Four Of A Kind

Her entire body went still. Not the tense stillness of someone bracing for rejection. The shocked stillness of someone who had prepared twelve backup arguments and suddenly didn’t need any of them.

“Yes?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Just like that?”

“You wanted me to make it harder?”

“I wanted you to. I don’t know.” She pulled her hand back from my chest and looked at her own fingers as though they’d betrayed her by touching me. “I thought you’d give me the speech again. About boundaries and professionalism and Iris and my mother.”

“Do you want the speech?”

“God, no.”

“Then you don’t get the speech. You get yes.”

Cassidy stared at me. Her purple eyes were doing something I’d only seen a handful of times since we met, that first day in the hallway when she’d screamed at me about coffee on her shirt. Something raw underneath the anger. Something that wanted, desperately and openly, in a way that Cassidy Valentine never allowed herself to want things because wanting meant the possibility of not getting, and not getting meant she was right about being broken.

She grabbed the front of my shirt with both fists and pulled me down to her height.

The kiss was nothing like Vivienne’s in the bathroom. Vivienne kissed like she was making a decision, every movement deliberate, every breath accounted for. Cassidy kissed like she was starting a fire, all heat and teeth and the kind of urgency that came from a girl who’d spent her whole life being told she was too much, too loud, too aggressive, too everything, and had finally found someone stupid enough to stand in the blast radius without flinching.

Her hands released my shirt and slid up to my jaw, holding my face in place while she bit my lower lip hard enough that I actually winced. She tasted like stolen waffles and strawberry cream and the slight chemical bitterness of whatever energy drink she’d had before breakfast, because of course Cassidy Valentine was the kind of person who drank Monster Zero Ultra before eight in the morning.

I put my hands on her waist. Her tank top had ridden up and my palms found warm skin and the jut of her hipbones above the waistband of her shorts. She made a sound against my mouth that was somewhere between a growl and a whimper and pressed closer, her body flush against mine, her back arching so her chest pushed against my torso.

The alcove was too small for this. The hallway was too public. Mrs. Tanaka could walk around the corner at any second and add this to her daily report to Camille, who would receive a detailed account of her second-born daughter pinning the scholarship kid against the wall and kissing him like she was trying to win a bet she’d already lost.

I pulled back.

Cassidy’s eyes were glassy. Her cheeks were flushed the color of her hair. She looked wrecked in the specific way that only Cassidy could look wrecked, all hard edges dissolved into something softer and more dangerous.

“That,” she said, breathing heavy, “was a down payment.”

“On what.”

“On the twenty-four hours. I want you to remember what you’re collecting.” She smoothed my shirt where she’d crumpled it, her hands lingering on my chest far longer than the task required. Her fingertips traced the line of my collarbone through the fabric, feather-light, completely at odds with the way she’d just tried to devour my face.

“I’ll remember.”

“Good.” She stepped back. The mask started to rebuild itself, the softness retreating behind familiar walls of sarcasm and hostility. But it didn’t quite make it all the way. A crack remained, hairline and visible only if you knew where to look, and I did.

She turned to leave, then stopped.

“Isaiah.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to pass that test.” She said it without looking at me, her voice stripped of bravado, just a girl standing in a hallway making a promise to herself as much as to me. “Not for the bet. Not for you. Not for my mother. For me.”

“I know.”

“And when I do pass it.” Now she looked over her shoulder, and the crack in her armor widened enough that I could see straight through to the person underneath, the girl who studied at two in the morning and color-coded her graph paper and kept a photo of her dead father in her wallet. “I’m going to need you to be there.”

“I’ll be there.”

Cassidy nodded once, sharp, like she was confirming a military operation rather than a romantic commitment. Then she walked away down the hallway, her bare feet silent on carpet that cost more than my education, her ponytail swinging behind her like a flag she’d planted in territory she intended to keep.

I stood in the alcove and touched my lower lip where she’d bitten it. The skin was tender. I could still taste strawberry cream.

My phone buzzed.

Sabrina. One message.

“The hallway cameras have blind spots. The alcove is not one of them.”

Then, two seconds later: “I saved the footage. For research purposes.”

I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes.

Somewhere in the manor, Harlow was making waffles. Vivienne was googling rock-paper-scissors strategy despite having already lost. Iris was probably drawing manga of my suffering. Cassidy was walking away with my lip print on her mouth and my sanity in her pocket.

And Sabrina was watching the security cameras like a girl who had already won the game and was simply waiting for everyone else to realize it.

One week until the festival. Two weeks until the rotation started. Two weeks until whatever Cassidy had planned for her twenty-four hours of ownership.

I pushed off the wall and headed toward the library, where my chemistry project waited on a borrowed laptop in a house that had never been mine and was starting to feel like home in all the wrong ways.

My phone buzzed one more time.

Iris. “u have lipstick on ur face lol”

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