Her throat constricted, an unfamiliar feeling welling in her. Usually when she looked at Kaden, she had a number of urges—to cut his hair shorter, to put him in clothes that didn’t make him look like such an outsider, to make him take a breath so he wouldn’t stumble on his words. But right now, she had a hard time focusing on all the things she wanted to change about him. In fact, in this moment, she kind of didn’t want to change one single thing—particularly the way he was looking at her.
“Kaden . . .” It was all she could say. She couldn’t remember the rest of her intended reply.
But saying his name broke the spell. He shook his head and turned away. “This is my stepdad’s hunting cabin. He never uses it anymore, so no one will see us here. And this will be quieter than trying to study with Gibson and my stepdad lurking around. Get your chapter questions out for the next test. We should have an hour or so before it gets too dark out here.”
She swallowed hard, her heart pounding in her ears. This was getting dangerous. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking anything about Kaden or wishing that he hadn’t walked away. He was the exact kind of guy she could never let herself be interested in. Her foster dad would take one look at Kaden with his long hair and black clothes and declare him a devil worshipper or something. But even knowing that, she couldn’t help the next question that fell from her mouth. “Did you wait for someone special?”
The question was loud in the dead silent cabin. Kaden’s back was to her, but she didn’t miss the way he stiffened. Finally, he sighed and sank onto the couch, his expression resigned when he looked up. “We both know I’m going to be safe from serial k-k-killers for a long time.”
“Kaden,” she said, frowning at his bitter tone and sitting in the chair across from him. “You’re going to find—”
“D-d-don’t.” He moved his attention to pulling his books out of his bag. “Let’s not play that game. We’re sitting in a cabin in the middle of the freaking woods because you can’t even be seen with me in public without risking your sparkly Ms. Popularity status getting revoked. No matter w-w-what I do, no one in that school will ever see me as anything other than the former fat kid with the stuttering problem. That label’s been applied with super glue and you know it.”
“It’s so stupid,” she said, twisting the silver promise ring Doug had given her round and round on her finger. “No one looks past the surface. At my last school, I wasn’t this. It was a private school with kids from families with stupid wealth. I’m talking the kind of money that would make Doug’s dad look middle class. All the cliques had been together since nursery school. When people found out I was a foster kid, I was viewed as the freak. Rumors went around that I’d been sexually abused. So, of course, that got translated into everyone saying I must be easy because I had issues. The family that was fostering me decided those rumors must be true since I started hanging out with the smoking behind the bleachers crowd, and they ended my placement because I was a bad influence on their younger children. Tessa McAllen, the very first virgin slut at your service.”
He stared at her a little wide-eyed. “Seriously?”
She pulled her ponytail tighter, surprised she was even admitting all this. She’d never told anyone about her life before here. “When I moved in with the Ericsons, I decided to become someone totally different so I wouldn’t get moved again. They wanted an obedient, church-going good girl. And so I am.”
“Even if that’s not who you really are?”
She shrugged. “I don’t even know what parts of me are real anymore. But life has been a lot easier since I came here, so I don’t plan on going back to the other version.”
“The v-v-version that would’ve hung out with someone like me.”
She sighed at his snide tone. “I am hanging out with you.”
“No, Tess, I’m tutoring you while we hide from your friends. There’s a b-b-big difference.”
“You make me sound like such a shallow bitch.”
He lifted an eyebrow as if to say if the shoe fits.
“You just don’t get it. In a year, you’ll get to go to college where all this popularity crap won’t matter.”
“And so will you.”
“No. I won’t. My grades aren’t strong enough to get a scholarship, and when I turn eighteen, my time with the Ericsons is done. There is no college fund waiting for me.”
A wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows. “What do you mean your time is done?”
She pulled her legs onto the chair, tucking them underneath her. “They foster hard-to-place older kids. As soon as I graduate, they’ll foster someone else. I’ll get a little financial aid from the state, but not enough to manage anything more than community college while working a full-time job.”
Kaden looked stricken at this revelation. And she supposed someone like him, the honor student who would have scholarship offers stacking up from everywhere, probably hadn’t considered the possibility that not everyone gets to go off to a big college. “Is that what your plan is?”
She looked down at her hands. “Sort of. Doug’s going to go to Georgia Tech. He said I can follow him there and . . . stay with him. I wouldn’t have to worry about the money stuff then. I could take some classes there.”
There was a long stretch of silence then a groan.
“Motherfucker,” Kaden said, standing up. “That’s it, isn’t it? The reason you stay with him. His goddamned money.”
Defensiveness surged through her, bringing her to her feet to face him. “No. I love him.” Possibly. Maybe.
Kaden stepped around the coffee table in two swift movements and was in front of her in a flash. “Bull. Shit.”
She reared up like he’d slapped her. “You don’t know anything about how I feel.”
“No, b-b-but I’m about to f-f-find out.”