I leaned over to tap the packet Rex’s lackey was still fumbling through. “If I were you, I’d keep an eye on J.B.’s poster count,” I said before continuing down the hall.

Of all the posters plastered on the wall, Justin’s was the one I knew I’d be most unnerved by — so I’d made myself promise to avoid it. I was this close to reaching the junior bathroom safely when I came face to face with J.B.’s cardboard incarnation and stopped dead in my tracks.

In the picture, Justin stood tan and shirtless on one of his boats in his father’s marina down near Folly Beach. And okay, it wasn’t an entirely unattractive photo. In fact, the intense look in his deep-green eyes almost made me stumble forward. When I leaned in for a closer look, I realized I knew that boat. I’d once spent an endless evening on it back when. . well, back when things were different.

Justin Balmer, the poster read, a Prince eighteen years in the making.

Please, more like eighteen years in the faking. I’d learned the hard way that J.B. was so much less than the sum of his cotillioned parts. You’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger sham — and at Palmetto, that was saying something. I squinted at the picture, wondering which Bambi skank had taken it, and when.

“I thought you gave up idol worship.” It was Justin, leaning against the wall and smirking at me with those same green eyes. He smelled the way he always did — Kiehl’s aftershave and freshly cut grass.

I gestured at the poster, unimpressed. “I was just checking to see whether that was a smudge or a giant mole on your chest,” I said. “Have you put on some weight?”

“Cute cover up, Nat,” he said in a low voice. “But I think we already know all about each other’s secret charming imperfections.” His hand grazed the small of my back, just inside the waist of my jeans.