Uninvited (Uninvited, #1)(34)

He eases into the desk in front of me and turns to face me. Using my desktop, he opens up his notebook and pulls out a work sheet tucked inside there. “Thought we’d finish that assignment.”

“The one from last week?”

He nods.

I angle my head. “You want to write my biography?”

“That’s the assignment,” he replies, his voice even, his gaze unflinching.

I didn’t think he cared. He’d hardly been a willing subject when I posed the questions to him. “Okay,” I say slowly.

“Name?”

“Davy Hamilton.”

“That’s not your full name.” He stares at me steadily, his eyes serious. He’s always so serious. I’ve never heard him laugh. Never seen him smile.

“Davina Evelyn Hamilton.”

And then I see it. The corner of his mouth lifts ever so faintly.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Just sounds like the name of someone’s great-great-aunt.”

“They were my grandmothers’ names . . . on both sides.”

His pencil scratches the paper. “Of course,” he murmurs softly beneath his breath.

“Parents?”

“Patrick and Caitlyn Hamilton.”

“Siblings?”

He asks the rest of the questions. All basic stuff. I rattle off answers.

“Hobbies?

I hesitate. He looks up at me. “Come on. You have them.” He sounds almost amused at the idea that I would try to deny this.

“Debutante training?” he suggests. “Tennis at the country club?”

I glare. “Funny. No. Music,” I snap.

“Music? You like listening to music?”

“No. I play. I sing.”

“What do you play?”

I sigh. “Piano. Violin. Flute, guitar. A few others . . .” My voice fades.

He lifts his pencil from the desk and looks at me squarely. “You play all those instruments?”

I nod, waiting for him to make a remark, to poke fun at me.

He returns his attention to his paper. “That’s really cool.” The comment is mild enough, but from him it feels . . . I don’t know. Important somehow. I’ve impressed him. For some weird reason this warms me. I doubt much impresses him.

“Is that why you’re always humming?”

“I don’t always hum,” I deny.

“Yes. You do. You’re really quiet, but you do.”

“I don’t think so.” At least I don’t think I always do it. “No one has ever pointed that out to me before—”

“Then they aren’t paying attention.” He just gazes at me as he says this with that serious expression of his, his smoky eyes shrewd in a way that seems older than his years.

His words resonate in me. They aren’t paying attention. But he is.

My face heats beneath his gaze. I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

He breaks eye contact with me and goes back to scrawling on the paper. After a moment, he asks, “Boyfriend?”

“What?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” He spaces each word out as though to help me comprehend.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He looks up, his expression almost bored—like the question and my answer mean little to him. He motions to the paper. “You’re what, seventeen?” I nod. “Just figure it’s a relevant question for the biography of a teenage girl.”

“No. I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say after some moments. I wait but he doesn’t ask any more than that. I don’t have to say anything else, but I hear myself confessing, “We broke up. The night you picked me up. That’s why I left. I got mad and stormed off.”

He considers me. His eyes deep, absorbing. There’s no judgment there.

“He couldn’t handle it. None of my friends can.”

He looks down at the tip of his pencil. He starts to pick at the thin splinters surrounding the lead.

“So he let you walk off? After curfew?”

“I didn’t give him a choice.”

“He had a choice.”

“No. Really. We had a fight and then I refused to get in the car.” I wince, unable to confess the slap. Even to him. I regret that slap. Regret losing control.

“I would have convinced you.”

I release a short, breathy laugh, and look away, my face hot at the idea of what this boy would have done if he were my boyfriend. An unlikely scenario. I shift uncomfortably in my chair.

“Think I have enough.” He stands abruptly and moves back to his desk. I blink and look straight ahead. For a minute there, things had felt . . . friendly. Like he wasn’t a carrier. Like he hadn’t warned me to keep my guard up around him and everyone else in my life.

Like I wasn’t so alone.





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Tori

R U coming???


Zac

Don’t do this Tori

Fine. Will go w/o u. Carlton agreed 2 come. Others 2. There were plenty witnesses Zac She used 2 be ur friend Tori