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“Suuure,” I say, dragging out the word with heavy sarcasm. “You were just about to rip the button off that side but go ahead. Be my guest.”

I saunter toward the towering gothic architecture slowly, to hurry her along but never to leave her behind. She knows I wouldn’t, but it doesn’t stop the screeching “Wait!” from leaving her mouth the moment I’m two steps ahead of her.

People watch us enter—several crowds of rich prep kids who’ve gone to school together their entire lives, eyes wandering over the odd couple I know we make. Guys from my team who hate me and fear me in equal measure. Students who find me abrasive and others who find Lily to be lacking and “weird.”

The scholarship kid from the other side of town and the strange girl who doesn’t have any friends.

It happens every day. They always watch us, though Lily never notices. Just like she never notices the number of people I subtly flick off behind her back. She’s still rolling up her other sleeve haphazardly, while I toss my arm around her shoulders and slide my sunglasses on with a smirk as I guide her into the school and toward her first class.

“Tor—”

Her voice overlaps with the Lily permanently cemented in locked-away memories. Proximity to her again somehow scraping holes into the wall I’ve built to keep them back.

“This room?” Lily asks, eyes bright as she looks up at me, skin pale as ivory and soft. Greedily, my eyes eat up her form again, reminding myself of every difference.

She’s always looked expensive as fuck and it pisses me off as much as it excites some dormant, buried part of me. I want to take her in, to reach out and touch her cheek because I know it’ll feel like silken glass—

A hand slaps my shoulder, jarring me enough to flinch and move.

“Watch it,” I sneer, the words barely out of my mouth before my brain registers exactly who is in front of me. “Damn it, Holden.”

“You’re telling me. I’m still in shock from the blessing of a Toren Kane sighting this early in the morning.” He grins, before moving his eyes over my shoulder. “Hey, pretty girl.”

I didn’t even realize I’d moved in front of her. I shift back and Lily stares up at him. She doesn’t say anything, blinking like an owl, and something pulls tight in my chest, painful.

“Lily, good to see you.” Holden’s smile grows brighter. “Are you both in this class?”

I shake my head before I hand Lily her class schedule back. “She is. I was just leaving.” I give Holden a long, hard look that I’m hoping conveys whatever jumbled mess my thoughts currently are, before moving to the other side of them.

“Save me a seat?” Holden asks, and my chest throbs as Lily brightens and nods excitedly, heading inside. I watch her anxiously bounce at the front of the room, unsure which desks to take—probably unsure of how to save his seat with just the binder in her hand. Still, she finds a middle seat near the window and tosses her things on one, leaving her hand on the other and glancing back toward Holden uncertainly.

“All good?”

“Fine,” I say, avoiding his eyes. I can feel the words coming and can’t do anything to stop it. “Just . . . watch out for her. Lily is . . .”

“No need to explain.” He grips my shoulder tightly before letting it go with a lighthearted shove. “She seems like a ball of fun.”

If anyone else had said it, I think I’d hit first, ask questions later. But Holden flirts when he breathes. It’s just the way he is.

“Easy, pup.”

His bright, excited expression melts into a frown. “Enough with the nickname. I’m not a dog,” he mutters.

I roll my eyes and take one last glance at Lily, watching her morph into a just-as-anxious sixteen-year-old in a plaid uniform skirt, waiting for me in a classroom ten times nicer than this room, before she fades back into this Lily.

Real. Here, in front of me again. And still clearly just the same.

Don’t do this. Don’t fucking do this.

Red and blue lights—a siren and a girl with blood across her red hair, in my arms and—

I skip my early class for a long ride, desperate to clear the red-haired haze from my fucking brain.

Chapter 9

Lily

On December 23, 1888, during an argument with Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear.