“As long as we’re clear.” His smirk was back in place, and goddamn, a part of me settled just seeing it. It’d been a long-lost friend at this point. I laughed under my breath at that, pulling my laptop out of my bag.

“What?”

I looked up. “What?”

“You laughed at something.”

“It’s nothing. You have this smirk you get when you’re being cocky. You know you’re being kind of a jackass, but you think you’re so irresistible.”

His eyebrows went up. “That’s what my smirk says to you?”

“It doesn’t? You don’t think that when you’re smirking?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m just usually laughing at something stupid in my head. I don’t even know I’m smirking half the time.”

“Well.” I had to laugh at that. “Whatever you’re thinking, it works.”

I was beginning to have a weakness when it came to his smirks.

I pointed to his textbook. “Our studying was drastically cut short. We need to do more of that, less of this.” I pointed between the two of us.

“What is this?” He repeated the same motion. “What are we doing?”

“We’re flirting.” I gave him a look. “You know that as well as I do, and it’s just going to end with us not studying and going back to your room.”

His eyes warmed. “Would that be so bad?”

“Yes. If my grade average is affected by what we do, we’re going cold turkey until my grades go back up.”

He snapped to attention. The smirk dropped. The flirting banter ended, and he coughed. “Incumbents and oversight, huh? Let’s talk about those.”

That was more like it.

We ate our food and studied for another two hours. It was around midnight when we left. Once we parked on the street outside his house, he looked over. “What’d you mean earlier?”

“What?”

“You said you didn’t want Linde to look at you differently. We talked about what I meant, but not you. What’d you mean by that?”

“Oh.” I shifted in my seat, tugging down my shirt and smoothing it out. “It’s stupid.”

“What is it?”

The lights were on in his house, and a few people were leaving through the front door. I thought I recognized them, but I wasn’t sure. “It’s—I don’t know how to explain slut shaming to a guy.”

His mouth lifted in a half-grin. “You don’t think a guy knows what that is?”

“Do you?”

“Guys are every bit as observant and intelligent as girls. There are some stupid guys, but there are stupid girls, too. Same thing with being smart. Some of us do exist. Yes, I know what slut shaming is. You think that’s what he’d do to you?”

“I think he would look at me like I’m a whore. We’re having sex and we’re not dating. A lot of people would call me a whore, but call you a player.”

That was why the Dick Crusher movement weighed on me so heavily, because those guys weren’t mad at Carruthers. They were mad at me. I didn’t have a right to talk back to him, to defend a friend, or defend myself when he came at me. He could do those things, but not me. That was the culture I lived in.

I held those words in and only said quietly, “Rules are different for girls.”

“You’re not a whore, and you’re not a slut, and I know Linde wouldn’t think of you that way.”

“You’d be surprised at who would think of me that way. You don’t know what people really believe deep down until you do something you’re not “supposed” to do because it’s ‘not your right.’ Like being raped. Girls aren’t supposed to say no, right?”

He drew in his breath, his eyes hard on mine. “You really think that?”

“No, but I know some who think that way. It’s all those assholes who were coming at me today. Carruthers, the guys from the food court, the guys I ran from before my second class, they’re not saying anything about how Carruthers would’ve physically attacked me. They’re mad that I humiliated him.”

He was quiet a moment.

I said too much. I was already regretting it, and then I heard from him, “What guys who you ran from?”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The dangerous side of Shay was staring back at me. He was heated, but he was keeping it restrained. Barely. I sensed the danger under his surface. A shiver went down my spine.

My mouth felt dry. “Just some idiots. I ditched them.”

“What guys at the food court? Did you have problems in your second class?”

“Shay—” I started but stopped. What could I say? “What are you going to do? Hunt them down and beat ’em up? Do you realize how many guys you’d be doing that to? You’d get kicked off the team. Every one you hit down, two more pop up. It’s endless. You can’t beat up everyone.”

He cursed, his jaw clenching as he sat back in his seat and raked a hand over his face. “I don’t want them messing with you.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Not you.”

I fell silent, sitting with him for a minute. “It’s always different when it’s someone you know.”

He frowned, saying so soft that I almost didn’t hear, “Yeah.”

I was walking through my hallway’s back door when the door to my room opened.

Missy stood in there. She saw me and bit down on her lip. She was clutching her phone to her chest.

I frowned. “What is it?”

Shay invited me to his room again, but I thought it’d be better to head home. I could go up there. We both knew what we’d do, and I could even spend the night. A part of me wanted to. It was the part that enjoyed being around Shay, the part that enjoyed his touch, but there was another part of me that didn’t want to come back to my dorm. I didn’t know why that was, and I ignored it for the night. Besides, things just started with Shay and me. Spending the night was too much, too fast. It would have been too hard to ignore the friendship budding into something more if I did that.

But now, seeing the strained lines around Missy’s mouth and the bags under her eyes, I wished I had stayed. I’d be wrapped up in bed, not feeling the pit of my stomach drop to the ground.

“I’ve been calling you. Don’t you check your phone?”

Shit. My phone had been buzzing on and off all night, but seeing they were only alerts for my social media, I turned it off. “I’m here now. What is it?”

“Your friends from second floor, one of them is in the hospital.”

“What?”

“You’re supposed to call Kristina.”

Icy panic lined my veins as I dug through my bag, turning and heading downstairs at the same time. I was rounding to their floor when the line connected to Kristina’s phone. It began ringing, and I was through the door and onto their floor. I was racing for their room. If they weren’t here, maybe there’d be a note on their door board, or maybe someone else knew.

A second ring.

I was at their door, searching. I couldn’t find anything but the normal scribblings from Casey’s friends.

The phone rang a third time.

A door opened farther down the hallway, and Sarah appeared. Her wide eyes filled with tears, and she sniffled, pressing a Kleenex to her reddened nose. “It’s Casey.”

“What happened?” I asked as Kristina answered, “Kennedy?”

“Kristina!” I exclaimed. My heart was pumping so fast. “What’s going on? Did something happen to Casey?”

She got quiet. “She drank too much. They had to pump her stomach.”

Sarah stepped closer to me, asking under her breath, “What’s she saying?”

I frowned. She didn’t know, but I asked Kristina, “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, but she wants you to come here. She said she’s going to make a statement and you’d know what it was about.”

The rape.

The entire bottom lining of my stomach opened up. It all fell out.

I could only say, “Okay.”