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“Pinky promise,” he says, his gaze dipping beneath his long lashes as he holds out his pinky finger. I clasp it in mine, then lower my hand as I lean into him, resting my head against his chest again. He strokes his fingers lightly through my hair and I feel a twinge of guilt for the promise I just asked him to make when I know I’m hiding something fromhim.Only I don’t want to think about the Braden Hall thing right now. I haven’t wanted to think about it much at all lately.
“What’s with the walls in here?” I ask, motioning to the three-and-a-quarter walls covered in a graffiti-like rainbow mosaic.
Seb grins. “Just a tradition that started a couple years ago. People write their names and stuff at their first beach bonfire.” He tips his head back. “Look up,” he says, his grin stretching even wider.
While most people have taken up small slivers of space across the walls, one whole third of the ceiling is taken up with one single quote.
SEBASTIAN MURDOCH WAS HERE.
I laugh. “Of courseyou took up half an entire ceiling to shout out to the entire world that you were here.” I lean in and kiss him. And then more softly, still smiling against his lips, I say, “And meanwhile, here I was in the same space, hiding.”
“Yeah. I wish you weren’t always doing that,” he says. “Trying to make yourself invisible all the time.”
Only his voice sounds serious. And then he’s leaning in, kissing me more deeply, pushing me back against the mattress, trailing his full lips down the length of my neck, my collarbone… lower…. lower… Until my breaths become shallow and desperate and I’m lying there drowning in him, as he sears those same words sprawled above me into my flushed skin:
SEBASTIAN MURDOCH WAS HERE.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Caroline
Thedininghallisabout twenty decibels louder the next day at lunchtime than it usually is. Dylan Braun started school this morning and people are even more riled up about his arrival than they were about Sebastian when he started here in September, which is saying something. A couple of billboards showed up on the freeway last week—and all over the country, apparently—with ads for some hip streetwear company, featuring a shirtless Dylan sprawled out provocatively, pants pulled down so low you can see most of his boxer briefs, looking sexy as sin. And ever since then, most of the girls who, just a few weeks ago when they heard Dylan was going to be attending our school, were freaking out—are suddenly giddy with excitement about his presence and all but salivating over him.
And yes, the guy is beautiful. I mean, absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. But the whole thing just seems… wrong, somehow. Because the slogans on those billboard ads? They have tag-lines like,“Show off your killer looks,”and,“Show off your killer instincts.”Totally capitalizing on the fact that Dylan was raised by a serial killer and is infamous for having his prints lifted from a couple of gory murder scenes.When he was a little kid,by the way. Which makes the whole thing even more exploitative, in my opinion. But I seem to be the only one who thinks so.
And the guys are no better. Most of them have it in for Dylan because they’re jealous of him or threatened or whatever. Which is equally messed up—being jealous of a guy who reached celebrity status because his mother was murdered and he was raised by the serial killer who ended her life? That’s just next-level sad in my books. I’m sure the dude would give up the sudden fame in a heartbeat, if it meant he could have his mother back. And a normal life.
Anyway, he obviously hasn’t come into the dining hall yet, because all I hear is the frantic chatter of people debating where he’s going to sit and if they had any classes with him and various exchanges about how hot he is. Oh, and mysterious. That word gets thrown around a lot, too.
So it’s a much-appreciated distraction when Jackie Delaney appears beside me and doesn’t even mention Dylan Braun.
“So, I told Seb I would be super stealth and sus out some sensitive intel for him,” she says, setting her tray down next to mine.
I nudge my tray over, making room for hers, arching my eyebrows at her. “Intel fromme?”
“Yup. Only I have no idea how to be stealth. So…” She takes a sip of peach juice. “Let’s just say I need to find out, on a scale of one to ten, how opposed you are to going to the Thanksgiving Dance.”
My eyebrows skyrocket even higher on my forehead. They’re probably trespassing straight into my hairline at this point. “Well, for the past three years I thought the chances of anyone ever wanting to go with me to the Thanksgiving Formal… or any dance, actually, were about zero. On a scale of one to ten.”
Jackie laughs. “Okay, well, first of all, your math is pretty bad for someone in AP calculus.” She takes another sip of juice and sets it back down on her tray. “And second of all, let’s say, hypothetically, the chances of someone asking you to Thanksgiving Formalnoware a ten, on a scale from one to ten.Thenhow would you feel about going? If the person thinking of asking you was, say, a certain star quarterback?” She bites the end of a fry. “Hypothetically, of course.”
“Hmm…” I pretend to think about it. “Is this a formal or an informal hypothetical inquiry?”
Jackie, who is close to my level of dorkiness, only way better at hiding it, pretends to be equally pensive. “Definitely informal.”
“Okay, good.” I pretend to be relieved. “Because if it was a formal inquiry, I’d have to say one to ten, my level of interest in attending a high school dance is about a low two. You know, because I’m supposed to think it’s lame and cliché and just another opportunity for the cool kids to impress their coolness on the rest of us measly loser students.” I grin. “But since it’s an informal inquiry, then my interest is definitely a high nine-and-a-half. Because I’ve never been to a school dance, and who cares if it’s cliché or what the cool kids think, because dancing to cheesy nineties tunes on an echo-ey sound system in a stinky gymnasium drunk on spiked fruit punch sounds like it could be really awesome.”
Jackie smiles, nodding her head. “Formally, we never had this conversation. Informally, I look forward to belting out Sweet Caroline with you at the top of our lungs in less than three weeks from today.”
When my phone bings with an incoming text just a few minutes before my third period class, I can’t keep from grinning—because I know it’s going to be a text from Seb asking me to the Thanksgiving Formal.
Only I’m so, so wrong.
It’s nothing like that at all.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Caroline
