Gio blinks down at me, dark eyes stormy with emotions that chase each other, one by one, across his face. Surprise. Hope. Confusion. Agony. All of it plays out right there in front of me until finally he laughs, an explosive sound.

“You mean in school?”

I pull him closer and let go, stepping back into the open space of the kitchen. I need to catch my breath. I’m saying stupid shit, and it’s no surprise. This constant dance between life and death is going to my head. “Why do you think I spent all that time with you doing homework?” I can’t help making a face. “I hated homework.”

Gio rubs his hands over his face. “Jesus Christ, Sia. You had me fooled. I thought we were friends.”

“We were friends,” I tell him helplessly, all those memories of his face in the afternoon sunlight colliding into one. “We were friends, and you were so—so handsome, and...”

Gio’s face hardens. “You don’t have to say this to me because you think I’m going to kill you.”

“I’m not,” I babble, but it’s the truth. “I felt that way. And when I saw you in my bedroom, I still—”

My nerves get the better of me and I let out a choked sob. Gio steps forward, his hand rising to touch me, but he drops it to his side at the last moment. His cheeks go a mottled color that looks like anger, but I don’t know if I can trust myself. “Fuck,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

“Yes, fuck all of this.” I lift my arms, gesturing to the whole of his kitchen, his house. “I mean—” I whip a tear away from my cheek, my heart thudding against my rib cage. “Why? Why, Gio? Why do we have to do this? Why do we have to play this game?”

His expression is dark. “This isn’t a game.”

“I know that,” I tell him, trying to soothe, even though I’m the one in danger of dying. I step closer, taking his hands in mine. It’s awful, the way my heart picks up even faster when I touch him. It’s awful how fast every cell in my being wants to forgive him for the fact that he fucking kidnapped me, dragged me to his house, and is now....what? Toying with me? Genuinely regretting his actions? I feel like I haven’t slept. “I know that, Gio, but why do we have to play at all? What are we doing?”

His eyebrows pull together and his gaze locks on mine, scanning for what, I don’t know.

“You’re right,” he says. Then he straightens, bolt upright. “You’re right. Shit. You’re right.”

Gio drops my hands and goes for the stairs. He climbs them so fast that by the time I’m in the hallway, I only catch the edge of his heel as he vaults up the last step. “Gio?” There it is—that nervousness, buzzing at the edges of my fingertips.

He doesn’t answer.

I’m not going to stand in the kitchen like an idiot, so I follow him up the stairs.

Gio’s bedroom door stands open.

It’s a disaster.

In the five seconds it took me to get up here, he’s thrown piles of clothes onto the bed and torn the closet doors open. Only his head is visibility—he’s kneeling down in front of something in the closet, eyes fierce.

“Gio?”

“Get your stuff,” he says, his tone clipped and commanding. It sends a shiver down my spine, that tone of his—it reminds me that there’s a danger underneath the handsome face that I don’t fully understand.

“I—” Obviously, I don’t have anything. I’m wearing most of the clothes I came here in, but I’m also not in any position to debate him on it, so I go back down the stairs. I collect my dress from the laundry room, and...that’s it. My shoes are long gone, back at my Uncle’s house, and I don’t have a single scrap of anything else. I close my eyes and wish to be transported to a TJ Maxx. Unsurprisingly, it fails.

“What are you doing?”

I open my eyes. Gio stands at the doorway of the laundry room with a rolling suitcase dangling from one hand and a backpack slung over his other shoulder.

I hold up my useless sequined dress. “Getting this.”

“Are you ready to go?” He sounds assholeishly impatient.

Irritation sweeps over me, sharp and pure and as stiff as the blanket of exhaustion that still hangs over my shoulders. “Yes, Gio. I’m completely ready to go. I didn’t have time to pack a bag when you dragged me out of my own house and—”

He rushes toward me, the suitcase clattering to the floor behind him, and I freeze. This is it. I’ve done it. I’ve provoked him into—

—kissing me.

His lips claim mine, hard and hot and desperate, one hand rising to wrap around the line of my jaw. I feel it all the way down to every nerve ending, a glittering, unholy heat, and from somewhere deep inside a moan catches in my throat and escapes.

The kiss deepens, gets rougher, and the thought floats up in the back of my mind that I honestly wouldn’t mind stripping down right here and letting Gio have his way with me on the floor of the laundry room. A keen nervousness is on the heels of that desire. Let Gio—do that? For the first time?

He pulls back, eyes on mine. “Sia, listen to me.”

My pulse thrums in my ears. It’s a hard sell, because I can still taste him on my tongue, the mint and aggression of him, and it’s so wildly distracting, even now, that I feel myself leaning in. “I’m listening, yeah.” Was that good enough?

“We have to get out of here.”

I let out a peal of laughter that crests with another wave of adrenaline. “Where? Are you taking me home?”

“No,” he says solemnly. “I don’t think I can ever do that.”