Getting dressed, I mull the incident over again.
He was fine until we kissed. No, he was better than fine. He was the Penn I’ve gotten to know.
What on earth made him pull a one-eighty and basically kick me out?
I sit on the edge of my bed and dry my hair with a towel. The friction feels good, therapeutic, even, and I keep going long after it’s dried.
“And I was worried I wasn’t being fair with him,” I say. “What a joke.”
I’m tossing my towel into a laundry bin when I hear a soft knock on my door. I feel bad for not wanting to talk about this to Harper because I know she’s worried, but I don’t really know what to say. Penn rejected me. I don’t want to say that out loud.
“What is it, Harper?” I ask. “I really just want to be alone.”
The door pushes open, anyway.
“Harper, please. I’m fine. I just . . .”
Penn is standing in the doorway. Paint is still smeared all over him, and his hair is still a mess from my fingers a little while ago.
I sink down on my bed. My chest feels tight as I give up on trying to figure out my emotions. They just are.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I want to talk to you.”
“I’ll be honest,” I say. “When you said you’d call, I doubted that. I’m having a hard time believing that you’re here.”
He must feel like it’s safe to come in. The door closes behind him, placing us both in the same compact room together.
It’s not big enough—not for our bodies, and not for all the things happening between us. I get up and open a window as if that will somehow add more space.
He stands by the door, hat in his hands, eyes so wary that I want to punch him and kiss him at the same time.
What a feeling this is.
“I’m not good at this,” he says.
“You’re not good at what? Explaining why you just freaked out on me?” I grab a brush off the dresser and pull it through my damp hair. “It occurred to me on my way out the door that you blindsided me the way I did you the other day. Were you just evening the score?”
“Avery, no.”
“Then what was it?”
His Adam’s apple bobs. “Will you sit down?”
“Nope.”
I’m not giving him the dominant position over me, especially not in my own bedroom.
He sighs. “I’m sorry for . . . I don’t know if you actually cried, because I kind of mentally checked out or something. But if you did, I’m sorry for making you do that.”
My brush slows a little.
His shoulders slump as he sits on the bed. He jams the hat on his head. “Can I ask you something?”
My stomach rumbles with anticipation mixed with anxiety as I try to decipher which way this is about to go. Thoughts spin in my head like a Tilt-A-Whirl—so fast that I don’t know how I want this to pan out.
I’m surprised he’s here. Embarrassed from earlier. Angry that I care.
Yet seeing him like this softens all that because seeing him without his cocky grin bothers me. A lot.
“I guess,” I say.
“Have you been to Dogwood Lane before?”
My brush slows more.
There’s a piece of red-hot lava that lodges itself in my stomach. His words are too carefully curated, his tone too unnaturally even to be anything but a lead-in to something else.
He knows. My hand stalls over the top of my head as I force myself to breathe. Even if I’m right and he’s somehow figured it out on his own, I want to tell him first. I owe him that.
“Penn,” I say, setting the brush down. “I . . . I have something I want to tell you.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and do that?”
Swallowing is hard with the lava in my throat, and breathing is difficult with the weight of a secret like this on my chest. I have no idea how he put things together or when he did or what it means, but I know I should’ve told him sooner.
But it’s too late for that.
Our eyes lock like they always do, and I wonder, if we didn’t know each other and found ourselves in a busy city, would we still find each other like this? Because it feels like it. It feels so natural to be around him, like something inside me searches for something inside him.
I don’t know what to say or how to say it. Words refuse to come to my tongue. My fingers grip the hem of my shirt. I walk in front of him.
My chest rises and falls with such depth that I wonder if it’s possible to die from too much oxygen.
He looks up at me. His features are tight from what I think we both know is coming. I want to cry again but manage to hold back my tears as I slowly lift the edge of my shirt on my right side.
I wait for his reaction. His eyes are glued to the two dice on my ribs, the two dice that are the same two as on his forearm. His weren’t there when we were together before, and I can’t help but wonder why they’re there now.
He reaches forward and grips the backs of my legs and pulls me into him. His cheek buries into my stomach as he holds me the tightest I’ve ever been held.
I cradle his head in my arms and pull him against me.
My emotions are scattered across the room, blending together into a muddled masterpiece. I don’t know what I feel or what I’m supposed to feel or what I even want to feel. Did I just lose him? Was he mine to lose? Do I want him? Can I risk that?
We stay like that for a long minute before he pulls back. His eyes are raw, the shields down as he peers up at me with a vulnerability that rips my heart out.
“I should’ve told you,” I whisper.
He nods.
“I was going to. Today. But then we were kissing before I could get it out . . .” I exhale sharply. “That’s how you knew. You saw my tattoo.”
He stands, giving me time to back up. His expression is pained. “Yeah. I wasn’t expecting to see that. I don’t really know what I said or how I made you feel, and again, I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m sorry for not telling you.”
“When did you know it?” he asks.
I smile sadly. “As soon as I looked at you.”
This pleases him. I can tell. He runs a hand over his mouth as he paces a small circle in my room. I give him the space to work things out in his head. I’ve had time to think about this, to work it out in my head. I’m sure he needs time to process it too.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, he stops.
“Why did you leave?” he asks. “Why did you give me a fake name?”
I take a deep breath, my room suddenly too small.
“I left because my mother summoned me. She called crying the next morning, saying she couldn’t get through my father’s affair without me being home. And I have to say, I really thought she might be serious, and I was thrilled she wanted me around.” I throw my shoulders back. “But she didn’t. She just wanted me to tell her attorney that I’d met my father’s mistress to help her case.”
“What a bitch. Pardon my language.”
“It’s the reason I didn’t tell you my name. I could’ve said I was Avery, I guess, but I didn’t know if you knew that Harper was my mom’s sister, and I just wanted to not be me for a night. For one night, I just wanted to be anonymous. Angry. Pissed off at the world. I wanted someone to like me without knowing I was Jasmine Perry’s daughter.”