He closes the door. “Of course it does. You seem to forget I taught you everything you know,” he says, stopping beside me. “It’s to the exact specifications you wanted, Josh. I went over it fifty times. Even had Kim out with the measuring tape just to be sure. I know how important it is to you.”

“I appreciate it. I just wish I had the time to do it myself.”

“We can say you did. She doesn’t have to know.”

“And live the rest of my life under God’s watchful eye knowing I lied to her? Nah, man. I’m good.”

He laughs at that before motioning to my cast. “Are you going to be able to help me put it together, or you want me to call one of the guys?”

As if right on cue, the front door opens and Aaron and Martin walk out, Becca following behind them. “You guys need a hand?” Aaron asks.

I look over his shoulder at Becca, who’s looking down at her feet.

Then I nod.

I smile.

And I act amicable toward him, just like I said I’d be. “That would be swell.”

“Swell?” Robby whispers.

I turn to him, baring my teeth with the fakest of all fake grins. “Just fucking swell, Rob.”

* * *

With Aaron’s help, it doesn’t take long for us to put together the arbor I’d had Robby build. For the past six months, Chaz had been hinting about it. Talking about it. Showing me pictures of it. Asking to go on trips to the lumber yard to pick out the material. Even going as far as making copies of the picture and wallpapering my bedroom with it while I was out of town. “I got jokes,” she’d said when I confronted her. But I don’t think it was about the arbor itself. I think she did it for the same reasons Robby built the half pipe in his yard. It was a reminder that I had a family and a home, and they were all here waiting for me.

I sit on the grass and compare the picture in my hand to the arbor itself and smile a genuine smile for the first time today. “It looks really good, man,” Aaron says, sitting down next to me.

Taking a breath, I try to ignore the anger and jealousy building in my chest. “Yeah, it turned out amazing.” I don’t know what he’s doing—sitting next to me trying to drum up conversation like we’re old friends. I stare down at my shoes and clench my fists, mentally picturing them smashing his face. Over and over. Right in his perfect poster-child Abercrombie model looking douche-tool teeth.

“So Grams tells me you’re home from a media tour or something?”

I hate that he calls her Grams. I hate him. Still, I smile, my hands now fisted in the grass beside me. I’m about to answer, but something cold, something wet, is placed on my arm, and I know what it is without looking. My eyes drift shut, memories of a scorching summer day with the exact same sensation filling my mind. Blindly, I reach for the glass next to my arm and take a sip of the ice-cold water. I don’t look at Becca when I mumble, “Thanks,” but it doesn’t matter because she’s walking in front of me now, her legs only inches away, and it takes everything in me to not reach out, to not touch her. But he does. He wraps his hand around her ankle as she passes him his own glass. “Thanks, baby,” he tells her, and I puke. In my mouth. Just a little. I wait for her to leave because I can handle her, I can even handle him, but I can’t handle them together. She doesn’t leave, though. Instead, she sits down opposite us, not in front of me, but not in front of him, either. She crosses her long, perfect legs, and I blink hard, pushing away the reminder of what it felt like to be between them. Her hands settle on her lap and she chews her lip, her gaze moving between Aaron and me. Then she pauses on me, her eyes pleading. For what? I have no idea.

I have absolutely no fucking clue what she could possibly want from me. It should be enough that I haven’t broken a skateboard on her boyfriend’s face, but now she’s looking at me, wanting more, and I have nothing more to give.

I’ve given her everything I am.

“Thanks for your help, man,” I tell Aaron, standing up and taking my glass with me.

I spend the next half hour pretending like I give a shit about balloons and flower arrangements and cheese fucking platters. It was a lot easier to pretend I cared about those things than to pretend like I didn’t care that Becca and Aaron’s existence was crushing my heart, stomping on it, shredding it to pieces. “You good?” Robby asks, standing next to me.

I pick up a flower from a vase and replace it in the exact same spot. “I’m fine.”

“So… Becca just asked me to ask you if she could help with anything.”

I turn to him before looking for her in the yard. I scoff when I don’t see her. “She can ask me herself.”

“She said she would if she didn’t think you hated her.”

“I don’t hate her,” I snap.

“I know that,” he says, leaning against the catering table. “But she doesn’t, and you speaking to her boyfriend but acting like she’s invisible isn’t helping.”

I blow out a breath, my shoulders dropping with the force of it.

“Maybe just talk to her, man.”

“No.”

“Josh.”

“What?!”

Rob shakes his head. “Don’t be an asshole, okay? You’re not the only one who went through what you guys did. In fact, she had it worse. Have you even stopped to think how brave it is for her to be here right now? She’s come back to a place that’s caused her pain and grief and enough suffering to last a lifetime. Maybe try not making it about you this time and—”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

He raises his hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just…” He sighs. “I like Becca. She’s a good girl. And she was good to you and she loved Tommy—”

“Don’t,” I cut in, my tone flat.

“Just talk to her. She’s out in the driveway.”

* * *

Two years ago, I’d stood in this exact same spot beside her, watching her do the exact same thing… holding a camera to her eye, one hand gripping the body, the other twisting the lens. I remember looking at her profile, her dark skin and high cheekbones beneath eyes I wanted nothing more than to get lost in. I’d asked her why she was taking photographs of a dying flower. She’d turned to me, my breath catching when her eyes caught mine. And I’ll never forget what she said: “Some things will always be beautiful, even in the face of death.”

I’d wanted to ask her what she meant. I didn’t. Maybe I should have. Maybe that simple question could’ve saved us.

Now, she’s holding a different camera.

But she’s still the same Becca.

And I’m still so miserably in love with her.

She snaps away a few more times before lowering the camera and turning to me, her free hand pointing to herself, and then to the yard. She begins putting the camera back in its bag, and without meaning to I reach out and stop her, my hand covering hers. “I’m sorry,” I rush out. “I’ve been acting like an asshole—”

Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out, and I feel the stabbing pain of the knife in my heart, over and over, because I caused that. Regardless of how many times people have told me that it wasn’t my fault, that a lifetime’s worth of torture and turmoil led to her actions, they’re wrong. And I know that, because with every single click of a shutter I hear, every piece of elation I feel when I land a trick, every time my name’s shouted from the stands, I think of her. And I know that it’s because of her I get to have all that. And I wonder if every time she opens her mouth and silence falls from her lips, every time she types on her laptop to communicate, every time she shows a message on her phone because her voice no longer works—she thinks of me. Because I’m the one who made her that.