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“Do you always think the world revolves around you?” I drawl. Meg’s aggression sharpens, and I’m presented with a rare opportunity to indulge in whatever Everest finds so interesting about her. I did save her life after all, regardless of why her life was in danger in the first place.

She’s tenacious, I’ll give her that. A flicker in her blue eyes presents a challenge, and the way she grips her phone appears as if she’s visualizing smashing me over the head with it. She’s welcome to. I’ve survived far worse. Rocking back on her heels, lifting her chin far too confidently for someone who is practically naked in the hallway, she is very much the campus legend and kidnapping survivor no one cares for anymore. Around here, being old news equals social segregation. Yet Meg doesn’t seem affected. She almost seems stronger for it. I should scoff and walk away, but something keeps me rooted to the spot. Something that yearns to see what Everest sees in her, the resolve he speaks so highly of.

“I can see this needs to be broken down slowly.” I lift a brow, letting the metal bar through it do some of the condescending for me. “Where did you expect them to put the rehab kids, if not right next to the teacher’s quarters where we can be monitored closely?”

Opening her mouth, probably to tear into me, nothing comes out. Her throat works instead, raw from smoke or rage or whatever else she holds inside, and I watch the fight flee through her eyes like a trapped animal. Clearly, Meg believed she was free of the rehab facility and all of its lingering memories, yet here I am. Pale-faced, paler-haired, and looming over her like a ghost that knows every little slip-up she made in group sessions. Boo.

“You could at least turn your music down,” Meg mutters, yanking the towel higher with one damp hand, the motion dragging my attention to the curve of her shoulder before I force my gaze back to her face. “Some of us nearly died today.”

My eyes cloud before I can stop them, and for a second I see her on the ground again, phone clutched in one hand, Everest’s shirt fisted in the other, both of them covered in ash because of me. I don’t even know if she’s hurt somewhere beneath her towel, but it’s not my concern even if she is. As Nicholas Calloway would repeatedly tell me, I’m the monster here. I don’t get to care for those who are better than me. So instead, I look beyond as if I’m thoroughly bored.

“And some of us are trying to drown out the fact that other people even exist.” I turn away before she can respond, before my expression gives away too much.

“Wait,” she blurts out. I stop with my hand on the door, half turned away and already regretting stalling. My hesitation has given Meg unpermitted access to glimpse inside my bedroom. There’s a blank canvas on the easel, stacks of empty frames against the wall, paint tubes scattered across the desk, jars of brushes, and charcoal dust all over the place. All the pieces of me strewn out for her to see, and her curiosity makes me bristle. This is a one-way street, I get intel on her, not the other way around. The last thing I need in my life is someone else to psychoanalyze me. Inhaling, Meg sets her shoulders, and her gaze is back on me.

“I don’t even know your name.” For some reason, that simple request lands harder than it should. My name? My birth one, my adoptive one, my fake one? All versions of me that have been torn down, shunned, and rebuilt in someone else’s image. Yet at this moment, with water dripping from her hair and smoke still lingering in her lungs, she wants to know who I am. She’s several years too late.

“Good,” I reply, then I slam the door in her face. Bracing my palm flat against the wood, I listen to the silence on the other side, waiting for her to curse, kick the door, call me an asshole, but nothing comes. Eventually, her bare feet move away to pad down the hallway, and her own door is clicked open and closed. That’s when I can fully exhale, the joint in my pocket forgotten.

My pulse is still climbing, my heart still battering against the cage of my ribs like I’ve run a marathon instead of standing in a doorway trading light insults with my new neighbor. She’s completely ridiculous. Freshly discharged and barely holding herself upright beneath all that righteous fury, yet she looked at me as if I’m a puzzle she intends to solve. She didn’t flinch at my cruelty. She simply buried the wounded flash in her eyes and carried on. I’ve seen her do this numerous times in group therapy, her anger keeping everyone at arm’s length, but I didn’t think her defenses would withstand the real world. Not for a single day.

When I finally turn back to my own room, the blank canvas is still waiting. I stare at it for longer than I should, my jaw tight and fingers flexing at my sides while the image of her refuses to leave me alone. Water on flushed skin. Dark hair clinging to her throat. Towel clutched like armor. Blue eyes wide with accusation, suspicion, and something raw enough to make my chest ache if I’m stupid enough to let it in.

I don’t want to paint her. I don’t want to give her a permanent place in my room, in my hands, in my art, in the only part of me that still feels sacred. Art is mine. It’s the one language I know that doesn’t have rules attached, the one place where I don’t have to alter myself for the sake of the people around me. Yet, the need hits like lightning under my skin, violent enough to drag me toward the easel before I can talk myself out of it. A stick of charcoal appears in my hand, my fingers already black with intention, and suddenly, Meg is there. Furious, inquisitive, and alive, staring out of the blankness like she has clawed her way through the wall and into my canvas.

I hate her. I hate the way she appeals to Everest without even realizing it. I hate the way he comes to life at the first sign of her rage, how her anger gives him something to chase, something to provoke, something to bleed for. I hate the way I identify with the pain that sits behind her eyes, that awful familiar ache she tries to bury beneath sarcasm and fury. I hate the way she always survives. For some reason, I draw her anyway.

Not as she was in the hallway, wrapped in a towel with suspicion cutting through those too-blue eyes. No, I draw her how I bend and shape her in my mind, how she looked when she thought no one could see past her defenses. Hollow with exhaustion, crippled beneath the gossip that swarms around her, contorted with the lies she tells herself just to keep standing. Her chin lifts on the page, defiant even as shadows gather beneath her eyes. Her shoulders curve inward, but her mouth stays hard, ready to lash me with an insult or to tell me to go fuck myself. Every line I drag across the canvas is too well placed, every smudge of charcoal turning too intimate. I didn’t realize I had been watching her so closely.

By the time my hand finally stills, she is staring back at me from the canvas with smoke in her eyes, water on her skin, smoke billowing from her back, and I understand with a cold, sinking certainty that hating Meg O’Connor is going to be much harder now that I resonate with her. Now that my hands recognize her pain as beauty.

Chapter Six

By the time I’m released from the private clinic, I’ve considered murdering the lower-level assistant my father sent to monitor my breathing all night multiple times. He’s not a doctor by any means, but he kept fiddling with tubes and dials as if watching House gave him a medical license. Despite my insistence that I’m fine, he refused to leave until they discharged me this morning.

Apparently, smoke inhalation is taken very seriously when there’s suspicion of a scandal hovering over the Calloway name. My father instinctively knows who the culprit is, even if I did spend hours on the phone convincing him the fire was just a freak accident. Arriving outside my frat house thanks to the family driver, my fingers curl around the handle as he speaks.

“Your father would like me to inform you that there are videos of yesterday circulating campus. He expects damage control.” His eyes flick towards the rearview mirror, a tired and unimpressed expression on his face.

“AKA, redirect attention elsewhere,” I huff. Shaking my head, I slump back into the backseat of the Sedan. “What does he expect me to do? The naked hula on top of the science block?” There’s no response other than a long, hard stare, and I roll my eyes. “I’ll deal with it.”

Pushing out of the car, I traipse up the pathway and porch steps, swinging my front door open with a bang. Gasps filter through the vicinity, bodies jumping up to throw a thousand questions at me. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager to leave the health clinic. Holding a hand up, I push through the jocks and cheerleaders who have apparently been waiting for my return, sleeping on any surface they can find. This is what happens when a leader steps away from his role, lost lambs bleating around, waiting for direction.

“All of you, fuck off. I need sleep,” I grumble, already halfway up the stairs when Danny calls up after me.

“The Dean wants to see you at eight.” My feet stop dead in their tracks and my eyes briefly slide closed. Had this notification popped up on my phone’s calendar, I wouldn’t have believed it. Someone has been having the time of their fucking life sending me on wild goose chases and interrupting the Dean’s morning meetings, but Danny knows Dean Colt’s calendar better than anyone, being her son and all. He’s always searching for a way to hold his mom’s attention, hence why he’s always hovering around me.

“Someone wake me up in an hour with breakfast and coffee. Fight amongst yourselves who it is.”

Continuing to my room, a ruckus of arguing breaks out in the entrance hall and continues down the front lawn. Eventually, once I’ve stripped from the health clinic’s paper pants and t-shirt, I flop into bed and let sleep take over. Behind my eyelids, flashes of flames, smoke, and flashing lights act as a backdrop to Meg’s determined desperation and Cody’s withdrawn temperament. The distance between us has never felt greater.

All too soon, a knock on the door jars me from the little sleep I managed. Wiping the drool from my mouth, I tug the pillow over my dick before Mitchell enters. He has a breakfast tray in his hands, and a placated smile on his face.

Sitting against the headboard, I drag a hand down my face, wincing when my throat pulls. The bruise Meg left sits there, beneath a newer irritation I can’t shift. It hurts when I swallow. It hurts when I turn my head. Yesterday, that bruise was proof Meg still has a fire deep inside of her. Today, it’s another reminder of how far I’m willing to go for a woman who hates me.

Once the tray is placed on my lap, Mitchell turns to leave, but I stop him in the doorway and cut straight to the chase.

“What do the videos show?” He doesn’t need any other context, his mouth tightening into a thin line. Mitchell is fully aware of my father’s interest in both my personal life and my online presence. He’s vouched for me a few times, providing an alibi when I’ve stepped out to be with Cody, even if Mitchell has no idea where I’ve been or with who. He’s loyal to a fault, as most of the jocks are.