“Why?”
His mouth quirked, but he didn’t quite smile. “It’s a nice day, and I feel like walking more than I feel like sitting in class.”
“Oh.” The wing of the swallow peeked out over his collar. I focused on the tip of it, which was pointy and black. “All right, I suppose.”
He huffed a low laugh as he fell in step beside me. “We should share playlists. Delilah did not appreciate my taste in music, but I think you might, and now I’m curious what you have on yours.”
I startled at this revelation. “You shared playlists with my sister?”
“Yeah.”
“She didn’t say.”
“Well, she didn’t like it.”
“She hates my music,” I admitted. It was one of the few things we did not have in common.
“I don’t think I will. Are you going to share with me?”
I slid a glance at him. “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to consider it.”
That made him chuckle. The low resonance melted over my skin, making me want to lean into him and ask him to laugh again. That wasn’t going to happen—and not just because it would be a weird thing to do.
Ivan Sokolov was off-limits.
Delilah had had a painfully all-consuming crush on him, and he’d turned her down. Gently, from her account, but it had hurt anyway.
They were friends now, and she was completely in love with Rhys, but that didn’t matter. To me, this was a black-and-white issue.
Delilah had liked Ivan.
Ivan had rejected Delilah.
Delilah had been crushed to pieces.
I loved my sister more than anything.
Therefore, I would never be friends or anything else with Ivan Sokolov.
Thankfully, we came to the language building, and there was no longer a reason for Ivan to walk with me.
“I have German now.” My grip on my backpack tightened. “Bye.”
Another low, melty laugh followed me all the way into the building.
Chapter Three
Ivan
????: Call me.
My father’s text had been rotting on my phone like a body buried in my backyard for several days now. His orders to call him never boded well for me. We didn’t often share friendly father-son chats. He wasn’t the type, and I was more of a business associate than a kid to him.
I’d come up with a list of reasons to put him off. Homework, swim tryouts, studying, work. It must not have been particularly urgent since he wasn’t blowing my phone up.
Not yet, at least.
Show tunes broke the silence in my bedroom. Dropping my phone on my desk, I closed my eyes and groaned. In the months since I’d transferred to Savage Academy and become suitemates with Freddie Spencer, I’d become somewhat versed in identifying which musicals the songs he belted came from.