“Jessica Marie Miller. You have to know by now I love you.”
I made a sound of surprise.
He smiled. “I feel like I’ve worn it on my sleeve since the day I met you.”
“The fortune,” I said, three years too late.
“Of course. The first week of class, you and I left East House at the same time. You didn’t notice me, but I watched you the entire time we were walking. You were so beautiful. But the thing that really fascinated me was that I could read everything you were thinking.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was so easy to tell what you were feeling. It was right there on your face for everyone to see. Longing when you passed other students, happiness when you saw Blackwell Tower, worry when you got close to Perkins Hall, where your class was. I remember thinking how innocent that was, or brave, how much I wanted to know you.”
Coop leaned down and kissed my nose. “Now I can never tell what you’re thinking.”
“I—”
“I wanted to ask you out, freshman year,” he said in a rush. “You taped the fortune on your door, and I thought there was hope. But then Bid Day, when I walked into my room and you and Mint were on the bed… Mint was my roommate. And you obviously liked him. So I told myself to forget you. But I never could.”
“You could have,” I said quietly. “You could’ve been with anyone. They all wonder why you don’t date.”
He shook his head. “Tell them I’ve been out of my mind for you since we were eighteen. There’s no one else for me. I thought I could handle being with you in secret, because at least I’d get part of you. I told you when we started that I wanted more—”
I could still hear those words: I’m telling you upfront. I need more. I need you over and over. Even remembering them brought heat to my face.
“But more’s not enough.”
“What do you want, then?” My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it rattling my rib cage.
He looked at me, green eyes serious. “I want everything.”
The words were like a spell. The weight of what I’d been holding back for a year hit me—meeting in secret, stealing time, wanting him so badly I ached with it, alone in my bed, trying not to think about what it meant that all I thought about was Coop, Coop, Coop. The truth was there, yet I hadn’t let myself look until now. Because I was afraid.
I knew what could happen if you loved someone with your whole heart.
“But Mint—” I started.
“You don’t love Mint,” Coop answered, so confident I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been scared. Coop didn’t understand what it felt like to walk across campus with Mint, arrive at parties holding his hand. The way people looked at me: appraising, envious, wistful. The rush of being valuable. What it meant to me. I did love it.
“The drugs,” I said instead. It was my ace card, the only thing we ever fought about. Coop insisted it was low-level dealing, mostly pot and molly to college students, just to keep a cheap roof over his head and shield his mom from debt. He refused to sell the hard stuff, which nowadays meant tweak, sometimes heroin. He’d never sell that, he insisted, no matter how pissed it made the people above him. He wouldn’t mess with real addicts.
I’d never told him about my father.
“I quit,” Coop said, and waited for my reaction.
“What—when?”
“Yesterday. I told them I was out. It’s senior year, so I’ll be gone by May anyway, and I’ve saved up enough money. It’s time.”
I kissed the corner of his mouth. “I’m really happy to hear that.”
Coop turned his head, finding my lips, and kissed me hungrily. Still as urgent as the first day, a starved man.
“Jess,” he said roughly.
“What?” It was hard to talk, or breathe, when all I wanted was to kiss him.
“Say it.” He wrapped his arms around me and crushed me to him, pushing a leg between mine. Warmth bloomed where his leg rubbed me, and spread. I arched into the bed and he kissed me harder, pushing hands through my hair, lowering his body over mine. I ran my fingers over his shoulders, the hard planes of his back, feeling the dip at his waist, pressing him against me, wanting to feel his weight.
He tilted my head back. “Tell me you love me.”
There was a sharp crack behind us, and the glass shattered on the French doors leading to Coop’s backyard.
I screamed, scrambling to sit up, and Coop rolled quickly to his bedside table, groping for something.