After a while, his arms around me slackened a little, but I refused to let go of him.

"Um..." he said, when it became evident that I had no intention of releasing him.

"Let's just stay like this for a little longer," I said, burrowing my head deeper into his soft hoodie.

"Okay."

We let the next several seconds pass without speaking.

Then he said, "Your hair smells great."

"Thanks," I mumbled. "You still smell nicer, though."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

"Nah."

As if to prove a point, he proceeded to bury his face into my hair and make a big show of inhaling deeply. The action tickled me a little, causing a tiny shiver to roll down my neck.

He hummed. "Perfect. You smell a bit like green tea."

That was the fragrance of my shampoo, and it in no way smelled nicer than Nolan's hoodie did.

"Do you even have a nose?" I demanded.

"Yes, and it works way better than yours, so I know that I'm right," he said.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.

"Nope," I said. "It's not my problem if you can't tell that you have an objectively better scent than me, even with your super sensitive nose."

"Can sense of smell really be objective, though?"

Too lazy to argue my point anymore, I responded with a hum.

We lapsed back into comfortable silence. Nolan started to stroke my hair. If I were a cat, I would have purred right then and there.

Eventually, I said, "Hey."

"Hey," he replied.

"Why do you have a fake last name?" Why did I feel like I was missing something?

"To lose any affiliation with my father while I'm in this school."

"Why do you need to lose your affiliation with him?" The feeling that I was missing some important detail persisted.

"It doesn't look good on him if his son always sleeps in class and skips gym all the time," he said. "He is the principal, you know."

"But you can't help it! It's not like you want to sleep—you have to."

"Yeah, he knows that, but the teachers don't. How do you expect him to tell the teachers about me, anyway?"

"I guess I can see what you mean."

There was no way they wouldn't freak out. I couldn't imagine Miss Wheeler or Mr. Jameson taking that particular piece of news well.

"But isn't it a bit ... cold to pretend that you're not related?" I said. "I mean, nobody else knows."

"It's working out well so far. It's the easiest when teachers send me to the principal's office. I just sit there reading a book or something for fifteen minutes. Everyone assumes that I got a lecture and thinks that the principal is so kind and understanding towards a troubled student for not throwing me out of the school. It's a win-win."

I hesitated. "Troubled student?"

"Since I got sent to the principal's office so often, my father tried to win me sympathy points so that they wouldn't expect too much of me. They don't know the details, but most of the teachers know that I took a gap year from school after my mother passed away before transferring here."

"Oh. You took a gap year?"

"Yep. I should've been in the eleventh grade this year, but ..." He ended his sentence with a shrug. "Most of them know that my stepfather sent me here."

"Does it feel weird that they know?"

"No. As long as it works to get them off my back, I don't care."

"How does your stepfather play into this? He knows that your father is the principal here, right?"

"He doesn't. I mean, I don't have a stepfather."

I pulled back to look up at him. "But you just said ... Didn't you tell me that before too? That your stepfather was the one who enrolled you here?"

"I lied about that. I'm sorry."

"Wait, then why did you tell me that you had one?"

"According to the school, I have a stepfather," he said. "If I told you and it was leaked out, at least there wouldn't be any inconsistencies."

"Oh, so you pretend to have a stepfather," I said.

The confusion in my voice must have been obvious because he said, "Maybe I should tell you a bit more about my relationship with my parents and what happened before I came to Fairwood. It might make more sense to you then." He added, after a brief pause, "If you want."

"Yeah, of course I want!" Still holding onto his arms, I sat up straight and beamed at him. "I want to hear everything about you."

Although we were officially in a relationship, sometimes it seemed to me that what I knew about Nolan barely scratched the tip of the iceberg of who he was.

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

"Uh," I said, desperately trying to will away the heat sneaking into my traitorous cheeks, "what was that for?"

"Sorry, I couldn't resist. Anyway," he said, resting his head on mine, "I'll start with my parents. They were both workaholics, so we never really spent time together as a family. They divorced when I was still in elementary school, and my father went to live in another state.

"After that, I stayed with my mother and visited my father on the weekends. She was always flying out of town on business trips, so I barely saw her around the house. I saw my nanny the most." He shifted slightly. "I miss her."

I gave him another hug, which he returned with a quick squeeze.

"I didn't really spend a lot of time with my father when I went to his place. He was always working, even at the dining table, so we didn't talk much. Neither of them was interested in getting to know me, anyway. Most of our conversations were about my studies. Come to think of it, I don't know much about them, either. They were always too busy for me.

"I didn't manage to make any friends in elementary school. But that was on me. I never tried all that hard to make them. The only person I actually talked to was my nanny.

"In middle school, though, I joined the swim team. My teammates liked having me because I was one of the fastest among them, so at least I got to make a few acquaintances there."

"When did you start learning how to swim? Did you get good there, or were you already good at it?" I asked.

"My parents signed me up for swimming classes when I was seven," he said. "They made me take piano lessons, too. I dreaded the piano ones, but I always looked forward to swimming."

Wow. I didn't know that he could play the piano.

"So that means that you were already good at it, right?"

"Yeah, I was. Then in the ninth grade, I met Eri."

"Eri?"

"She's the one who turned me into ... this," he said, looking down at himself.

If my memory served me correctly, Nolan had transferred to Fairwood in the ninth grade. That must have been when he took that gap year.

"We were assigned groupmates for a class project, which was also the first time I'd really noticed her. She was way too cheerful, and she kept trying to get me to talk to her. It took a couple of weeks of her constantly making conversation before I caved.

"She was the first real friend that I had. We could only hang out in the evenings because she had private tutoring lessons after school, but we hung out all the time after she was done. You know, in hindsight, that was probably just an excuse she made up so that she wouldn't have to go out in the afternoon."

"That would make sense," I agreed.

A half-hearted smile spread across his face. "I can't believe I never got suspicious. Anyway, we had been friends for only a few months, but it felt like we had been friends forever. My nanny returned to her hometown when I was in the seventh grade, so by that point I was desperate for friendship, some company, anything.

"I was doing really well in the swim team then, and a big competition was coming up soon. Right as things were starting to look up for me, my mother got into a car accident on the way to the airport. She died on the spot, and the police showed up at my house at night.

"You're probably going to think that I'm cold, but I didn't cry when I got the news. I couldn't cry. It was weird, how much of a stranger my own mother was to me."

"I don't think you're cold," I said, squeezing his hand.

My parents could never be like strangers to me; we knew each other too well for that. My heart ached for Nolan. I couldn't even imagine not knowing my mom and dad like I did and just being expected to live with it.

He squeezed my hand back.

"Thanks. Although I didn't cry, I was still in shock. I wasn't close to her—I barely even knew her—but now even the opportunity to learn more about her was already gone. Obviously, they contacted my father, and he flew over as soon as he could.

"I didn't cry at the wake, either. My father asked me if I wanted to transfer to Fairwood, because he couldn't stay there with me indefinitely since he needed to return eventually, but I couldn't leave my old school behind. I couldn't leave Eri behind.

"So I decided to stay behind without him. He agreed to keep our housekeeper in employment so that I could continue living in our old house until I graduated."

I frowned. "Wasn't he worried about you?"

He shrugged. "It wasn't like he saw much of me when my mother was alive, anyway, and I lived just fine without seeing her on a regular basis. When I returned to school, I seriously couldn't focus. Not on classes, not on swimming, not on anything. The day just passed by like it never happened. After school, I sat underneath the bleachers in the school gym. I needed a place to hide."

"Hide? What from?" I asked gently.

Closing his eyes, he lay back down on the grass. "I don't know. The world, I guess. I couldn't go home. I couldn't go back home to face the fact that she was gone. I couldn't deal with any of it. Eri texted me sporadically during her home tutoring, but even when she was done with her lesson, I was still sitting there.

"So she came back to school to sit there beside me. I couldn't get up, no matter how much she cajoled me. I didn't know how to talk about it, so I didn't. We ended up sitting there for a long time in silence."

If I hadn't already known what would happen between him and Eri, I would've admired how great of a friend she was to him, especially at a time when he needed one most. No wonder he trusted her.

"Eri was making a joke about having a sleepover in school when I blurted out that I was sick of everyone around me always leaving me. She said that she wouldn't leave me, that she'd always be there for me. I said that she shouldn't make promises she couldn't keep, because no one could predict the future.

"She said that she could keep this one—unless I didn't want her to. I felt like I had no one else left in my life except for her. I couldn't afford to lose her, too. I said that even though I wasn't sure she could guarantee that, it would be nice if we really could be friends forever.

"Then she said, what if she knew of a way to make sure that we would always be friends?

"I asked her what she meant.

"She asked, 'Do you really want to be friends forever?'

"I said yes. I shouldn't have said yes, Chelsea. Even now, I still wonder sometimes what would've happened if I hadn't. I didn't fully comprehend what she was saying until her fangs slid out. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't.

"I wish I could forget what she said after that. But I don't think that's possible. 'I'll tell you a secret, Nolan. I'll live forever. But you won't. Didn't you just say you wanted us to always stay friends? I know how to make that happen.'"

"What..." I said, ignoring the massive twisting of knots my stomach was currently undergoing.

"Do you remember how much disbelief you were in when you first found out about me, Chelsea?"

Speechless, I nodded.

"That was exactly my reaction then. While I was struggling to connect the dots, I started backing away from her. She was right next to me. You have no idea what it feels like to suddenly have a pair of bared fangs only inches away your face. I really thought that I was going to die right there.

"She seemed to have expected my reaction—she didn't seem bothered by it at all. I was too paralyzed with fear to make a run for it, so I opened my mouth to try to scream for help. That was when she grabbed me and bit me."

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AN: presenting nolan's backstory! this was really, REALLY hard to write (hence the late update). i'm so sorry! wow. it was like impossible. i kept rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. i'm going to get back to work on the next part now. thank you for reading and waiting for this update! you're the best. ♡ the weather's been kinda different lately; please take care and stay hydrated, everyone ♡