Shredded

Chapter 12 Ophelia

“Hey, Ophelia, you heading back to the dorms?” Harvey asks, running to catch up with me as I push my way through the heavy front doors of Lost Canyon Lodge’s main building.

“I am, yeah.”

It’s been a long crazy day and I’m exhausted, even though it’s only about four in the afternoon. I didn’t sleep well last night, haven’t slept well since that whole thing with Z, to be honest, and the hectic pace of the café today totally tired me out. The last thing I want to do right now is to walk the three miles of trails back to the dorm, but that’s what I get for refusing to drive.

“Do you mind if I catch a ride? My car’s in the shop. Busted alternator.”

“Ooh, bummer.” I’ve dealt with cars enough to know. “Those things aren’t cheap.”

“Tell me about it.” He looks at me expectantly. “So, do you mind giving me a ride?”

“I wouldn’t mind at all, but I’m walking myself. You can keep me company, if you’d like. We can talk about Anthem, if you’ve finished it.”

“I have, actually. But why aren’t you driving? Is something wrong with your car, too?”

Nope. My baby is in tip-top shape. Or at least she was the last time I turned her on. Which was just about two weeks ago, now that I think about it. The day I got here and got settled into the dorms. For all I know, she could be a holy-shit-what-have-you-done-to-me mess by now. She did spend her whole life in New Orleans before this. Utah’s probably a huge shock for the poor thing.

I don’t say any of this to Harvey, though. I don’t want to have to explain what I barely understand myself. So instead I just tell him, “I felt like walking this morning. Wanted the exercise.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy, but he doesn’t complain as we veer off the main path and onto the winding trail that will take us to the dorms. I’ve taken it twice a day, every day, for the last two weeks, so I’m pretty familiar with it. But still, on days like today, when clouds have moved in, darkening the sky, I can’t help but get freaked out by how ominous it feels. Especially since the path isn’t used very much.

“It’s nice to have company, though,” I tell him with a smile. “Makes the time go faster.”

We spend the next fifteen minutes or so talking about Ayn Rand and Anthem and how messed up it is that a woman who wrote a book like that also participated in the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s.

“It just makes no sense,” I tell him. “If she’s all about how individuality and ego are the only things that matter, how could she have any part in a panel whose sole purpose was to punish people it believed thought differently? I don’t get it.”

“Is that really surprising to you? I thought artists were known for not making sense. Or at least for being completely hypocritical.”

“Not all of them,” I say. “Some of my favorite people in the world are artists of one type or another. They’re really passionate and kind of self-absorbed, but I wouldn’t call them hypocritical.”

I think of Remi, who was amazing at drawing. He didn’t let many people see that side of him—I don’t know if he was afraid it wasn’t tough enough for the neighborhood we lived in or if he just wanted to keep it to himself—but he had well over a dozen sketch pads filled with the most beautiful drawings. When he died, his mother gave all but one of them to me.

They’re one of the few things I actually brought with me from New Orleans. I haven’t been able to open them yet, haven’t been able to look at the dark lines and broad strokes that make up so much of Remi’s sketches, but I can’t let them go, either. Someday, I tell myself. Someday, maybe, it won’t hurt when I try to open them.

“Maybe I’m biased,” Harvey said. “My mom was a singer. She ran out on us when I was little because she had to ‘follow her bliss.’ I don’t think my dad ever got over it.”

“My dad did almost that same thing.”

He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry.”

“No big deal. I was a baby, so I never got the chance to know him.” I reach over and put a hand on his arm. “But I’m sorry about your mom.”

We’re almost at the end of the woods now, with only about half a mile between us and the warmth of the dorm, and I can’t wait to get there. My fingers and toes are completely numb, and even though I’m wearing a hat and scarf, my ears and nose feel like they might actually be getting frostbitten.

How the hell do people actually live up here? Sure, it’s beautiful, but there are lots of beautiful places in the world where snow doesn’t cover the ground for six months of the year. Like Tahiti. Or Brazil. Or, hell, Ethiopia. It’s getting to the point where I don’t care where I go as long as it’s away from here.

I start to quicken my pace—I can almost feel my flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers—but Harvey stops me with a hand to my elbow.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. For a second, my mind is filled with images of wolves or bobcats or whatever the hell kind of wildlife lives up here. Every time I walk this stupid trail, I have visions of being dragged off into the wilderness by some starving animal with really sharp teeth and a love of human flesh. Overly dramatic, maybe, but I’m a city girl and have no problem admitting it.

“Nothing.” Harvey tugs off one of his gloves, then brushes ice-cold fingers to my face. “Your cheeks are really pink.”

Alarm bells start going off in my head. Still, I shove them back, try to convince myself that I’m wrong. The last thing I need is for Harvey to make a play for me—he’s pretty much the only friend I’ve got here and I don’t want to ruin that by rejecting him.

“It’s the wind,” I tell him, taking a couple of steps back. “I think it’s flayed off the first three layers of my skin.”

He doesn’t get the hint. Instead, he moves a couple of steps closer, strokes his fingers down my hair.

“I need to get going,” I tell him. “I told my mom I’d call her at four-thirty and it’s almost that now.”

“You’re really pretty. You know that, right?” He plunges his hands deeper into my hair—hard enough for my hat to fall off—and his fingers tangle in the strands.

“Harvey.” I put a hand on his chest, try to push him back a little. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

For some crazy, godforsaken reason, Z’s face pops into my head at the question. Not Remi, but Z. It freaks me out so much that I end up shoving Harvey away, hard—and nearly losing a chunk of my hair in the process.

“Ow!” My hand goes to the sore spot where he pulled my hair. “What the hell was that for?”

“Why’d you push me away like that?” Suddenly he’s even closer than before. And this time the closeness doesn’t seem nearly as innocuous as it did a couple of minutes ago. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“I know. It’s just—” I start to tell him about Remi, but I never talk about him. Never. And I’m not going to start now just to make some guy who has definitely overstepped his bounds feel better.

“What? I’m not good enough for you because I’m a dishwasher?”

“I never said that,” I tell him, even as I start to back away from him. The alarm bells have become full-fledged shrieks and whistles, along with a get-the-hell-out-of-there-girl warning that I have no intention of ignoring. “I thought we were friends.”

“What if I don’t want to be your friend?” He grabs my arms, hauls me in closer to him. “What if I want to be more?”

Shit. This isn’t going to end well. I can tell already. I try to pull away from him, but he tightens his grip until his fingers are digging into my arms hard enough to cause pain.

“Let me go, Harvey.” I pull harder, wrenching my arms from his grasp, then stumble back and nearly fall flat on my ass, thanks to the snow. “I have to get back to my room. I’ve got to make that phone call.”

He reaches out to steady me, but I don’t want his help. I’d rather fall flat on my ass than take anything from a guy who thinks manhandling me is an effective means of communication.

“Hey, chill, Ophelia. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Yeah, I might believe that if I didn’t still feel the imprint of his fingers around my biceps. From the way it aches, I’m pretty sure he’s left a bruise. “Fine. Then let me go back to my room. I need to call my mom.” I repeat the info with the hope that it will sink into his thick skull.

How the hell did I get myself into this situation? I thought Harvey was a nice, harmless guy—probably because he reminds me of Remi’s BFF, Max, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. I even wrote off the creepy way I saw him looking at me and some of the other girls as nervousness because he lacked social skills. It never occurred to me that something more sinister was going on. But obviously that was my freaking mistake. Turns out Harvey’s plans include a late afternoon fuck fest, one I’m suddenly thinking he won’t mind making into a rape fest if I don’t cooperate.

And I’m definitely not cooperating. But I’m not going to show fear, either. Not to this asshole who has delusions of being a player. It may be my own stupidity that got me into this mess—when the hell am I going to learn?—but I’m done playing nice. All that does is get me into trouble.

When he doesn’t say anything, I start to move around him, taking great care not to touch him. But he moves with me. Blocks my path. Goddamnit. He’s got a teasing smile on his face, like this is all a game, but I don’t want to play. Not now. Not with him.

“Come on, Harvey. I don’t have time for this.”

“Sure you do. You don’t have any plans tonight.”

The first stages of fear work their way through the mad. “How do you know what plans I have?”

“I asked around. I wanted to make sure you were free to have dinner with me.”

“Is there even anything wrong with your car?” I ask as all the pieces come together in my head.

He looks down, pretends to be embarrassed. “I just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

Fuck. Every nerve ending I have is standing up in alarm now. I glance around, try to ignore my racing heart and sweating palms, but it’s not working. Not when panic is welling up inside me like a balloon on the verge of popping. It’s getting hard to breathe, hard to think. I’ve been here before, know where this is going to end up if I don’t get him away from me.

I want to make a run for it, but I’m still clumsy in snow. Half the time I end up falling if I try to walk too fast, and the last thing I want right now is to be on the ground with Harvey above me. “Let’s head to the cafeteria, then,” I finally say, hoping to appease him by sorta going along with what he wants. “I skipped lunch, so I’m totally up for a snack or something.”

He smiles triumphantly at my words, like he’s somehow won something. It makes me burn, and a million insults find their way to my tongue. I don’t voice any of them, though. Not out here where no one can hear me scream. Not out here where I’m at the mercy of this giant ape and his disgusting libido. As soon as I’m back at the employee lodge, I’m telling him off, then running to my room. And I’m not coming out until I’ve practiced all those self-defense moves Remi taught me when we first started dating.

There’s no way this is happening to me again. No way in hell.

I move to go around Harvey a second time, and this time he lets me pass. The panic recedes and I start to breathe easier, start to question if all the shit with my mom’s boyfriends through the years has made me overreact to what was nothing more than a simple advance.

But then he grabs me from behind, wraps his arms around my middle, and pulls my back flush against his front. He bends down and whispers something in my ear, his breath hot and disgusting against my cheek. I can’t hear what he’s saying over my own harsh breathing and the strangled screams working their way out of my throat. “Stop!” I tell him, struggling against him with every ounce of strength I have.

He just laughs, holds me tighter. That’s when I feel it poking against my lower back. He’s hard. My stomach turns, and for a second I think I really am going to puke. But I can’t, not now. He’s big and strong and about seven inches taller than I am, and I need every ounce of concentration I have if I’m going to get out of this.

“Relax,” he says as he lifts me off my feet in an obscene version of a bear hug. “I’m just playing with you.”

“Then let me go. I don’t want to play.” I jab my elbow back into his ribs, but it doesn’t have much impact. “Please, let me go.”

“Sure, of course.” He puts my feet back on the ground, loosens his grip just enough to slide a hand under my jacket and sweater. His rough palm is on my stomach now, on my skin, and terror is a deadly sharp icicle within me. “I’m not going to hurt you, Ophelia. I just want—”

He goes flying before he can finish his reassurance. I don’t expect it and I’m straining so hard in the other direction that I stumble forward, hard, the second he releases me. A strong arm wraps around my waist right before I slam into the ground, keeps me from falling face-first into the snow. I know it isn’t Harvey this time, can feel the difference in the arm holding me and the spicy cinnamon scent of the man it belongs to, but still I freak out. Start shoving and clawing to get away. I can’t think, can’t breathe. I can’t—

He lets go immediately, takes a couple of steps away. “Hey, Ophelia, are you all right?”

I turn my head to see Z standing there, his hands raised in front of him in a gesture I know he means to be nonthreatening, reassuring. And it is. Somehow I know that the rage burning in his eyes isn’t for me. That he won’t hurt me.

Harvey, though, is another matter entirely. Z’s looking at him like he wants to kill him. And maybe it’s wrong of me, but I just can’t work up the will to care. Not right now, when I can still feel Harvey’s hand on my stomach, his fingers creeping toward my bra.

Still, I hate anyone seeing me this vulnerable. I dash a glove across my face, brush at the weak, useless tears I didn’t even know I was crying. But they’re frozen to my cheeks and they don’t budge. Not really.

“Answer me, Ophelia.” Z’s voice is strained, worried. “Are. You. All. Right?”

“I’m fine.” I take a deep breath, tell myself that it’s true. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t look convinced.

“I swear,” I reassure him, making sure my voice doesn’t tremble this time. “I’m okay.”

It must work, because he nods before switching his attention to Harvey, who is just now climbing off the ground where Z threw him. “Hey, man, what the hell was that for?” he complains as he picks his hat out of the snow.

Z doesn’t answer, just plows a fist straight into Harvey’s face. Harvey rears back as blood starts leaking from a cut on his cheekbone. He touches his cheek, looks down at his crimson-streaked gloves. Then launches himself at Z with a bellow of rage.

He’s bigger than Z—a couple of inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier—but Z doesn’t so much as flinch. He just meets him head-on, with a fist to the stomach so powerful that it leaves Harvey gasping for air. Then Z really gets to work.

It’s over almost before it starts. A few jabs, an uppercut, and a hard roundhouse to the gut and Harvey is laid out in the snow, groaning. Z stands over him, fists clenched, face livid with rage. “What’s the matter, asshole? You only like to hurt girls? Come on, I’ll give you a free shot. Let you see what it feels like to hit a man this time.”

Harvey doesn’t move, so Z bends down, goes to punch him again. I get in the middle before his fist can land. Defending someone is one thing, but if Z does any more damage, he’s going to end up in jail, and he doesn’t deserve that, not when he’s just trying to help me.

“That’s enough.” I put my hand on his elbow. “Harvey’s had enough.”

Z shrugs me off. “It’s not enough. Someone needs to teach the fucker that he can’t go around putting his hands on women just because he feels like it.” He draws one booted foot back and kicks Harvey in the ribs. Then does it a second and a third time.

Harvey groans, curls up into a little ball to get away from Z’s blows. “Z, stop!” I grab him this time, try to pull him away, but once again, he shakes me off. He doesn’t seem to hear me. All he hears, all he can focus on, is Harvey.

“You don’t look so strong now, Harvey. Rolling around on the ground. Begging like a little bitch. How’s it feel not to be the strong one, huh? How’s it feel not to be the one in control?” He kicks him again.

Shit. If I don’t do something, and quickly, Z’s going to kill him. It’s in every fury-filled line of his body, in every enraged word that comes out of his mouth.

I rush him from the side, shove him as hard as I can just as he raises his leg to kick Harvey again. My attack catches him off balance, and it’s his turn to stumble. He regains his balance, then turns to me with a confused look on his face. “What’d you do that for?”

“Look at him.” I point at Harvey, who’s whimpering as he curls himself into the fetal position and waits for more blows to rain down on him.

But there aren’t going to be any more. My shove was the wake-up call Z needed. He’s finished. I can see it from the look in his eyes, like he’s just waking up from a particularly realistic nightmare.

Like he can’t believe what he’s done.

I don’t know why, but I reach for him. I should be terrified by his display of violence, by the way he lost himself in his own head. But I’m not. There’s something about the way he touched me, the way he came to my rescue, that tells me he won’t hurt me. At least not with his fists. Besides, if he’d wanted anything from me, he could have had it four nights ago.

It only takes Harvey a couple of seconds to figure out the attack has stopped. Once he glances at Z and realizes he’s not going to get hit again, he unrolls himself and climbs laboriously to his feet. “I was just having some fun, man,” he says in a whiny, high-pitched voice that makes me wish Z would hit him again. “I wasn’t going to hurt her.”

I think about the bruises on my arms, the pain in my back and shoulders. He’s already done damage and he doesn’t even know. Or, more likely, it’s that he doesn’t care.

“Get the fuck out of my face, asshole.” Z glares at him, takes a menacing step forward. “And if I ever catch you near Ophelia again, I’ll kill you.”

Ice runs down my spine. Not at the threat, but at the deadly soft conviction behind the words. A part of me thinks they aren’t for show, that Z really means them.

Harvey must think so, too, because he goes deathly white before spinning around and fleeing in the direction of the lodge as fast as his injured body can carry him.

After he disappears into the trees, I turn to Z. “Are you okay?” He’s stretching out his hand like it really hurts. Which, of course, it must. It’s bruised and swollen, the knuckles split open from the force with which his fist connected with Harvey’s face. The fact that he wasn’t wearing gloves, that his hands are ice cold, has only aided in the damage.

He’s also trembling, whether with cold or reaction I’m not sure. But I can’t leave him out here. Not when he just saved me from a fate I don’t even want to think about. Damn Harvey and his hey-can-I-hitch-a-ride approach. And damn me for being stupid enough to fall for it. I’m turning into one of those too-stupid-to-live heroines from horror movies and I don’t like it, at all.

“Where did you even come from?” I ask, looking around. Until we get to the employee lodge, there’s nothing out here at all. Just snow and trees and rocky cliffs.

“I’ve been hiking.” He walks about fifty feet away and picks up the snowboard he obviously dropped on his rush to rescue me.

“With a snowboard?” I ask, incredulously.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like you’ve got time to tell it to me.” I take the board from him. “Come on. Let’s go back to my room so I can clean you up.”

“You don’t have to do that.” He doesn’t move. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. You’re the one who looks half frozen.” I glance down at his clothes, realize they’re wet and covered in ice in a bunch of places. “Hey, what happened to you anyway?”

Those wild sapphire eyes of his jump to mine. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re soaking wet. Did you fall?”

The left corner of his mouth lifts up in that crooked smile I can’t help appreciating. “Something like that.”

“Well, hurry up then. You’re going to freeze to death out here.” Even snowboarding pants can’t protect him completely from all that ice.

“It’s fine. I’m cool.”

“No shit you’re cool. That’s why your teeth are chattering.”

The crooked smile becomes a full-blown grin. “You think you’re pretty smart, huh, Ophelia?”

I think of Harvey. Of the mess I helped make back in New Orleans. Of the way standing too close to Z makes my breath catch even though I know better. “Smart’s not the first adjective that comes to mind. Now, let’s get going before you turn into a Popsicle.”

When he still makes no move to follow me, I move closer. Wrap an arm around his waist. God, he really is freezing.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” His way-too-cold hands reach up to cup my face in a way-too-familiar gesture. After the way we left things Friday night, it should piss me off—I don’t like being touched at the best of times—but somehow it doesn’t. The concern I can see in his eyes makes me feel good. Safe, even, and I haven’t felt like that in more months than I can count.

“I’m fine,” I tell him one more time, and this time it feels like the truth. “You got here before he could do anything but annoy me.” I push against Z’s waist to propel him forward, and this time he actually moves with me. “Thanks for the rescue, by the way.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a rescue.”

“Oh, yeah? What would you call it, then?”

“A helping hand. You were holding your own pretty damn well. Besides, I’m not exactly the type to rescue damsels in distress.”

I’m not so sure about that.

He stopped for me at the bus stop, then drove all the way up to the employee housing, out of his way, just to make sure I was safe.

He stopped when we were going at it, when no other guy would have, just because he realized I wasn’t into what we were doing.

And now this. He pulled Harvey off me. He stood between us. He made sure, before he did anything, that I was okay. Much as I’d like to agree with his assessment of himself, much as it would make things easier, I have to admit he feels a little bit like a hero to me. Which only makes all the shit that’s gone down between us seem even stranger.

We don’t say anything else until we get back to the lodge. I don’t know what to say, and I guess Z doesn’t, either. Nothing that’s happened in our messed-up relationship so far could have prepared me for the fact that he’d be the guy stepping up to stop me from being raped.

“Take your pants off,” I say as the door to my room closes behind us.

He turns to me with a teasing look. “Aren’t you at least going to buy me dinner first? I’m not the kind of guy to just get naked.”

I roll my eyes even as I reach for an extra blanket from the cupboard next to my bed and toss it to him. “You’re exactly that kind of guy, as Friday night proved. And as charming as the thought of you naked is, I was thinking more along the lines of preventing hypothermia rather than having my wicked way with you.”

“So you say, but we both know the truth.” He snaps the blanket in the air a couple of times to unfold it. “Not that I mind.”

“And here I was afraid of offending your delicate sensibilities.”

He laughs, loud and long. As he does, the sensitive, worried guy from earlier fades away, only to be replaced by the cocky bastard that most of the world sees when they look at him. The transformation should annoy me, but strangely it doesn’t. Not when he smiles at me and says, “I like you.”

“I like you, too,” I answer brusquely, determined not to let him see how off-kilter being around him makes me feel. “Now get changed.”

“If you insist.” He reaches for the tie at the top of his pants and undoes it.

“Stop!” I screech, whirling around to face the wall away from him. “What is it with you and taking your clothes off in front of people? There’s a bathroom right through that door.” I point blindly.

He chuckles. “What’s the big deal? It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Besides, nothing’s showing. It’s way too cold for me to go commando.”

I don’t answer him, just groan and cover my eyes with my hands. Now that I’m not trying to have sex with him to get rid of him, I can’t believe he’s stripping in my room. Right in front of me. This is what I get for trying to return the favor he did me.

A half-naked Z in my bedroom.

My stomach flips a couple of hundred times at the thought, and unlike outside with Harvey, it’s not such a terrible feeling. Which just makes the whole situation feel worse. Remi hasn’t been dead quite a year yet, and here I am thinking about Z naked. Not just about having sex with him for expediency’s sake, but about kissing him, touching him, letting him touch me.

He’s everything I don’t want in a guy, everything I know to stay away from, and yet I’m standing here wondering what I’m missing by staring at the wall and not at him.

Just goes to show how screwed up my judgment really is.

“You can look now. The wet clothes are off.”

I realize my mistake as soon as I turn around. Z didn’t tell me that he was covered, only that the wet clothes were gone. And they are. But the blanket I gave him is crumpled on the floor at his feet and he’s standing there, watching me, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs and gray socks with a small hole over his right baby toe.

For long seconds I can do nothing but stare. He should look ridiculous with his socks all slumped down like that and his toe poking through, but he doesn’t. Instead, he’s gorgeous. All long and lean and bronzed and muscled. And hot. So fucking hot I can feel my entire body catching fire at the sight of him. The quivering in my stomach moves lower and it takes every ounce of willpower I have not to touch him. Or, better yet, lick him.

He’s got his snakebites in this afternoon, and suddenly I want to know what the little silver balls will feel like against my lips when I kiss him. If I kiss him. Which I won’t. I’m done with adrenaline junkies just asking to get killed. And even if I wasn’t, the glimpses I’ve seen of him—of the scars on his body and the ones that lurk beneath his pretty-boy facade—scare the hell out of me. So that’s it. I’m grateful for what he did, but I’m done. Finished. I’ll dry his clothes, but then he has to go.

“Give me your stuff,” I tell him in the most I’m-so-not-impressed-with-your-beautiful-body voice I can manage. Of course, it’d probably be more convincing if I could catch my breath. “I’ll run down and put everything in the dryer.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I kind of do. It seems ungracious to let you freeze to death after you kept me from turning into another statistic.”

“Hey. That asshole wasn’t going to hurt you. I wouldn’t have let him.”

“I know.”

Instead of wrapping up in the blanket I gave him earlier, he reaches for the tangle of blankets on my unmade bed, pulls the top one off, and winds it around himself. Then he buries his face in it and pulls a deep breath in through his nose. My whole body goes hot when I figure out what he’s doing. He picked that blanket so he could smell me on it, so he’d be wrapped in my scent.

The thought does all kinds of crazy things to me, gives me all kinds of feels I just don’t want. It’s all I can do to keep from ripping it off him again. But then I’d be faced with that chest and those abs and all those gorgeous tattoos.

At this point, I don’t know what would be worse.

The smirk on his face tells me he knows exactly what I’m thinking. Of course he does. How could he not when girls drop at his feet wherever he goes?

Forcing my sudden attack of lust back down to wherever it came from, I gather up his clothes and a couple of dollars in quarters and run them down to the employee laundry room. When I get back, he’s standing in front of my bookshelf, my battered copy of Catcher in the Rye in his hands.

Why am I not surprised? Of course he’s a Holden Caulfield fan.

“You like this book?” he asks, his voice so casual that I know he’s really interested in the answer.

“Yeah. Do you?”

He shrugs. “I’ve never read it.”

“Not even junior year in high school?” I ask, surprised. I thought rich boys like him were all about fancy schools.

“I was never much of a student. By the time I was fifteen, I’d been kicked out of every major private school in Park City and Salt Lake City.”

Now that doesn’t surprise me at all. “You’d probably like that book, then.”

He glances at the innocuous red-and-white cover. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

“The main character, Holden Caulfield, gets kicked out of a bunch of schools, too. He’s pretty much one of the best antiheroes ever written.” I move into my tiny little kitchen, which is really just a minifridge, a microwave, and the Keurig Remi bought me for Christmas last year. “You want some coffee or hot chocolate or something?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I gesture to the little carousel I’ve got that holds all the different K-cups, but he’s too interested in the blurb on the back of the book to notice. “You can borrow that if you want,” I tell him.

Immediately he puts it down. “No, that’s okay.”

“You sure? It’s a great story. With that book, Salinger proved—long before U.S. pop culture figured it out—that antiheroes actually make the best heroes.”

Now he looks at the book like it’s a king cobra that’s got him in its sights. “I’m good. I’ve never been much of a reader.”

“I didn’t used to be, either.” I pop my favorite kind of coffee into the Keurig, then hit brew. If he doesn’t like it, he should have told me what he wanted.

“Really? With a name like Ophelia, I kind of thought you’d be all about reading.”

Because I can sense the tension in him, I go with the change of topic. “Nope. Not really.”

“So, what changed?” he asks. At my blank look, he continues, “To get you reading? You’ve got a lot of books here.”

I think about those long weeks in the hospital, the longer weeks lying on the sofa at home, just waiting to get stronger. Just waiting for the pain to go away. It never did.

“It’s a long story.”

His usually cocky smile is gone, and in its place is an intensity that takes my breath away. “Seems like we have a lot of those between us, don’t we?”

“I guess we do.”

He catches my eye, holds my gaze for long seconds. “We going to do anything about that?”

Just the thought has my breath hitching in my throat. “I don’t know. I don’t … think so.”

He nods, like that’s exactly what he expected me to say. Then again, I’m pretty sure it’s what he would say if I asked about his secrets, so why wouldn’t he expect the same from me?

“Tell me something else, then.”

I gaze at him warily. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Tell me something, anything, about you.”

“Why should I?”

“Because if you do it, so will I.”

I can’t help smiling. “A little I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours?”

It’s only when he grins that I realize what I said—and what it sounds like. He doesn’t call me on it, though. Instead he smiles innocently and says, “I’m all for quid pro quo.”

But I can see his eyes, can see the way his pupils have dilated and his irises have turned a deep midnight blue. This is a bad idea.

Yet I can’t stop myself from smiling back. Any more than I can stop the words tumbling out of my mouth.

“I hate Brussels sprouts, cold weather, and guys who think they can have whatever they want.”