“You’re Van, right?” she asked. “Van Allard.”
He nodded, stepping forward. “You’re bleeding.”
Her eyes dropped to her hands. A thin rivulet of blood was working its way down between her knuckles, catching the kitchen light in an almost beautiful way. She hadn’t even felt it. “I must’ve… when he—” But the words collapsed before they could get out.
Van took a slow step toward her, as if she were a deer and he knew exactly how close he could get without spooking her. “Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s rinse it off.”
She didn’t stop him. She let herself be led to thekitchen sink. The faucet screeched a little as he turned the handle, letting the water run until it turned warm. His hands—larger than she expected, rough with youth and sports and whatever boys did—guided hers under the stream.
She looked up at him. Up close, he was startling—tall like his father, with that same burnished golden skin. But with the long-lashed hazel eyes of his mother and a jawline that lent him a defiant air.I bet he gets away with murder, she thought.
Tori yanked her hand back, grabbed a paper towel, and pressed it to the cut with more force than necessary. “I’m fine.”
“You got a Band-Aid somewhere?” he asked.
“I said I’m fine.” Her tone was clipped. She was the adult, he the interloper. She needed to establish her authority. Oh, what she could do with this little situation. Imagine! Call the police? Have them arrest Van Allard? That would make a delicious neighborhood scandal.
“Yeah, you keep saying you’re fine, but…”
Tori stepped back, trying to escape his force field. “What are you doing in my house? Do you have the code? Did you get it from your parents?”
The shrug he gave affirmed this. “You’re not gonna tell them, are you?”
She barked out a surprise laugh. “Tell them what? That their son let himself in to their tenant’s house? That’s illegal you know. I could call the police.”
The mirth vanished from his face. “Please don’t. It would be a nightmare. Like, next-level bad. We werejust fooling around. It was stupid. We thought no one was home.”
“That doesn’t make it okay, you know.”
“I know.” He hung his head.
She wondered if he knew about her, what had happened with his dad. Not that she expected parents to share that kind of gossip with a child.You know the lady we’re renting to? Daddy was helping her with some household stuff and she tried to hook up with him.But maybe they’d just poisoned the well in quieter ways. Whispered slights. Tension thick enough to taste. Parents could turn children against people in subtle ways. She saw it all the time in her practice.
“Why are you here?” she asked, her voice wavering. “Did you and your friend target my house? Just because your parents own this doesn’t give you the right to come in.”
His face went blank. “What? No, I swear. We just thought—it was dark. It looked empty.”
“So you broke in?”
His hand raked through his shaggy hair, making it stick up in every direction. “Yeah. I know. It’s dumb.”
“If you know it’s dumb, why do it?”
“I don’t know. For the thrill, I guess. There’s something about being inside someone’s house when they’re not there.”
She didn’t say a word, certainly not that she recognized the urge. It was the same one that drove her to study psychology. She wanted to crawl inside people’s innermost thoughts because she didn’t know howto get close in any real way. Intimacy was something she had to study, because it wasn’t something she ever lived. In graduate school, it was such a common trait among future psychologists that they had a name for it—me-search.
“I’ll do whatever you want.” He looked up at her. “Please don’t tell my parents. They will freak out.”
There was something in his voice, a combination of fear of and contempt for his parents, that made her pause. It pleased her. The Allards, with their fancy house and cars, their sense of entitlement, had an Achilles’ heel. And he was standing in her kitchen, pleading with her.
“When I was in high school,” she said slowly, “I used to sneak into nearby pools to go swimming.” That wasn’t quite true. It had happened once, when she was dating a boy who had a large social circle. It had been a night of revelations—that people had immense yards with lighted pools, that her classmates were taking these kinds of chances, and that they were having so much fun.
“Skinny-dipping?” His grin was wicked. How quickly his mood changed.
“Of course.”
“That’s awesome. These days everyone has cameras.”