“What’s so funny?” I snap.
His eyes spear mine. “You.”
I reach out and ruffle his hair. It’s silky under my fingers, and I flinch back, feeling branded.
I just touched him.
What is wrong with me?
He freezes at the contact and jerks away. “Don’t touch me.”
I will my pounding heart to slow down.
Mrs. White clears her throat as she approaches our table. “Well, I’m glad to see you two getting along.”
I scoff.
“I’ve got some movie choices for you,” she continues. “You’ll need to watch it together and work on the essay. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No,” Knox says tersely.
I groan inwardly. “I can’t wait to work with Knox. What do you have for us?”
She smiles, seemingly clueless about the thick tension that’s hanging over our desk. “Ah, well, I have two here, either Star Wars or Dirty Dancing. Which one?”
“Star Wars,” I say.
“Dirty Dancing,” he says at the same time, and I gape at him.
“Seriously? You’d pick ‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner’ over flaming swords and Jedi, and hello, aren’t all guys into starships and killing? Are you male? Use the Force, Knox. It must be Star Wars.”
He gives me a haughty look. “Flaming swords aside, there are aspects to Dirty Dancing we can write about. How Baby brings her family together—”
“Pfft,” I snort. “What about Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia? Chewie and Han Solo? That’s a family for you, not rich people vacationing in the Catskills—”
“—two socioeconomic groups, the vacationers and those employed at Kellerman’s—”
“God. You even know the name of the hotel. And now you want to throw out big words like socioeconomic. Surprising—I always assumed you were a bit dim.”
“You’re supposedly the brain. That’s your label, mine is jock. Keep up with the big words, Tulip.”
“If you call me Tulip one more time—”
“It’s a heck of a lot better than what everyone else calls you.”
“—I will smack your face.”
There’s silence as Knox and I stare at each other.
He shakes his head. “You’re mouthy.”
“Get used to it.”
Mrs. White holds her hand up, her eyes bouncing from me to Knox. A little titter comes from her. “I never expected you to be so vehement about your options. Is everything okay?”
Oh, I’m not backing down now. I nod. “Yes.”
Knox sighs.
She grins. “Good! I love the, um, enthusiasm. Let me see… Oh, I have it. There’s a number in my head and each of you gets to pick between one and ten. Whoever guesses closest to the one in my head gets to choose—”
“One,” Knox says, interrupting her while glaring daggers at me.
“Five,” I snap.
She gives me a sheepish look. “I picked one. Sorry, Ava, it’s Knox’s choice, so Dirty Dancing it is. I’ll leave it up to you to decide on the topic, but I like Knox’s idea about societal differences, or perhaps a discussion of how the romance in the movie has managed to capture the hearts of several generations?”
“Societal differences,” I call.
“Romantic aspect,” Knox says over me.
We glare at each other.
Are you for real? my eyes say.
Oh yeah, his gleam back. And this is going to be so much fun.
She laughs. “Whichever you want. Maybe you can come up with something more original. You need to have it watched and notes turned in two weeks from now.”
She walks off, and Knox faces the front. “She always picks one, by the way. I beat you.” A dark chuckle comes from him.
I bristle. “Romantic aspect over lightsabers? And here I thought you were a dude.”
‘“Patience you must have, my young Padawan.”’
I stare at him. “Oh, you jerk! You just did that just to get at me, didn’t you? It wasn’t about the movie—it was about you being all Let’s make Ava uncomfortable.”
He grunts and lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Everything isn’t about you. Patrick Swayze was my mom’s favorite actor, and Ghost was the one movie she’d watch over and over.”
My ears perk up. “Was?”
He clamps his lips tight.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he mutters.
I narrow my eyes at him. Oh, it’s definitely something.
I pick up my pen and twirl it around. “Keep your secrets then. I don’t—”
“My mom died when I was twelve.” He rubs his hand over his mouth, as if he’s surprised the words came out.
I blink rapidly, trying to realign what I thought I knew about the inscrutable Knox Grayson. How did I not know this?
“Happened before you came to Camden.”
Okay, so he lost his mom. Don’t feel sorry for him, Ava. Fuck that. He’s Knox, a Shark, and he doesn’t deserve my—
He gives me a tight nod, interrupting my thoughts. “People die. Life is tenuous, and we get no clue as to when it’s going to be over. Not that it even matters. No one really cares.”
No one really cares.
“Super dark, Knox.” I clear my throat. “Back to the paper—”
“Right. I imagine you don’t want to spend any time with me that you don’t have to. We’re just going to pretend to watch Dirty Dancing together.”
“I can’t imagine being alone with you.”
He doesn’t answer, and I turn to look at him. He’s toying with his laptop, rubbing his fingers absently across the silver keyboard, looking at nothing. Suddenly, he frowns. “Because you’re afraid of me? It wasn’t me.” An odd look fills his eyes.
I study his wavy dark brown hair, the silkiness of it. The guy who raped me had dark hair, I think. Maybe I’m wrong, and I can’t trust those memories…
I say quietly, “I just don’t like you.”
“Thank God.” He jerks out a piece of paper from his notebook, scribbles a number, and passes it over to me. “Here’s my cell. Don’t share it, or we’ll have a problem. Maybe we can watch on the same night and talk about what topic we want to write about when it’s fresh.”
Oh.
Oh.
Knox Grayson never gives out his number. I know because every girl since freshman year has tried to get it, to sext him or whatever. I’m not one of those. Rumor is he’s warned all his buddies if they share it, they’ll be sorry.
I take the scrap of paper, instantly recognizing that the digits aren’t the same as the ones in the letter that’s been lingering in the back of my mind since I found it. Well, at least my “secret admirer” isn’t him.
“No problem. One night this week? Watch around nine and chat at eleven?” I exhale. “The younger kids get the TV after dinner, and I have to wait for them to go to bed. I don’t have one in my room. I could watch on my laptop if you want to do earlier, but I prefer the TV.”
“Younger kids? I thought you only had one brother.”
I flinch. How does he know about Tyler? I barely talked about him in the years I was here.