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Caldwell backed into the wall.

I recognized that look. Not the cause, exactly, but the need to escape a room when everyone thought asking questions would help. It was the exact brand of quiet paralysis my parents used to inflict on me in our pristine, silent house, though I doubted Caldwell’s family had any ill intent.

Growing up, my mistakes had never been met with shouting. They were met with a barrage of highly analytical, well-meaning inquiries designed to dissect my failures. If I struggled to explain my exam results in a way they approved, they would sit me down at the dining table and conduct a polite, clinical investigation. They believed they were helping, when in fact, they were turning my private struggles into a postmortem report.

Every question became another heavy brick piled onto my chest, a constant reminder that I had failed to meet their standards. I had spent my entire life trying to avoid those polite interrogations, convincing myself that if I wasn’t completely assured and on solid ground at all times, I would inevitably mess up and disappoint everyone. The last thing I wanted was to turn into the same cold, distant roommate my parents had always been to me.

Looking at Caldwell, I saw a fellow casualty of a well-meaning interrogation.

I approached him slowly. “Can I sit here?”

He looked at me. I pointed to the floor several feet away, leaving space between us.

No answer.

I sat anyway. The floor was clean enough, and my jeans would survive.

Caldwell kept standing.

I took my phone out of my pocket and lowered the brightness. “Hudson told me you like to draw.”

He glanced toward the sketchbook under his arm.

“I draw too, but not very well when people watch.” That wasn’t entirely true. I drew professionally, so I’d had to get used to being analyzed while I worked. But that didn’t matter right now.

I opened a blank note and used my finger to make a terrible cartoon wolf.

Caldwell’s gaze moved to the screen.

I added eyebrows. “He’s upset because someone used his mug.”

Caldwell’s mouth twitched.

I drew a second wolf. “This one did it.”

After a moment, Caldwell lowered himself to the floor across from me.

Nobody approached. I glanced up and found Julie watching us. Patty stood beside her and had apparently stopped anyone else from interfering.

Caldwell opened his sketchbook. He turned to a blank page and drew quickly. His wolf had better proportions, expression, and structure.

“That’s humiliating,” I said. “Truly. I’m super impressed.”

He smiled.

I tuned out the music by lowering my own awareness of it and opened a playlist. “What do you enjoy listening to?”

Caldwell hesitated, then wrote a single word in the corner of the page.

Reggaeton.

“Really?”

He nodded.

“Any specific artist?”

He wrote again. Daddy Yankee.