Page 6 of House of Hearts

I’ve got to hand it to Calvin—his ego is so enormous that I momentarily forget why I was nervous in the first place. My anxiety takes a back seat to rage.

“Who said I want to kiss you?” I ask as I climb after him, and yes, okay, I’m secretly thrilled I got the question out without stammering.

He rolls his shoulders—shaking free all the imaginary daggers I lodged into his back—and throws a cursory glance in my direction. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

Ha. Ha. The man is Narcissus in the flesh: beautiful but too aware of the fact.

If he wasn’t spoiled and rich, I’m sure I’d be another lovestruck fool clamoring in his wake, but I know better.

Falling for a boy like Calvin is the same as losing your footing on a ledge, a dizzying free fall and a crushing blow you can’t come back from.

The way he looks at me, you’d think I was the scum beneath his shoes. That has me balling my fists and cataloging all the things wrong with him.

For starters, he bites his nails. I can see jagged crescents where his teeth ripped them off. There’s a particularly angry wound on his pinkie where I’m guessing it bled earlier.

His nose is also upturned—as stuck up as the rest of him.

Oh yeah, and I think his brother murdered my friend.

“I can feel you staring at me.” He freezes with his hand on the banister and forces me to stop in my tracks. “You’re not subtle.”

I avert my eyes and try to hold my tongue. It doesn’t work. “I’d assumed subtle was off the table when you said we needed thirty minutes of alone time.”

“Touché.” His voice echoes, the sound rippling like water. The tower around us might not be massive, but it certainly feels like an eternal climb upward.

I search for the scuff of Emoree’s shoes on each step, something that would mark the memory of her forever. The way Paleolithic humans have come and gone, but their lives are still spelled out in chalk lines on cave walls.

There’s nothing to see here. Her memory has rinsed right off.

“Well, this is it,” Calvin says with an exaggerated flourish at the lookout.

The landing is a welcome reprieve after all that climbing.

An arched cathedral-style window sits to the left of me, the glass fogged from time but transparent enough to showcase the full scope of the school.

It’s predictably breathtaking, but it’s not what I’m looking at.

I’m gazing up at the next level of stairs, hypnotized by the spiral railing ascending into the shadows.

“What’s up there?”

Calvin hesitates. His jaw clenches ever so slightly as he follows my gaze. “More stairs.”

“Where do the stairs lead?”

He toys with his collar and loosens his tie at the throat. “The pearly gates. It’s amazing, really. It goes on forever into the sky, and baby cherubs wait for you on the final floor. I’ve been told they play the harp.”

“Okay, fine, I get it. You’re not going to tell me.” I’m trying not to lose my cool again.

There’s a pregnant pause before he asks, quieter, “Why do you want to know?”

“Curiosity.”

“Bad trait to have,” he mutters to himself. He taps a steady rhythm against his cheek, the phantom strokes of some song only he knows. “Or so I’m told.”

I turn to face him fully, but he slides down the wall and ignores me for a hangnail on his ring finger. If I thought conversation with Calvin was a stilted, horrible affair, silence is worse. I shift to stare out the window—risking anxiety over whatever this is.

As much as I hate this place, I can’t deny that it’s beautiful. The campus is an otherworldly green. The color spreads up the throats of academic buildings, thick tangles of ivy like branching arteries. And if those are the arteries, there’s no denying what the heart is.

A hedge maze sprawls as far as the eye can see, a never-ending labyrinth locked away by an ornate metal gate.

Wind slices through it, breathing life into the shrubbery and making it pulse in tandem with my own heart.

This high up, the world feels particularly violent outside.

I shudder and imagine what it’d be like standing at the top, feeling the sharp air against my cheek.

I rip my gaze from the window. Calvin’s a cat curling in on himself, his head propped against his shoulder as he splays on the ground. He’s gotten ready for the long haul.

“Comfy?”

He flutters an eye open. “I’d be comfier with a down feather pillow and the sound of the ocean spraying through Bose speakers…but otherwise, yeah. This will do. If you need me, which I hope you won’t, I’ll be taking a nap.”

I cross my arms to keep my hands from trembling at my sides. “And I’m supposed to believe this is the best napping spot on campus?”

He winces, and I know he’s been caught. “The stone floor is comfier than you think.”

I level him with a look until he finally huffs in defeat. “I thought it was fairly obvious. I need a break from my sister.”

“What does she want?” I conjure the image of her red face and glaring eyes snapping between us. Glaring at me like I was a gnat that flew too close.

Calvin wets his lips. He looks every inch a Grecian tragedy on the floor. Splaying out like an art class might arrive with charcoals and canvas to capture his melodramatic anguish.

“What doesn’t she want?” he answers finally. “A conversation? A lecture opportunity? Maybe Mom got tired of telling me I’m a disappointment directly, so she decided to have Sadie play messenger.”

“So, you’d rather hang out in a dusty old tower than talk to her?”

Calvin stands up, and I feel the heat rolling off his skin as he peers out the window behind me. I stiffen as he approaches, his body so large it eclipses mine. We’re not touching, but if I were to lean back, I’d fall right onto his broad chest. The closeness has me holding my breath.

“I’d lather myself in honey and jump into a grizzly’s cage if that’s what it took. What, you think I came up here for the view?”

“It’s…” I’m about to say “pretty,” but the word doesn’t come. I’ve made the mistake of looking straight down. Vertigo has me by the throat, and I’m suddenly Emoree. Zeroing in on a patch of grass before the world rushes past me. An impact. And then darkness.

At least it was quick. I remember someone whispering that at the funeral. Painless .

The wind knocks out of my lungs, and no matter what I do, I can’t tear my gaze away from the lawn.

My grief is a hole only I can see, ruptured through the thicket of green, green grass.

It’s black and never-ending, and I’ve tumbled down it before.

You fall and fall and fall, and when you think it couldn’t possibly go any further, you’re wrong.

I swallow down bile. She’s gone, I know that, but now I feel like I’m falling, too. The world sways, and my knees buckle, and now I really am falling, and…

Arms. I’m halfway to the floor when I feel the heat of someone pressed against my back. Gentle hands lowering me to the cool stone floor. A rushed, worried breath sticky against my skin. And then Calvin’s face is way too close to mine.

He brushes the back of his hand to my forehead. It’s refreshingly cool against my flushed skin. “Jesus, are you okay?”

Less than twenty-four hours here, and I’ve already lost it twice. I wave his concern away—or I try to. My arms are as weak as the rest of me. “I’m fine.”

I really need to stop saying that.

“Sure about that one? Because from my viewpoint it looks like you nearly blacked out and I’m the only thing that kept you from cracking your head open on the floor.”

I squeeze my eyes shut at that. The casket was closed at the funeral, but my mind is strong enough to fill in the gaps.

“I’m okay,” I repeat, woozy. “I’m…scared of heights.”

Calvin makes a show of swiveling around us. “I hate to break it to you, New Girl, but you’re in the tallest building on campus. I’m not sure if you noticed that coming in.”

Is it possible for my cheeks to burn any hotter? “I didn’t, actually. I was far too busy being dragged in here against my will.” I leave out the part where I thought I could handle it up here. I thought I could handle a lot of things.

He blanches like he hadn’t considered that. “You could’ve told me you had a phobia.”

“Told you? I don’t even know you,” I jab, even though that’s also not entirely true.

I know enough. Though his world existed on a cracked phone screen to me. I know his favorite spot to vacation is Greece. I know that he’s got an endless parade of girls who adore him. I know that his last post was a year ago, a golden-hour selfie with the caption LIFE IS GOOD .

“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have dragged you up here if I knew.” He has the gall to look sincere. I don’t believe him for a second, but I let him hold on to the scraps of his morality.

“Whatever.”

“So, what now? Do I need to carry you down?”

No way in hell. “I can walk on my own. Just…give me a second to distract myself.” I make the wretched mistake of dropping my eyes, and for a horrible moment, I’m staring at his mouth.

“A distraction, huh?” He snorts, wetting his lips again.

I’ve never whipped away faster. I struggle to keep my tone even. I worry there’s a slight gallop in my words as I answer: “Not that. Just talk to me. Anything. Five minutes.”

“You’re the new one here. What do you want to know about Hart Academy?” he asks before monotonously reciting everything off the school’s FAQ page. “Our Ivy League acceptance rate? Our college-readiness program? Our—”

“The hedge maze,” I blurt out, and I could slap myself for it. There are a million more important questions to ask, but I’m over here asking him to tell me about a glorified garden.

He cocks a brow. “What about it?”

I guess there’s no turning back now. “Why is it locked up?”

Calvin groans like this is a story he’s heard before and one he doesn’t want to hear again. “Because it’s also a private cemetery.”

A chill sweeps over me. “Who chooses to be buried in a hedge maze?”