“My stories can get long, Dev.”

“I want to hear them.”

Butterflies dance in my chest, and I push them down. This is Devon. Friend.

“That night, I sat at the hospital and forgot about Carlton for the moment—that was the lacrosse player’s name.”

“Last name?”

I smirk. “Anyway, Daddy passed that night. When I checked to see if Carlton had posted the video, he hadn’t. Maybe he heard about my dad—it is a small town, and Daddy was the mayor, and news travels fast, so perhaps he felt bad. I don’t know—maybe he never intended to make the video public but planned to use it to hold over me in some way. School was set to start the next day, so I was terrified he planned to do something with it on the first day back. What he didn’t know was that I may be the quiet sort, but I will make a plan.”

“Revenge?”

I nod.

He grins. “You’re fierce.”

My lashes lower. Oh, if you only knew the thoughts I’ve had about you. “I worked at the school office, organizing and cleaning. I had access to info you’d never believe. Records, test papers left on the copier, teacher’s computer passwords—I never used those, by the way.”

“Of course. But you wrote his paper.”

“A mistake. Anyway, I came to school the next day—Mama had no idea. I was exhausted and heartbroken, and my head wasn’t right, but I was angry—God, so angry. At everything.” My breath hitches. “I wasn’t myself.”

He puts an arm around me and tugs me to his side. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

I nod. “I didn’t get my name on the attendance roll, because I wasn’t planning on staying, just slipped into the office, hugged the secretary—she was the sweetest old lady and had heard about Dad—then grabbed Carlton’s locker combination. Keep in mind all students had to leave their phones in their lockers. Then, while everyone was in class, I opened his locker and swiped his phone. I left the textbooks. A man needs an education. With the state I was in, I wanted to blow up everything he had.”

“Ballbuster.”

“Are you bored yet?”

“You never bore me.”

“People put crazy things on their phones. I went home—because remember, I was never at school—and found two videos of him drinking and snorting coke at various keggers over the past years.”

He gives me a surprised look. “How did you get the passcode?”

I tap my head. “I’d watched him unlock it several times, and I mostly never forget what I see. I sent the videos to his parents from his own phone. Pretty easy since I had all their contact info. If you think about it, I was helping him. He was on the road to drug addiction. His parents got him in rehab the next week, and he missed half of our senior year.” I pause, feeling the weight of his stare, green and intense. “Too hard core?”

“Hell no. I’m kind of . . . turned on.”

A blush steals up my face. I see it in the reflection of the elevator. “Interesting.”

A long second stretches out—until the ping of our arrival makes me jump.

He pulls me along as the elevator opens, and we walk down the hall. “No one ever saw your video?”

“Just his buddies, I assume, but then they saw it firsthand anyway. There was some talk amongst their crowd, sly jokes directed at me, and it hurt—it really did—but I just put my head down and kept going. Losing my dad had me in a haze anyway.” I think about those blurry days of dealing with my father’s death. “If Mama had seen that video . . . she couldn’t take any more. She would have been arrested for killing him.”

“Huh. Did you get your revenge on Preston?”

I shake my head.

“Why?”

I shrug, feeling the weight of his question, wondering the same thing myself. “I don’t know.”

We reach his door, and he opens it for us, a grin twitching his lips. “Welcome to the fuck palace, baby.”

Laughing, we walk in. He sets down a squirming Pookie, who promptly finds a pair of sneakers by the door, squats, and pees.

Devon blinks. “Shit.”

“Just pee. She only does that when she’s nervous—which is ninety percent of the time.”

“Great.”

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re now living with two females.” I hit him with a blinding smile. “Let’s hope our cycles don’t sync up. We’ll clean out your ice cream and cry over nothing.”

He blanches.

“Kidding. Small dogs typically go into heat only three to four times a year—a larger dog, every six months. She’s spayed, so you’re safe.” I pat his arm and pick up the shoe, and he stops me.

“Leave it. Come on; let’s get you settled.”

I follow him past the foyer and into the massive den, taking in the open floor plan, noting the expensive gray leather couches, two huge black loungers sitting on chrome legs, the giant big screen, the trophies stuffed in the white built-in bookcase along the back wall. The floors are a wide-planked bamboo. Framed art of Devon dots the walls, one a blown-up image of him at a game in his blue-and-yellow jersey as he snatches the football from the air, his face a study in concentration. I take in a candid of him with his helmet gone, sweat misting his face as he smiles and accepts an MVP award. I watched that game. It was last year’s AFC Championship.

To the right is a huge window overlooking the gleaming lights of downtown. Farther out, I see the east bank of the Cumberland River and Nissan Stadium.

He hasn’t finished unpacking yet, judging by a few boxes lining the wall. My eyes snag on my heels, sitting like they don’t belong on a rectangular, heavy concrete coffee table. His style is modern and bare. How’s he going to feel when I start leaving my laptop and glasses everywhere? It’s just for a few days . . .

He gives me a quick tour, and I estimate it’s about four thousand square feet or more on one level. I follow him to the ultramodern kitchen with a spacious granite island in the middle. The cooking area is decorated with shiny black subway tiles all the way to the ceiling, the appliances a stark white. The formal dining room sports a Scandinavian pale-oak table with lush velvet high-back chairs. A brushed-nickel chandelier hangs from the textured ceiling. He leads me down the wide hall with thick molding around the baseboards and along the ceiling, all in white. He tells me I can have the best guest room, then shows me the en suite bathroom it opens to and the closet that’s as big as the bathroom in my apartment. The bed itself is a king, the headboard padded in tufted cream linen, the frame draped in a white duvet with pops of furry blue and gray pillows. There’s a whitewashed eight-foot armoire, an elegant mirror that leans against the wall, and two matching end tables. Everything looks like it came straight out of a magazine.

“You’re gaping,” he murmurs.

I close my mouth. “You’ll have to kick me out of here when it’s time to go.”

He shrugs. “I hired someone to decorate. Never had a home that was all mine.”

Once out of my room, he opens the door to another bedroom across the hall, but it has zero furniture; it’s just sparkling clean. Two more rooms are the same. All have private bathrooms.