that she was doing perfectly fine without him. But it nearly undid her, seeing Cord now; his oxford shirt untucked, his dark hair a little unkempt. So familiar, and so achingly off-limits.
She sat still, letting her eyes drink him in, dreading the moment when he would notice her and she’d have to glance away. It was a cruel cosmic joke, that the very first person she ran into at her new school had to be Cord.
His gaze almost slid past her, seeing just another half-Asian girl in the uniform—and then he seemed to register who she was, and did a double take. “Rylin Myers,” he said, in the old familiar drawl; the one he used for people he didn’t know well. Rylin’s heart broke a little when she heard it. It was the way Cord had spoken the first night he met her, when she was nothing but the hired help. Before she stole from him and fell in love with him and everything spun wildly out of control.
“I’m as shocked as you are, trust me,” she told him.
Cord leaned back against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. He was smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I have to admit, this is one place I hadn’t expected to see you.”
“It’s my first day. I have to meet with an adviser,” Rylin explained, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be here. “What about you?”
“Truancy,” Cord said carelessly. Rylin knew that he sometimes skipped school to visit his parents’ house on Long Island and drive their illegal old autocars. She thought of the day he’d taken her out there, a day that had ended on the beach in a rainstorm, and she reddened at the memory.
“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?” She hadn’t planned on having this conversation with Cord, at least not today, but there was no avoiding it. She was here, in his world—or was it her world now too? It certainly didn’t feel like it.
Cord hesitated, seeming torn between his resentment toward Rylin and his curiosity about what she was doing here—and what she had to say. Apparently curiosity won out. “Follow me,” he told her.
He led Rylin out of the office and down the hallway. It was getting more crowded as the first bell approached, students gossiping in small clusters, their gold bracelets and wrist-comps flashing as they gesticulated to make a point. Rylin saw their eyes travel curiously over her—taking in her unfamiliar features, her angular beaded earrings, her close-cut blue fingernails and the scuffed flats she’d stolen from Chrissa, because she didn’t own any footwear that qualified as “simple black shoes without a heel.” She kept her head held high, daring them to challenge her, resisting the urge to look over at Cord. A few people said hi to him, but he just nodded in greeting, and certainly never introduced Rylin.
Finally he turned through a set of double doors into a pitch-dark room. Rylin was startled by the holographic label that popped up as they crossed the door. “You have a screening room at school?” she asked, because it was weird and because she desperately wanted to break the silence.
Cord messed with a control box, and after a moment, the track lighting along the stairs flickered on. It was still very dark. Cord was little more than a shadow.
“Yeah, it’s for the film class.” Cord sounded impatient. “Okay, Myers, what’s up?”
Rylin took a deep breath. “I’ve imagined this conversation at least a hundred different times, and in absolutely zero of those scenarios was I here, at your school.”
Cord’s teeth gleamed in a hollow smile. “Oh, yeah? Where did you imagine this conversation?”
In bed, but that was wishful thinking. “It doesn’t matter,” Rylin said quickly. “The point is, I owe you an apology.”
Cord stepped back, toward the top row of seats. Rylin forced herself to look directly at him as she spoke. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since that night.” She didn’t need to clarify; he would know what night she meant.
“I wanted to ping you, but I had no idea what to say. And it didn’t seem like it mattered anymore. You were up here, and I was down on thirty-two, and I figured it was just easier not to dig it all up.” And I’m a coward, she admitted to herself. I was afraid to see you again, knowing how much it would hurt.
“Anyway, now I apparently go to school with you—I mean, I’m here on scholarship—”
“The one Eris’s parents endowed,” Cord said, unnecessarily.
Rylin blinked. She hadn’t counted on the fact that so many people would talk to her about Eris. “Yes, that one. And since I’m going to keep seeing you around, I wanted to clear the air.”
“‘Clear the air,’” Cord repeated, his voice flat. “After you pretended to date me so that you could steal from me.”
“It wasn’t pretend! And I didn’t want to steal—at least, not after the first time,” Rylin protested. “Please, let me explain.”
Cord nodded but didn’t answer.
So she told him everything. She admitted the truth about her ex-boyfriend, Hiral, and about the Spokes—how she’d stolen the custom-made drugs from Cord that one time, the first week she worked for him, to keep her and Chrissa from being evicted. Rylin lifted her chin a little, trying not to falter as she explained how Hiral had blackmailed her into selling his drugs for bail money. How V threatened her, forcing her to steal from Cord again.
She told Cord everything except how his older brother, Brice, had confronted her, saying that unless she broke up with Cord—unless she acted like she’d only dated him for the money—he would send her to jail. She knew how close Cord was with his older brother and had no desire to get in the middle of that relationship. So she made it sound like Hiral did it all.
And she didn’t tell Cord how much she’d loved him. How much she still loved him.
Cord didn’t say anything until Rylin’s last words fell into the silence like stones, causing it to ripple in waves around them. By now it was well into first period; they’d both missed their meetings in the main office. Rylin didn’t care. This was more important. She wanted, desperately, to make things right with Cord. And if she was being honest with herself, she wanted so much more than that.
“Thank you for telling me all this,” he said slowly.
Rylin took an involuntary step forward. “Cord. Do you think that we could ever—”
“No.” He flinched away before she could finish the question. The movement hit her like a blow to the stomach.
“Why?” she couldn’t help asking. She felt like she’d ripped her heart open, let its contents spill like sawdust all over the floor, and now Cord was walking carelessly all over it. She somehow held back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.
Cord let out a breath. “Rylin, after everything that’s happened, I don’t know how to trust you. Where does that leave us?”
“I’m sorry,” she ventured, knowing it wasn’t enough. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did hurt me, Rylin.”
Someone cracked open the door, letting a flood of light into the room, then backed away hastily when they saw Cord. In the brief moment of illumination, Rylin caught sight of
