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“What the fuck,” Paige says, thinking.

Kenzie makes a sound. “Oh, yeah. That’s weird, Kylie.”

“Right?”

“Talk to Nash,” Paige says. “You should just knock on his door right now.”

“I don’t know which one is his door.” I laugh at the audacity of this girl. “I’m not doing that.”

“It’s three down from yours.”

Kenzie’s eyes go wide. “You’re such a stalker, Paige.”

I start to panic because I did not mean for it to go in this direction.

“I literally don’t care if that’s stalkerish,” Paige says. “I’d want answers. I want answers, and you’re only going to get them from Nash.”

My phone buzzes.

Declan: Glad you came.

I show them the screen, and they all make a sound.

Paige stands. “Go to your floor and knock on his door right now.”

“No,” I plead.

She grabs my hand. “Come on. I am not going to let you get dragged through the mud by this Declan dude. We’re getting answers.”

12

Three Doors Down

Nash

Somebody knocks on the door. Rafe and I glance at each other.

It’s a soft knock. Not the demanding pound that Koda does.

I’m at my desk with a pencil in my hand, in shorts and a shirt with cut-off sleeves. Rafe is on his bed with his laptop on his stomach, watching something with the sound low.

The soft knock comes again. Rafe lifts his head and looks at me, and I look back at him.

“You gonna fucking get it?” he says.

The knock comes a third time, and underneath it, there’s a voice in the hallway, then another one, and the second one is definitely telling the first one to shut up. Girls, at least two. There’s a shuffling sound, like somebody’s being shoved.

Rafe raises his eyebrows. “Did you call Jules over and not tell me?”

I shake my head. I’ve been ghosting her all week.

I get up and open the door. Blondie is on the other side with her hand still raised to knock again, turned halfway around, arguing with somebody at the corner of the hallway. “—go,” she’s hissing. “Oh my God, go.”

Then she turns back, sees me, and stops. Her eyes go down to my arms, then to my chest, then back up to my face, and for about two full seconds, she doesn’t say a single word. She just stares at me, dumbfounded and at a loss for words.

I’ve known this girl for maybe two weeks now. She’s called me an asshole multiple times, accused me of cheating on a girlfriend I don’t have, told me I’m always in the way, and shoved napkins across a table at midnight. She has never once run out of things to say.

“Lost?” I ask and hang on the top of the door frame. “Greeley doesn’t live here.”