don’t you get it, Harper? You’re the one who doesn’t want to be seen together. Not me. I don’t care. I never cared. You just didn’t believe me. You never gave me—us—a chance.”
I sat back in my tall chair, his words whacking me in the heart and sinking in, creating a storm of euphoria and confusion.
“That…that isn’t fair,” I whispered.
“No?”
“No. I didn’t know there was an us. Since when is there an us?”
“There isn’t. Not since you drew a line and forbade me to cross it.”
I stared, taking in Orion’s face as if seeing him for the first time. His rich eyes, broad mouth, perfect skin…And everything about him that wasn’t physical—the whole of him—that I couldn’t keep out of my mind, and now he was telling me…
We could’ve been together? For real?
I shook my head, a warmth of possibilities flooding me and then burning away in the next instant.
“Was that before or after Elowen Blake threw herself at you? What am I saying? This is ridiculous. And impossible. You can’t just blindside me… Forget it.” I started to reach in my bag. “I’m paying you back.”
“No, you aren’t,” Orion said. “No chance.”
“Yes,” I said, rummaging. “I can’t—”
