Page 77

He sucks in a breath before throwing his head back to laugh, startling my rat. “Oh, blue-eyed boy, your face. That was beautiful. Not you and I together, but we are finding someone to get down and dirty with tonight if it’s the last thing I do.”

“But I don’t want to get down and dirty.” Well, I do. But not with a stranger. Just with my boss. Ex-boss?

KC throws me a pointed look, reading my thoughts. “He has a girlfriend, Shilo. You know that, right?”

Immediately, I scowl. “Yeah, but…I don’t think it’s real.”

Ryann made it sound like it wasn’t real, anyway. Just an act he was putting on for his father.

There’s a brief pause where KC’s eyes soften, and then he’s pulling out his phone as he slowly walks over to me. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this looks very real to me.”

He holds it up, and I blink at the screen, my stomach sinking as an Instagram photo of Ryann and Olivia assaults my eyes. It’s a post from Christmas—they’re on a boat surrounded by lights, probably the Ship Festival on the Puget Sound. And he’s…kissing her. Not on the lips, but still. On her cheek. The caption reads:

Happy Holidays to the best boyfriend a girl can ask for! So glad I met you. Love you, babe.

Love? She loves him? When did that happen? I thought they’d just started going out.

Oh, how wrong I was because a quick scroll on her page shows multiple pictures of them together, dating all the way back to…

August. When we first met.

“I’m sorry,” KC says softly. “I thought you knew. It’s actually why I figured you went full hermit mode.”

Burning bile rises in my throat, and I cough, quickly making a beeline for the bathroom, where I all but force myself to keep my breakfast down.

I will not do it. I won’t. Doctor Iskar says it’s a trauma response, and I won’t let it win.

But it’s hard. Especially when the cruel things kids used to say about me come rushing back, their words slicing through my brain like fresh wounds—comments about my body, the way I looked. I spent all four years of high school trapped in a constant state of panic. Even now, I can still feel their hands on me, shoving me to the ground in the PE locker room, laughing while I cried.

“Are you alright?”

KC approaches me, and I straighten from where I’d been hunched over the sink, meeting his concerned expression in the mirror.

“I’m fine. It’s all fine.”

I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

“You don’t need to lie, babe.” He sets his chin on my shoulder, eyes so full of pity that I want to scream.

“I really don’t feel like partying, Kansas. I’m sorry.”

He gazes at me for a long moment before nodding slowly. “Okay. That’s fine. I’ll order a pizza, and we’ll play some games until midnight, then pass out. If it’s fine with your parents, I mean.”

Spinning around, he heads back into my room, and I follow with a frown. “They don’t care, I’m an adult. But why would you want to hang out here? Why not your place?”

“I cannot deal with Carpenter right now. Let me avoid him, Shilo. If we aren’t going out, here’s as good a place as any.”

“What did he do?”

Flopping face-first onto my bed, KC growls into the blankets. “I don’t want to talk about it.” After a beat, he turns his head to peek at me. “Any chance you’d let me kiss you at midnight and take a picture of it? Platonically, of course. I want to post it to the ‘Gram and make certain people jealous.”

I’m about to say no thanks, but his words make me pause. By certain people, I’m sure he means Carpenter, but…would Ryann see it, too? Would it make him jealous? Would he even care?

“I’ll…think about it,” I tell him, and he grins when I pull out my computer chair.

“Oh, this is so happening. Just don’t fall in love, Shi, because that would ruin our friendship, and I’d hate to lose you.”

Yeah, right. Pretty sure that won’t happen because I’m already in love with someone I can never have.