Mrs. Gates walks around the other side of the table, clean scrubs on. “You don’t have to be here, Clay.”

She’s worried I’ll get triggered, and then she’ll have to explain to my parents why she lets me sneak in here at least once a week.

Fuck it. I don’t want to be home, so… I pull off my hood and tie my hair back into a ponytail, ready to work as I draw in a deep breath and exhale.

I’ll have to fix the nail polish. I’d love to change it altogether, but if she has it on, she must’ve liked it, so I suppose I should honor her style. I’m sure I have something as equally hideous in my collection from when I was twelve that I can use.

I push up my sleeves and get to work, feeling my heart calm down again as I busy myself. But my thoughts still linger on her. What would Olivia Jaeger say if she saw me now?

Maybe it would be the one time she couldn’t say anything.

Sometimes I feel like I want her to know me. Sometimes I don’t want her to know anything but me.

And other times, I’m glad she doesn’t have a clue.

I CLIMB OFF the back of the bike and unfasten the strap under my chin. “Thanks,” I tell Iron.

I dump the helmet between my brother’s legs, but he just sucks in a drag from his cigarette, looking around me—past me, beyond me—with his lids half-hooded.

I clutch my backpack straps. “What?”

He hesitates a moment, looks down, and then shakes his head as he takes another puff. “I only approve of Macon paying for this place because I knew you wouldn’t be interested in the guys ogling the short skirts.”

The scent of the dogwoods lining the walkway up to the school wafts in the morning breeze, and although it’s only February, I can tell they’re about to bloom. The wind sweeps through the plumeria already decorating the campus, and students move across the circular driveway, while others climb out of cars dropping them off for various sports or club meetings before school.

Chills spread up my bare legs from the rare bite in the air. Rain is coming. “What about women checking me out?” I tease. “Worried about them?”

“Strangely, no.” He looks amused. “They can’t get you pregnant.”

I scoff, looking right and see a few students heading down the sidewalk toward us and the front of the school.

Clay Collins meets my eyes as she passes with her gray Fjällräven backpack, little pink octopuses drawn on the front pocket, and she tries so hard to look bored and intolerant. But the mischief playing on her lips warns me she had a lot of fun in the dress shop last night. We’re not done.

We’re never done.

Her gaze flicks to Iron, and I turn back to him, seeing his eyes lock on her, as well, as he smokes the last of his cigarette. But whereas he’s well aware of the shit she throws my way, he looks like he’s entertaining ideas of all the things he could do with her in a dark room.

Or a back seat. Idiot.

“You approve of Macon paying for this place,” I say, “so you can ogle Catholic girls in their short skirts when you drop me off every day.”

“She has to be eighteen by now, right?”

I shake my head. “Hallmark Christmas movie heroines aren’t your type.”

“Everyone is my type when they’re naked.”

Gross. I back away, flipping him the middle finger. “See you after school.”

But he shakes his head, stopping me. “Nope. Come here.” He flicks his cigarette, the butt still burning as it lays in the school drive. “This could be it.”

He holds out his arm, a warm, cocky smile on his mouth.

I sigh, half-rolling my eyes before I come back in and embrace him.

This could be it. The Jaeger family creed. The Tryst Six warning, however you want to look at it.

Our parents’ passing came at so great a shock that we make it a point to remind ourselves not to fight with each other now.

Not to waste time.

Not to leave anything unsaid.

This could be it. The last time we see each other.

“Be careful,” I murmur in his ear, dropping my eyes to the tattoo on his neck. It’s the same symbol that hangs on our wall at home in the garage and that adorns the leather bracelet all the Jaegers wear. A snake wrapped around an hourglass.

He holds me tight for another moment and then releases me. “You, too.”

A look, a smile, and then he’s off without a helmet on his head and his scab-marked elbows hanging out of his black T-shirt from the last time he rolled his motorcycle. I watch him until he pulls out of the driveway, turns right, and disappears down the street.

“Hi, Liv,” someone calls.

I glance to see Maria Hoff walking past as I fit my earbuds into my ears.

I grunt and fall in line with the few other students making their way into the school. She’s only being nice to me, because there was a suicide with a public school student a couple days ago. Allison Carpenter—Alli for short. Everyone here seems to think every gay person knows each other, so she probably thinks I lost a friend.

I knew of Alli—small town and all—but I didn’t know her. It was still awful what happened, though. And it happens too often.

But not to me. I’m almost done surviving them. Just a few more months.

I enter through the front doors, heading down the hallway. “¿Qué te gusta hacer?” I repeat with my Rosetta Stone app. “¿Qué te gusta hacer?” I push my tongue behind my teeth, trying to form the syllables with a pronunciation to match the voice on my phone. “Te…gusta…?”

Damn Aracely. The next time some ex of my brothers’ calls me shit in Spanish, I want to know what they’re saying. I guess I should be speaking it already. I’m one-fourth Cuban.

Or maybe an eighth, I’m not sure. The only thing my family prides themselves on is the other fourth—or eighth—of Seminole blood that keeps us on our land.

Blood that also came in handy when I applied to Marymount four years ago. A little diversity looks good on the school’s yearly accountability reports, and even shaved a little tuition cost off for me when I won their scholarship.

I mean, I guess I didn’t win it. I was the only one who applied for it, but still.

I breeze past my locker, around the corner, and push through the door to the women’s locker room.

“¿Cual es son tu pasatiempos?” I repeat, opening my gym locker and hanging my backpack inside. I pull out my school skirt and black Polo, shaking out the wrinkles and hang them on the hook inside, feeling the girls around me turn to quickly pull on their workout gear and cover themselves.

I’d learned a long time ago, even before Clay’s mother and the rest of the school board forked over fifty grand for a complete remodel of the locker room showers to give us all private stalls “in the best interest of everyone”, that it was best to just come up with a routine that put me in these situations as little as possible. I come to school in my leggings and tank top on workout days. I change in a stall after school before practices. I go home in my dirty gear afterward and shower there.

“¿Cual es son tu pasatiempos?” I say again, trying to act oblivious to the eyes on me ready and waiting to report to Father McNealty if I ogle their bodies like some hypersexual pervert.