“Looks like he’s sticking with Kiera this week, huh?” Elise says to Willow as she drops her tray down to join us at our table.

“Yeah, it’s rare for the flavor of the week to last an actual week,” Willow responds. I assume they’re talking about Owen, so I don’t even ask.

Jess takes over the conversation when he joins us, talking about some concert coming to Chicago in a few weeks, some band they all seem excited about. I’ve never heard of Phantom Ant, but when Elise urges me to go with them, I shrug and nod yes. I’ve been to concerts in the city before. Granted, most of them have been classical, but I don’t think my parents will have a problem with me going.

I’m doing my best to remember the names of songs they’re saying so I can look them up later when the tapping on the window behind me becomes impossible to ignore.

“Uh, Kens?” Willow says, gesturing over my shoulder.

I know I shouldn’t, but I turn around anyway, and I give Owen my full, undivided attention. His friends have already left, and he’s slowly walking backward, showing me his middle finger and smiling with that faint half-grin I’ve seen far too often over the last three days.

I don’t know what makes me do it. In fact, I don’t know why I am the way I am with Owen. I’ve been careful and timid and obedient my entire life, my only mission to please everyone—please my father, Chen, my mother, my friends, my teachers. Please, please, please, please, please. That’s all I do. And all it’s done for me is land me in Woodstock, away from my friends and the senior year I was expecting to have. I’m not pleasing Owen Harper, too. So I stand with my tray and raise my arm slowly by my side, my eyes zeroed in on his until I’m pointing at him. I close one eye and cock my head slightly to the right, like I’m making sure I have him in my sights—and then I pull the trigger.

“Jesus H Christ, Kensi! What’s wrong with you?” Willow asks. She pulls my arm back down, but I keep my eyes on Owen, staring into his gray-blue eyes—eyes that look like a wolf’s. “What are you doing?”

“I’m starting a war, Willow,” I say, my heart speeding up and my breath growing more ragged as reality catches up with me.

I’m starting a war with a guy who doesn’t lose—a guy who doesn’t play by the rules.

A guy who scares me, and who knows where I sleep at night.

Chapter 5

Each day happens exactly the same. Owen sits behind me, lounging his feet on my desk until I make him move. He makes out with the dark-haired girl named Kiera—practically putting on a show for me at lunch—then he taps on the window and sends me off with a message. One day it was a kiss to the glass, the other, he threw a dollar on the ground. I went outside when he walked away and put it in my pocket, and when I got home, I pinned it to my wall.

Despite the stories and rumors, Owen Harper didn’t scare me. Everything he did was predictable; all show with no real threat, and nothing I couldn’t easily ignore. I had my circle of friends, and I wasn’t interested in winning a popularity contest, so I was fine not being a part of Owen Harper’s cool crowd.

I’d endured bigger threats than he could offer—threats my father dealt out any time I talked about the idea of maybe not going to college at all, maybe studying jazz or just performing on the road, period. He was quick to poison those dreams, stopping short of disowning me. I was more than welcome to walk my own path in life; I’d just have to pay for it all myself, and not expect to live under his roof ever again.

What hurts more is how my mom always supports him. I’m not the same naïve girl I was a few years ago. I understand the economic dynamics of my family now, and I know my mom earns at least twice my father’s salary. But he has this hold on her, and she puts him on a pedestal. My father, Dean Worth, is a talented musician, and when he commands the orchestra, it’s impossible not to feel prideful watching him work. But my mother has let that pride take all of the power—and somehow, power over me, and my life, was bargained away with it.

The first football game was at a school only a town or two over, so the bus trip was just long enough to be an adventure. Our team lost, but the band sounded good, so I celebrated with Willow, Elise, and Jess afterward at the ice cream parlor in the old part of town.

Normal teenagers would want to keep the party going, to stay out with their friends until the sun threatens to rise. But I know there’s an empty house waiting for me at home, and I’m desperate to touch my piano. What I want and reality, though, are two very different dimensions. I know something is off the second we turn the corner to my street.