Chapter 39

WAR AND PEACE

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13

Charlie von Hevringprinz, your mother called the office eleven times regarding final grades, which were emailed to all parents this afternoon. Please visit at your earliest convenience.

—Maverick, the Residential Retainers Commission

I rip the note off my door and ball it in my fist.

I don’t go to the office and return Mom’s call. I don’t pack up my uniforms. The moment I unlock the knob, I chuck the balled note at Jasper’s cardboard cutout as hard as I can, flop into bed without even changing out of my uniform, and go to sleep.

By the time I wake up again, my watch reads two in the morning. I blink around the room, where Jasper’s bedside lamp shines into my eyes. He sits at his desk, flipping through his notebook. He wears a headband that shoves his blond bangs up every which way, like he’s ready to put on cucumbers and a relaxing face mask. Totally calm.

Like we never fought.

My rage jerks my body awake. I swing my legs over my bed and stare him down. “What is wrong with you?”

Jasper yelps and flings his fountain pen, which soars across the room. He spins in his chair, his rolled sleeves slipping down his forearms. “Sleep.”

“How do you expect me to sleep after you practically freaked out and barred me from helping you finish the letters while you stay up all night?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Fine. Play clueless.” I head into the bathroom. I need to wash my face and brush my teeth and get this worst day of my life off me. “Don’t care that I’m leaving Valentine.”

Jasper doesn’t respond. Of course he doesn’t. I spread toothpaste along my toothbrush and shove it into my mouth. Unbelievable.

From the other room, Jasper’s chair squeaks. “That was the last letter, Charlie.”

“ Whu-ay? ” I call back.

“They’re finished. The letters. It’s not a burden.” There’s a pause. “In the library, I was angry because I saw the ranks. Not because of you.”

My brow furrows. I spit out my toothpaste and walk back into the room. Jasper stands at the center, fist clenched at his side. A less stubborn piece of me tells me to drop it, to let go of this fight and celebrate that Jasper somehow finished rewriting the mixer letters. That we did it, even though we doubted we could.

“ You’re angry?” I repeat instead. “You’re Rank One.”

“Yes. Because this academy has taken P.M. from me, and now it’s trying to take you. Because there are loopholes in our system that should not exist . Although my grades are flawless, I would prefer to leave my excused PE credit out of it. This isn’t fair to—” His gaze steadies on me. “I’m going to make sure you stay. I give you my word.”

The words render me speechless. Jasper does have principal’s nephew powers. But can he really promise something as seemingly impossible as keeping me at Valentine?

“Why would you do this for me?” I finally mutter.

“Because I’ve seen you,” Jasper says. “And when you push yourself so much that you pass out in the library, you probably think you’re only hurting yourself—or maybe you don’t even realize how much you are. But do you know who else you are hurting?”

I scoff. “No one?”

“No, Charlie. Everyone around you. I admit, I never understood how unfair this all was until recently, and that was”—his fist clenches tighter—“so, so ignorant of me. But quite frankly, you’re hurting me too.”

“You?”

“I care about you !” His voice cracks. “Is that not obvious by now?”

My heart stutters. By caring, he means as a roommate. A friend.

But that crack in his voice didn’t make it seem that way.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “But I can’t just stop trying to handle everything. That’s my one job.”

“Says who? Because I can’t imagine it’s you. Is it what you want?”

I consider Mom, Grandma, and Grandpa, who were so disappointed in her and her store, and Valentine as a whole—but no one has ever said this out loud. Either way, as I stand here in my exhaustion, I know the answer to Jasper’s question. It’s not what I want.

The words stay lodged in my throat.

“You have to tell me what you’re thinking,” Jasper says, his blue eyes hardening from the other side of the room. “I may be a genius, but I’m not a mind reader.”

“I know that,” I grumble.

“Do you? Because every time I do try to read your mind, you get mad at me because I’m always getting it wrong. So, please. The spotlight is yours.”

What am I thinking?

I’m thinking about how Jasper is trying to help me, even though he’s supposed to be a self-obsessed poet with posters of himself on the ceiling. How he’s the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met but one of the most inspiring minds I’ve ever known.

I’m thinking about Jasper. Always. And that’s wrong .

I grip my forehead. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

A groan leaves Jasper. He crosses the room and stops in front of me, his bangs shoved up by his headband flopping dramatically around his forehead. “With all due respect, I don’t know what I’m thinking about you either.”

My chest lurches. I lean backward. “Jasper?”

“I had many expectations for my second year at Valentine. Win the Critical Junior Poet’s Award. Model for Poetic Fortune Digest’s Sexiest Poet of the Year. Remain Rank One. But being attracted to my roommate at an all-boys academy was not one of them.”

All my breath drains out of me.

I try to find the logical map for him meaning friend again. There are too many roadblocks this time. “That’s what you’re thinking?”

Jasper’s cheeks tinge pinker than they already are. “I don’t know. I just said I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“You said you’re attracted to me.”

“I suppose I did say that.”

“Okay.”

We stare at each other.

Jasper starts to pace our bedroom and tosses up his arms. “I mean, of course I said that. Yes. I’ve been searching for you all these years because I fell for you. Those feelings don’t simply poof”—he does some jazz hands—“away!”

I cautiously follow his pacing with my eyes. My face must be as red as his with how scorching it feels. “That doesn’t mean you’re attracted to me now.”

“How could I not be?!” His voice hits a high note I’ve never heard from him.

I readjust my glasses. “You’re panicking.”

“I am not. I’m always composed.”

“Jasper.”

“It all began when I brought that dreadful bookcase in our room. Why ever did I engrave our names like that? Have you noticed it looks like a wedding invitation?”

“Wait. Then? That was before you even knew who I was.”

“That’s why I was having a CRISIS,” Jasper shouts, breaching into hissing basilisk territory, and his eyes blow wide. “I thought I was falling for the love of my life’s brOTHER. I was about to set myself on FIRE.”

“Jasper.”

“And I have been trying so hard to be very, very normal since, but I cannot. Why, Saint Valentine, did I put us in a bedroom together?” He slams himself against my bedpost, sinking toward the floor like a dead body.

Before he falls too far, I walk over, tug him up by the collar, and press my lips to his.

I just want him to shut up, to listen to me. His lips are warm despite the rest of his body always being freezing, and it’s so strangely intoxicating that I almost let him keep kissing me.

Except he’s not kissing me. I’m kissing him .

Like two years ago.

Abruptly, I pull back. Do I ever learn from my mistakes? “Sorry. I’m—I should’ve asked. But. Do you at least know what you’re thinking now?”

Jasper doesn’t look horrified, even though I expect him to run away, slamming through the wall so forcefully that only the outline of his body remains. Instead, he peruses up and down my body in a way that makes my heart simultaneously plummet and explode.

Then my own shirt collar is tugged, and I’m being lightly shoved against the bedpost. Jasper cups my jaw and kisses me with the passion of someone starved for weeks. For two years. Every second thought I’ve had about Jasper melts out of my head, his touch lancing electricity through my core. This is nothing like our first kiss years ago. It’s more. It’s too much.

A muffled sound leaves me as I place my hands on his chest. “Jasper—”

His hand travels from my jaw to my hips, shoving our bodies closer. He’s barely unruffled, only a few hairs escaped from his stubby ponytail, yet my lips are already swollen and my uniform is a wreck. “Please, Charlie, can you stop arguing with me just this once?”

My body screams at me to finally listen to him.

I try to regain my balance on the bedpost, but my legs are too close to giving out. “Somewhere else.”

Jasper is merciful enough to oblige, but I barely catch my breath before his arm is wrapped around my waist and he’s pushing me into our bookshelf, pinning an arm over my head. Fluttering pages fall to the carpet. Shakespeare, Jasper’s poetry—that’s all I catch before his lips are on mine again.

“This isn’t much better,” I manage on a gasp.

“Never liked poetry much,” he says. “Poets are snobs.”

“ You are a poet.”

He pulls back with a soft, low laugh. His blue eyes search my face, the same way they do when I read my writing aloud. The look that constantly floods my head with so much heat, I can’t think straight.

“What are you doing?” I cover myself with a palm, but he gently brings it down.

“Why do you always hide your face?” Jasper says. “I like your face.”

“Wh-what?”

“I said, I like your face. It’s my favorite part about you.”

I thrust my hand over his mouth instead. “I heard you.”

“Why don’t you want me to keep saying that?” he asks, muffled through my fingers.

“Because, well, you’re really close—and—I’m insecure about it.” My hand falls gradually off his mouth after admitting the truth I’ve never said aloud.

“But you have no reason to be insecure.”

“Thanks,” I drone. “No longer insecure.”

“I’m serious,” Jasper says. “I’m not sure what you see when you look in the mirror, Charlie, but I have a hypothesis that it isn’t what others see.”

I’ve tried to tell myself this for years but could never believe it. For some reason, right now, it feels like a piece of me is starting to.

My lips are back on his in seconds. We tumble into his side of the room until we fall on his bed. I finally yank off his ridiculous headband and thread my hands through his hair, and he does the same to my curls. Our teeth clink, and my glasses slide up my face. I pull away for air, and he gives me the chance. He’s listening. I’m listening too. What I’ve wanted all along.

Good. All I need is to get this—him—out of my system. And he just needs to be quiet. That’s all this is.

But what if it’s not?

“Wait” heaves out of me.

Jasper stops. “What’s wrong?”

“Does this—Does this mean you want to be together?”

His chest rises and falls as he takes me in. At first, I think I’ve worked him into a panic again, but his lopsided dimple pops. “Is it not obvious?”

It is. But if what Jasper says is true, that he’ll figure out a way to keep me at Valentine—us together, at a place like this, the spotlight would be huge. To students. Instructors. His aunt.

All that attention. On me.

Dread rolls through me, and my heart squeezes tight.

My gaze drifts away from Jasper, but he leads my chin back with his pointer finger. “Hey,” he says. “I do. Want us to be together.” His smile softens, almost shy now. “And if you’ll allow it, I would be honored to take you to the mixer. As your date.”

I imagine us walking hand in hand into the mixer tomorrow. All those eyes following us. Slowly, I nod.

His face falls gradually, emptily. “You don’t want to.”

It’s not a question. The words fall out from under him.

I stare back into his pained eyes. My hands itch to pull him closer. My heart tells me to let go of my fears and say yes .

But my brain won’t let me this time.