“You lost your house?” I pressed my lips together and held my breath, trying to imagine what it would be like to lose your house. Where would she go? What would her family do? I’d just met her, but she already made my worry radar buzz out of control. I moved my hand to grab hers, almost by instinct, eager to offer her some kind of comfort. She squeezed my hand tight.

  Evan blinked hard a few times and scratched at her eyebrow, which was bold and dark and wouldn’t have worked on a face less gorgeous than hers. “I can’t believe I’m just spouting this all out. I mean, I know we just met, and you don’t really know anything about me, and here I am just blabbing all these things I haven’t told a single soul back home.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” I felt awkward holding her hand now, and our palms were both a little sweaty, but it also seemed unfriendly to break the connection. Just as the thought ran through my head, she squeezed my fingers tight again.

  Her lips wobbled a little, and she had to snatch her hand away because she was on the precipice of crying. “I use eighteen coats of mascara.” She laughed a watery laugh, and waved a hand in front of her eyes. “It’s my lucky number, eighteen. But it’s going to leave a sludge pit on my face if I don’t mop it up this second.”

  I grabbed my purse and handed her a little crinkly packet of tissues. She blotted the tears and pressed her lips together. “Brenna Blixen? My name is Evan Lennox, and, even though I am a self-proclaimed drama queen, I mean it when I tell you that my life is about to fall apart.”

  I crooked a tiny smile in her direction. “Hi Evan.”

  She chuckled, blotted a little more, until the whole tissue was dotted with sooty black patches, and blew out a long, shaky breath. “Ever feel like you’re just wearing this mask for everyone’s benefit, and if you have to keep it up for one more second, you’re going to have a nervous fucking breakdown?”

  I realized that it was my good luck that I actually never felt that way. And my thoughts immediately pounced on Saxon and the mask he never seemed to be able to get rid of, no matter how exhausted and spent it made him. “Don’t keep it on, then,” I suggested gently. “Take the mask off, Evan. Because, honestly, I hardly know anything about you, but I like you already. I don’t think you should fake anything about yourself.”

  She licked her lips, then reached into her little pink clutch and took out a lipgloss. She smoothed some on with two neat strokes and passed it to me. I coated my lips, and they smelled like raspberries. Our lips both smelled like raspberries, and that made me feel weirdly, wonderfully linked to her. She looked at the tube and smiled. “I thought this trip was going to be total shit. Now I’m really glad I came.”

  I got to my feet and held my hand out to pull her up.

  “Where are we going, dollface?” She ran a quick hand over her hair and gave me a falsely bright smile.

  “We’re going to your room. You sit and talk about whatever you want. I’ll make hospital corners on your bed and hang all your clothes up. It will make you feel better. I promise.” I opened and closed my hand and tilted my head. “C’mon.”

  She blew her nose and wadded up the tissue, then took my hand and stood. “You know what? I think I might love you already.”

  Listening to her voice was like listening to my mother’s Celtic mixes. It was so gorgeous and sad, lilting in these waves and twists, that I was fairly sure she could read me a trigonometry textbook or a Joseph Conrad short story and it would sound like pure music. I made her sit on the chair while I fixed her bed, but when it was done, I patted the neatly made surface, inviting her to sit.

  “Thank you for doing this, by the way. You seriously don’t have to. And I’m not sitting there. You actually have sweat on your forehead from tucking all that in so perfectly. I’m not mussing it up.” She shook her head and all that glossy hair swished from side to side like tall, dark grass in the wind.

  “I like doing this. It’s very soothing for me. Come on. Sit. I’m not that anal retentive, I promise. Sit.” I coaxed her over and she did sit while I went through her clothes.

  My parents had never had money problems, and they were always very generous when it came to an allowance for my clothes. I also made a nice chunk of my own money designing t-shirts back home, so I was able to shop in some fairly upscale stores. Or so I thought.

  Evan’s clothes had tags from stores and designers I’d only ever read about in celebrity magazines. Every piece was more beautiful than the last, and, if I didn’t like her so much already, my blood would have been poisoned with pure, hateful clothing envy.

  “I see you eyeing that pink suede skirt,” she accused happily from her spot on the bed. “We can’t switch shoes, but I bet we’ll be able to share clothes if you want.”

  “I have to admit, I’m having a hard time not hating your guts right now.” I held up a canary dress with wild black floral patterns all over it and a designer label that I couldn’t help but run my greedy fingers over. “This is a dress that could make a girl do bad, desperate things.”

  “Don’t hate me.” She sighed and flopped her long arms out on either side of her body, wrinkling the covers. “That dress was an apology from my daddy for missing my end-of-the-year dance recital. Also, he had to cancel my private dance classes for a few months because we were so behind on the bill. And, of course, we were losing the house.”

  I edged my fingers over the delicately embroidered fabric and tried to follow the swirling floral designs, but it made my eyes swell. And the story behind the dress made my heart squeeze and choke. This dress was seductively gorgeous, like electric sunshine and deep, velvet midnight, but, with that back-story, I could imagine there was any way Evan could wear it and taste anything but the hard swallow of bitter misery.

  “That sucks.” It’s all I could think to say as I slid the dress on the hanger and slipped it into the tiny, dark closet.

  Evan’s voice twined in my ears. “Money means everything to my parents. Daddy especially, because his family seems to have this knack for almost losing it all once a generation or so. Mama comes from money, too, but my daddy can waste a whole lotta money. Two family fortune’s worth. Piles and piles and piles of money.” Her voice sing-songed a little, and she turned her face toward me, her forehead wrinkled and her eyebrows squished low over her eyes. “You know, I’ve never told my best friend any of this. I never even told my boyfriend.” She pulled her hands in and folded them over her stomach. “I just feel like I can trust you.”

  I finished hanging the last of her dresses and surveyed the now-neat room, feeling totally content. I fell onto the bed next to her, only caring a tiny bit that all the tight corners had loosened up. “You can trust me. I won’t tell anyone.” She was chewing her lips with such quick, desperate nips, I was sure her teeth would bite right through the skin, but they didn’t. “So, you have a boyfriend back home?” I asked to take her mind off of everything in her world that was buckling and folding like cheap luggage.

  She rolled her eyes in a circle that had to be nerve-damaging and popped up on her elbow. “It’s very, very, very complicated. Very crazy and tempestuous and all this make-up and break-up drama. Ugh. And complicated.” She covered her eyes with her hands and laughed. “Did I mention complicated already?”

  “So, was he upset about you coming here?”

  My boyfriend Jake was so good. Deliciously good. Amazingly good. He was the one wiping my tears before we left for the airport. He was the one who bought me a guide to Dublin and spent nights going over how awesome this whole experience would be until I calmed down and slept with peaceful Irish dreams dancing in my brain. He was my rock, and I missed him so much at that moment, the ache of it cut me to the quick.