The Falling (Brightest Stars, #1)(54)

When I heard the knock on the door, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Shit!”

“Karina?”

“WHAT?!” I sounded angry, like you do when you’re scared.

“Karina, are you okay?” It was Kael. “Can I come in?”

“Come in,” I said, and nodded, though he likely couldn’t see me through the crack in the door. He entered slowly and, once inside, gently closed the door. The little click sounded so loud. So definite.

“You okay?” he asked, as he walked toward me, stopping a few feet away from the bed.

I sighed. “Yeah,” I said, shrugging, closing my book.

“So do you always read at parties?”

When he said that, it reminded me of a novel I was reading last year—an angsty good girl?bad boy trope. I had a love-hate relationship with those books, but was currently waiting for the next one in the series. So I was in love at the moment.

“I just . . . I don’t know. I got overwhelmed? That girl”—I raised my hand in the air, holding the book—“she heard me say that stuff, and now Austin’s being a dick and she probably feels like shit.”

Kael nodded. “You didn’t know she was going to walk up.”

“Still.”

“Try not to worry about it. I know you’re going to beat yourself up over it, that’s just who you are—”

“You know what?!”

Now he was the one who looked caught. It was clear that he hadn’t meant to say what he had. Or maybe he’d meant to word it differently. His mouth hung open a little.

“What do you mean that’s just who I am?” I accused. He’d better not have meant what I thought he did.

He took a breath. “I meant that I know you worry about a lot, and you put a lot of pressure on yourself. A lot of blame.”

I wanted to stand up, to tell him to get the hell out of my room, but I sat there, holding tight to my book, keeping my legs crossed underneath me.

“And you know that how?” I asked, not really wanting to know what he was going to say. I had already become this girl to him, the one he needed to check in on, maybe take care of. I despised the idea of that.

No way was that going to be me.

No way was that me.

“Come on,” he pressed me. He no longer looked unsure about what he had said or would say; he looked annoyed.

“You’re acting like you know me. You’ve been around for, what—a week? And half of that time you were MIA.”

“So you missed me when I didn’t come back?” he asked.

Why was he talking so much all of a sudden? And how could I get him to stop?

“That doesn’t matter. My point is that you don’t know me, so don’t say that I’m doing something or being a victim or whatever.” My voice sounded screechy and dramatic.

“That’s not what I’m doing.” He sighed, rubbing his cheeks with both palms. “And I sure as hell didn’t say anything about you being a victim.”

“You said, ‘You put a lot of pressure on yourself.’”

“Never mind,” he said, defeated. “Forget I said anything.”

I felt so angry, so embarrassed and upset. I didn’t know I was directing all my feelings toward Kael. He came up to my room, I assumed, to check on me. That was a nice thing to do.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m frustrated and I’m taking it out on you. I guess this fits, since I’m”—I hooked my fingers into air quotes—“‘always pissed.’”

“I don’t think you should be too hard on yourself. People do shitty things. It’s what we’re made for,” he told me.

He was trying to change the subject, and I was grateful because I felt like crap. Any sort of buzz that I was feeling was basically gone at that point, but Kael still looked different than he had before tonight, even without my vodka glasses.

“Humans are made to do shitty things? That’s depressing,” I told him. But I kind of liked the way it sounded, cynical as it was.

He sat down next to me on my bed and the metal frame creaked. He was too big for my bed. He looked like a grown man in a dollhouse. I felt like he was going to lecture me about something, maybe ask if I did my homework. His knowing eyes were focused on me, and in a rare occurrence, he didn’t look away or stare at the floor.

“That’s life,” he said.

“Life is depressing?”

“Every life I’ve come across,” he replied, his eyes still on me.

I couldn’t disagree with him, though it made everything feel so heavy.

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“You told me about the way you and your mom made sense of things, believing that when stars burn out, the good in the world dies along with them.” He chuckled softly. “That’s the most depressing thing I’ve heard, and I’ve seen and heard a lot.” He drew out the end of the word.

I laughed at that and continued to look unabashedly into his eyes. He was a good head taller than me sitting down, and his black jeans and dark skin looked so nice against each other.

Kael’s hands moved to his leg and my tummy flipped, thinking that they’d move to me next, that he was going to touch me. But instead, he rubbed at the top of his leg.