VII.

It was nearly midnight when Caleb got back to Cavanaugh Hall, eyes rimmed with dark circles, his laptop still warm from a hard day's work. Most people who had just single-handedly ruined some kid's life and reputation might have felt a bit of remorse at this point, but all Caleb could think about was Hanna. How she'd come to him in the library that first day, panicked, laying everything down in front of him and trusting him with all of it. How she'd singled him out and approached him, instead of slinking off into alleyways and whispering to talk the way everyone else on campus did when they needed him. Hanna could have easily passed for a diamond, or at the very least, a semiprecious stone. She could have sneaked into Cavanaugh Hall by the back entrance late at night so no one would see that she lived with the scholarship kids; she could have thrown around foreign-sounding designer names with the rich girls over lunch; she could have been one of them without even trying too hard. But she wasn't.

She had chosen to be herself, and now someone was torturing her for it. 'A' just couldn't let Hanna win.

The lights in the Cavanaugh Hall lobby were on, but the front desk was empty. Caleb heard sound effects and laughter coming from the lounge downstairs ― a late-night video game tournament, probably. Caleb couldn't remember the last time he'd had genuine, lighthearted fun. These days, when he wasn't worried about avoiding suspicion about his computer activity, he was worried about grades, worried about his mother back home and how devastated she would be if he lost his scholarship or flunked out of Rosewood entirely. And now, he had a new concern to add to the ever-growing list: Hanna.

Caleb signed himself into the hall and, hesitating for only a second, headed up to the fourth floor.

His mind was a storage tank for numbers and facts, and her room number flashed brighter than the rest behind his eyes: 408. 408. 408.

When he found the door, he raised his fist to knock, then let it fall to his side again. Why was he even there? It was late; she was probably studying. Sleeping. Not thinking about him at all. It wasn't too late yet. He could turn around, go up another level and return to his own dorm: 503. She wouldn't have to know he'd been here.

But Caleb had this problem where he would think of the smart, practical thing to do and then do the exact opposite. He knocked three times on her door and cringed. Twenty bucks said he would regret this later.

The door swung open slowly and he found her eyes in the tiny open crack. He couldn't see her whole face, but he saw the sliver of gray where a little of her eye make-up had run down her cheek.

"Are you crying?" Caleb pressed his hand against the door, trying to push his way in.

"It's late," Hanna said. "I'm tired."

"Let me in. I need to talk to you."

"I'm sure it can wait until tomorrow."

"But it can't." His voice broke a little. "I won't stay long."

She sighed. "One second."

The door shut. A moment later, it swung open again, and Hanna yanked Caleb inside. The gray streak had vanished from her face, he noticed, as she shut the door behind them.

"What is it?" she said, quietly. Her eyebrows were furrowed, not with anger, but concern.

Caleb realized then how strange this must have looked ― him turning up at her dorm at this hour, clutching a laptop and looking all sorts of disheveled. He set the laptop down on her desk beside hers, wiping his sweaty palms on the thighs of his jeans. The room was dark, lit only by a single lamp on her nightstand, and he was glad she couldn't see how his hands were shaking. "I needed to see you," he began. "I mean ― see how you were holding up." He bit his lip, eyeing her warily. "Obviously, my instincts were on point, seeing as how you were crying a minute before I showed up."

"I wasn't crying."

"Now, now. Pretty girls shouldn't tell such ugly lies."

"Okay. Then I'll admit: I'm freaking out. I've been freaking out every second of every day since I got that first text message from A."

"It's only been a week," Caleb said. "I'm handling it. We still have time to figure out who's doing this. The police have barely made any progress in the arson case. They don't have anything besides rumors and lies linking Lucas to the crime. No solid evidence at all."

"But how long will A wait before telling them about the evidence sitting right here in my drawer? I can't even get rid of it. If someone sees me dumping out that stuff, I'm automatically guilty. This is a sick, twisted game and A's got me right where they want me. Deadlocked." Hanna took a step closer to Caleb, and the light spread over her, revealing her wide, panicked eyes. "Who would even believe me if I told them about A? I'll look like guilty and crazy."

"I believe you." Caleb shrugged. It had to count for something.

Hanna smiled, even as her eyes watered. "I could make all of this go away, you know. If A is only after me because of my grades, my scholarship money ― maybe I could just leave."

"Leave," Caleb said flatly. The word wasn't registering. "What do you mean, leave?"

"I could go to a public school. It's free, it's closer to home."

"Public school? What the hell? You're here for a reason, Hanna. The connections you'll have through the Academy are insane. You can't leave."

"If I lose my scholarship and get blamed for burning down the treehouse, I'll have no choice."

"So you're just going to let A bully you around?"

"What else am I supposed to do?"

"You're supposed to trust me. We made a deal, remember?" He took her hand, pulling her closer. The light from the lamp warmed her face. He brushed at a spot under her eye, where some tears had collected. "I promised you," he said, "that I would find out who's doing this to you. And I would stop them."

"Don't you know how bullies work?" Hanna said. "They don't just pick on you. They pick on the people you care about, knocking them down one by one, until you have no one left to help you. A is already after me." Her breath caught. "I don't know what I'd do if you — I don't want you to be next."

"You might surprised to hear this, Princess, but I know a lot about how bullies work. And I know that they don't leave you alone if you run from them. So, frankly, I don't care how much power A seems to have right now. I don't care how scared you are. We're going to figure this out, once and for all, and until then, Hanna Marin, you're not going anywhere."

What happened next made Caleb's insides lurch.

She reached up to pull him down to her. Not even an inch space separated their noses, their lips. Her skin was hot with so many feelings, her blood pumping with panic. Very softly, so softly, that he would wonder for hours later if he'd only imagined it, she said, "I wish I didn't need you so much."

She was so close and her mouth was right there and that was all the incentive he needed to kiss her, long and hard, until the sky outside her window began to lighten, a new day breaking through the dark.