I answer with one blink.

“I was waiting for the right time.”

A movement at the door draws glances from both Drex and me. It’s Rhyson.

Drex looks back to me, smiling like the devil.

“In case you’re wondering, this is it.”

“Kai, Gep is on his way.” Rhyson steps deeper into the room, Grip right behind him. “Drex, shouldn’t you be in Birch?”

“You know what, you’re right.” He walks to the door, pausing in front of Rhyson. “Did your girl tell you we know each other?”

This awful man holds my happiness in his careless hands like a child skipping with Ming porcelain. I already feel it shattering around me, even though he hasn’t dropped it yet.

“Yeah, she was in that video of yours, right?” Rhyson shrugs. “Sorry, I don’t really remember that song. Not sure many people do.”

Drex’s narrowed eyes flick between Rhyson and Grip, who has flipped a chair, straddling it, elbows folded across the back.

“Yeah, that video wasn’t very memorable either. The director was a joke.” Drex nods. “The most memorable thing about that shoot was the night it wrapped.”

Fear and anxiety vice my chest. I want to crawl into the refrigerator and hide under a leftover, something with green fur growing on it.

I know Rhyson sniffs out Drex’s malevolence, trying to discern where it’s coming from and where it’s headed. I want to run across the room and insert myself between them, protect Rhyson from what’s coming, but some naïve part of me holds out hope that Drex won’t do it.

“Whatever.” Rhyson walks over to me, taking my hand and checking my eyes. “You okay, Pep?”

“That’s so sweet, Gray,” Drex says, looking at us, malignant anticipation building behind his eyes. “You’re trying the girlfriend thing again. Remember how I fucked that other one? The Russian? What was her name? Petra?”

“Shit.” Grip lowers his head to the arms he has folded across the back of the seat. “Drex, you got a death wish, dude?”

Rhyson stiffens beside me for a moment, but I can practically see him make a conscious decision to let it go.

“Drex, that was high school, and Petra’s ancient history.” Rhyson puckers his lips, like he’s meting out the words, one by one. “Like I said, I think they’re looking for you in Birch.”

“You’re right, high school was a long time ago. Petra was a long time ago.” Drex walks to the door, looking over his shoulder at us. He winks at me, a smirk dirtying his face. “Kai, though, she wasn’t that long ago. You should ask her about it.”

He leaves behind a silence so heavy I’m suffocating under it. It smothers me, sits on my face, blocks my air, squeezes my throat.

Grip looks from me to Rhyson, shaking his head, dark eyes narrowed.

“You have got to be shitting me,” he says. “Rhys, man, if she—”

“Get out, Marlon.” The knife-sharp edge on Rhyson’s voice already drips blood.

I want to cover my face. I want to hide, but there’s nowhere to go. The one secret I knew could ruin everything is out, and I already miss Rhyson’s trust. His love. His affection. It’s floating past me like mist.

“I’m getting tired of you telling me to get out, man,” Grip says. “You need to listen to me on this.”

“I said get out, Marlon, and lock that door.”

The look Marlon shoots me as he leaves boils with suspicion and mistrust. I can’t buy a break with the people who love Rhyson. Maybe after this, I won’t even be able to buy a break with him.

When it’s just the two of us, Rhyson swallows. Draws a shallow breath through his nose. His lips part to speak, but he snaps them shut.

“I want to ask you . . .” His words fall apart. He clamps his lips over what’s left of them.

“You can ask me anything.” The words tremble on my lips. “You know that.”

He’ll have to ask because I can’t volunteer it. I can’t hand over my happiness that way. Maybe he can get past this, but if he can’t . . . God, what if he can’t?

“You see, the thing is I feel like I already know what your answer’s gonna be.” Rhyson looks down at the floor, closing his eyes tightly like inescapable images are burned there, already torturing him. “And I have no right to feel the way I’m gonna feel if you say what I think you’re gonna say.”

“Baby, I just—”

“But we said no more secrets, so you wouldn’t keep this from me, right?”

He looks back up at me, and it’s the hurt in his eyes that undoes me, that makes my eyes water.

“Rhyson, I wanted to tell—”

“Yes or no, Pep.” Rhyson lasers a look at me, pinning me to the wall with the sudden intensity of his stare. “Did you fuck Drex?”

I thought I could just say yes, but I can’t leave everything hanging on just that flimsy word that doesn’t begin to describe the dark loneliness of those foolish moments I can’t ever take back. That one word, those three letters, cannot convey how low and desperate I was that night. Mama’s birthday.

“Rhyson, I was in such a—”

“Yes or no.” Storm clouds build in his eyes.

“It was before—”

“Yes. Or. No.”

“Yes.”

He plummets to his haunches, elbows on his knees, head buried in his hands. His fingers tear at his hair, and a growl rips past his lips.

“Rhyson, you and I hadn’t even met then.”

He holds up one hand, silencing me, head still lowered.

“God, Pep.” He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Anyone else. Just . . . not him. Not that piece of shit.”

“I can’t change this, Rhyson.” Tears drown everything I would say. The words bob up in my throat, desperate to break the surface, only to go under again. “You and I didn’t even know each other then.”

He explodes to his feet, veins in his neck straining, fists clenched at his sides, face radioactive red. I’m standing in the heat blast of his nuclear rage, absorbed in the violent shock of something unreasonable and out of control.

“It doesn’t matter!” He screams it. The words rattle in his throat like in a cage. Like trapped things behind bars clamoring to get out. “He fucked you. He had you, and I . . . I just don’t . . . I just can’t . . .”

His eyes fall to the ground. He looks at the goofy Family Guy magnets on the refrigerator. Looks at the locked door, like he’s held hostage in here with me. His eyes are wild, everywhere but on me. In a matter of minutes, he’s gone from looking at me like he can’t get enough, to now not being able to look at me at all. Like I’m some soiled rag someone else wiped their ass with.

His phone dings with a text, and he pulls it from his pocket to look at the screen.

“Gep’s outside.”

That’s all he says. My heart has atrophied in my chest. A muscle that has forgotten how to work, it doesn’t bother beating. I’m not even sure it’s pumping blood. I wasn’t married to Rhyson like Mama was to Daddy. We don’t have kids or much of a history, but I can’t imagine she hurt any more than this when he left her. He walked away. Is it easier to be the one doing the walking? Rhyson doesn’t tell me to go, but I know he wants me to.

So without another word, I do.

IVAN GORSHKOV, HIGHLY RESPECTED RUSSIAN PIANO instructor, hated me. I knew it right away. He resented that there was so little he could teach a nine-year-old. He would rap my knuckles with a bamboo wand for minor mistakes. He’d set this metronome on the piano facing me. It ran constantly for the hours I studied with him. This perennial, steady, annoying tick.

In some twisted, Pavlovian way, that metronome is the sound of my fury. I’ve only experienced it a few times in my life, but when I’m enraged, that steady tick is in my head. It’s my pulse. It’s the aural expression of my rage. It’s ticking in my chest like a bomb, primed to detonate. And God help anyone in my vicinity.