Still there.
I just need that one last reassurance she’s not going to disappear into the night and take my heart with her.
TWENTY-SIX
HARPER
“So come on, spill,”Z says the second we’re alone in the basement.
It smells like lavender and fabric softener down here. Everything matches. Cream-colored furniture. Coordinated throw pillows in teal and peach. Big prints of impressionist art on the wall that I recognize but can’t name, with water lilies and bridges and sunrises.
It’s cozy. Warm.Safe.
I can’t believe we did it. After all the waiting and fear and shame about getting out while Z was left behind, we actually did it.
Z is here.
My heart feels so full it could burst.
“Spill about what?” I laugh, finally happy without guilt gnawing at my insides.
I grab the sheets from where Caleb handed them tome upstairs—I had to shut the door in his face to do it, and I felt bad about that—and start making up the pull-out couch. But Z deserves some one-on-one time after the long car ride, where I was so exhausted and out of it, I slept the whole way.
Z’s voice drops into that low, conspiratorial whisper he always uses when we’re gossiping about something dumb. “What’s up with you and Step-boy?”
Heat crawls up from my chest, slow and suffocating. There’s the shame, back again, trying to strangle me.
“Nothing,” I say way too fast. My hands go stupid as I try to straighten a corner of the fitted sheet.
I wince as soon as I say it, because that’s not true. I mean, what Caleb and I have isn’t like any of the guys I’ve been with before. It’s not like when I lost my virginity to Danny Mueller at that house party when I was fourteen, then went home shaking, and Z held me while I sobbed. It’s not even like the handful of others I’ve hooked up with just to feel something—anything—even if that something was just being wanted and clutched in someone’s arms for a few, desperate minutes.
But with Caleb, it’s...
God, I don’t even have words for what it is with Caleb.
“Well, I mean—” I sputter, trying to find something that sounds true without beingtootrue. “Just—You know how I am with guys.”
I wince the second the words leave my mouth.
Because that’s a lie.
A complete fucking lie.
And Z will know it. Z knows me better than anyone.
Z goes totally still. “You’re hooking up with him.”
Last night flashes through my head—Caleb’s hands on my skin, his mouth on mine, the way he looked at me like I was somethingprecious—and heat floods my face so fast I feel dizzy with it.
My cheeks are burning. My hands are shaking.
I shrug, suddenly intensely focused on shoving sheet corners into place like my life depends on perfect hospital corners. “I mean—You know. Sort of.”
“Jesus, he’s yourstepbrother.” Z’s disgusted voice lands like a slap. It’s judgmental in a way I never expected from him. Z, who laughed when I told him about the married guy (I didn’t know untilafterwe’d hooked up, in my defense); Z, who high-fived me when I made out with two different guys at the same party; Z, who never once made me feel like I waswrongfor the way I moved through the world.
“That’s fucked up, Harper.”
My eyes shoot to his. Something hot and sharp flares in my chest.