Chapter 7: Cold Water

Rowan's POV

I stood at the edge of the quad with my hands in my jacket pockets.

When she stepped off the stage, the quad was so quiet I could hear the candles hiss.

I had written her eighteen letters, and the whole time I'd pictured her careless and bored.

I had been wrong about everything but her name.

The boy had her by the wrist before I saw him move.

A girl in the front row had pressed a candle into Tegan's hand when she came off the stage, and Santino's grab tipped it.

The wax ran across her palm.

She didn't cry out.

I was across the grass before I decided to cross it.

"Let go," I said.

He turned to me with his teeth showing.

"You," Santino said. "You told me you hadn't seen her."

"I lied."

"You're the caretaker. You work for us."

"I work for no one who stands on her porch and calls it his."

I took his hand off her wrist, finger by finger, and he let me, because there were three hundred phones on us.

"She's not well," he said, louder, to the crowd.

"She's fine," said a girl in a green scarf, in a clear voice. "You're the one who's weird."

Tegan was already walking.

I went after her.

My truck was behind the library.

She got in without a word and held her hand in her lap, palm up, with the wax gone white.

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