Page 190 of The Storm

I lick over my dry lips. “It’s Dia and Bridge’s apartment. You’ve been here before. You’ve seen everything there is to see.”

“Not your room.”

“You’ve seen my room.”

“It was dark.”

“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”I give up.“I guess… come on, then.”

He follows me up the stairs and stands way too close while I unlock the door. We both toe off our sneakers, and he casually strolls farther inside. I mean, he’s clearly familiar with this place. He confidently bypasses the doors to Dia’s and Bridget’s rooms and walks past the entrance to the living room before he pushes my bedroom door open and walks inside, disappearing from view.

I exhale loudly and follow him.

I find him standing in the middle of my bedroom, his eyes moving over the bare walls and sparsely furnished space around us.

He flicks a glance my way and quirks his brow. “It doesn’t look like you.”

“It’s a rental.” I lean against the wall. “They don’t really encourage you to change a whole lot.”

“You used to have all those plants in your room. And posters. And medals. And trophies.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not in high school anymore.”

“I’m aware. My point stands, though. This room doesn’t feel like you.”

I blow out a breath and give the empty walls a sour look. No, it doesn’t feel like me. But since when is it his business? And why the hell does he think he has any right to tell me what feels like me or not? How the hell does he have the nerve to be right about it?

“Things change. I’ve changed.” I push myself off the wall and gesture around. “Well, you’ve seen it all. Clearly, you’re not impressed, but that’s whatever. You probably have stuff to do now, right?”

He doesn’t reply. Instead, he starts walking around the room.

I sigh quietly.

He picks up the book I’ve been pretending to read before bed while I obsess about things I shouldn’t even think about.

“Hemingway?” He grins.

“I didn’t read it in high school.”

He sits down on the edge of the bed and leafs through the pages. “How come? We all had to read this. And you were always so…” His eyes take another long sweep over me. “Thorough.”

I swear to God, the way he says it, it comes off as downright dirty, which means I’m immediately flustered, and I would bet a lung or any other crucial internal organ that he can tell.

“I got seven chapters in, but I just couldn’t do it. It was so goddamn boring. So I read the Cliff’s Notes version and got an A on the test.”

“And now you read it because you yearn for boredom?”

I shake my head. “It’s the only book I didn’t actually read in high school.”

“And it came back to haunt you?”

“I figured I’m older and wiser now, so I might have learned to enjoy it.”

He looks at the bookmark with a smirk. “And have you?”

I sigh. “It’s still just really boring. It keeps putting me to sleep.”

He puts the book down on my nightstand, eyes still fixed on me, then he gets up, walks over to where I’m standing, and leans against the wall next to me.