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I close my eyes.

I’m falling for her.

Chapter Thirty-One

Bea

Iwake up alone, starfished across my entire bed.

Cal left at five in the morning. I know this because I made him. Somewhere in the pre-dawn dark I’d mumbled something about roommates and studying and don’t you have songs to write with Luca, and he listened and left quietly, like a burglar—if burglars kissed you on the way out while you were three-quarters unconscious and almost certainly drooling.

My phone said 5:14.

Cal

escaped undetected. I am ninja

I’d put it face-down so I couldn’t grin at it, and then I lay there grinning at the ceiling instead, and then I remembered I have an eight o’clock lab session and I have been awake for approximately four hours of the last nine.

* * *

The eight o’clock lab runs long, because it always runs long, and I come out of Hartley at ten past nine with my coat over one arm and four hours of sleep behind my eyes.

“Beatrix.”

Priya is coming the other way with a coffee and a stack of printouts against her hip.

“Morning.” My voice is fine. My voice is completely fine.

“You look like you’ve been up all night.”

“Practice questions.” The lie arrives before I can think about it. Well, I have to lie, right? I can’t exactly say ‘Well yes, Priya, I didn’t get much sleep because I was having the best sex of my life with my assigned tutee, that’s all part of it, right?’

“Mm.” She shifts the printouts. “How’s Fox getting on? I’ve heard nothing from him, which in my experience means either very good or catastrophic.”

My bag is over my shoulder. Inside it, rolled into the bottom, is a gray hoodie that smells like him.

“He’s doing well,” I say. “He works harder than people think.”

Something in her face softens.

“Good. I’m glad it was you.” She takes a sip. “I knew I could trust you with him. I can be tough when dealing with someone so high profile.” Guilt sloshes in my stomach.

I smile, and she walks away before she can see it written all over my face.

* * *

Back home, I keep replaying last night. It was hands down—no doubt about it—the best sex of my entire life. I’d like to be cool about it. For all of my sexual life, since the unceremonious losing of my virginity at 17 to David Edden in the back of his Lexus, I’ve had a working theory: Sex is essentially a really nice stretch—pleasant, efficient, you do it, you feel better, you get on with your day. And maybe the first time with him was a fluke. Callum Fox took that theory out into the yard and shot it. With a bazooka. He bazookered my sex theory.

I should be studying.

I should really be studying.

The thing I can’t admit, even alone, in my own bed, is that I’m not even really scared he’ll vanish anymore. I’ve got the opposite problem. He texted me good morning before I’d opened my eyes. The fear isn’t even that this ends, but it’s that it keeps going, that it gets easy, that one day I look up and I’ve folded my whole carefully-built life around a man with a guitar, exactly the way I swore on everything I never would.

I take a deep breath, put on my comfiest UMS sweatshirt, and go downstairs to perform the role of a woman who is completely fine.

“Ughhhh I am so hungover. Somebody please save me from this hellhole.” Sydney moans while she’s curled up in a ball on the sofa.