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“‘Someone’?”
Jesus. He sounded guilty as hell. He shoved more pizza into his mouth. It tasted like cardboard.
He should have kept his mouth shut. Michael was staring at him now.
Hannah shook her head. “We were all in the front yard, and whoever got her out, went in through the back.” She scowled.
“The press is having a great time with this. We would have kept it out of the papers, but the mom talked. Now it’s all out there the unusual burn patterns, the way the girl escaped down the laundry chute, the mysterious ‘hero.’”
Her voice was full of disdain, but Gabriel was stuck on the mom. He could still remember the way she’d grabbed him around the neck, the way she’d sobbed her thanks.
o;He was a dick to start with.” Gabriel’s blue eyes were intense and almost frightening. “And I’m not real crazy about getting accused of rape in the first thirty seconds I meet someone.”
“Wow, you’re really good at this apology stuff.”
He took a long breath and didn’t look away like he was gathering his temper, or his mettle, or . . . something.
“I am sorry,” he said, “for upsetting you.”
He meant it. She could feel it. It cost him something to say it, and the little tugs in her chest were begging her to nod, to forgive him, to acknowledge that there were many things unsaid, on both sides of this conversation.
She didn’t move.
Gabriel moved a bit closer. “I’m sorry, Layne. Really.”
His voice was low and rough, and this close, she could make out each individual eyelash, the line of his cheekbone, the bare start of shadow across his jaw. She felt ready to slide down the lockers and melt into a puddle at his feet.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about her father’s warnings last night, about an outlet. Her dad was right. Falling for a guy like Gabriel would end up with her hurt and her secrets all over school.
“So,” she said, feeling her throat close up, “is this when girls usually fall all over you and forgive you for everything?”
He jerked back like she’d hit him.
God, she regretted it immediately. His eyes went dark, walled off. Closed. A second ago, the distance between them had felt like an inch; now it felt like a mile.
But then he glanced down the hallway and back at her. He almost had a small smile on his face. “A friend just told me I pick a fight every time someone gets close to figuring me out.”
She swallowed.
Gabriel leaned in again, putting a hand on the locker beside her head. “What’re your secrets, Layne?”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe.
He held there for a moment.
Then he reached around her and jerked a yellow notebook out of her open backpack the one she used to keep assign-ments in order. A pen was still attached to the spiral, and he pulled it loose.
That was so unexpected that she faltered. “My . . . what . . .
why . . .”
He’d flipped to the middle and was already writing.
Before her heart could catch up, he shoved it back into her bag. He didn’t even smile, just stepped back. “Call me when you’re ready to cut through the bullshit.”
He’d turned the corner before she could get it together to pull the notebook out of her backpack, to see what he’d written.
There in the middle, scrawled across the page, was a phone number.
