“Riley…”

“But I didn’t stop, I couldn’t. I just kept driving, hitting wall after wall until there was nowhere else left to go and the car wouldn’t move and I just sat there with smoke around me and my mind gone and my heart dead in the bottom of the lake.”

Dylan clears his throat. “And then what happened?”

“Cops came. Fire trucks. Ambulances. Apparently I’d gone through five different businesses in my fit of rage. Jake’s dad’s law practice was one of them. That’s how he knows about it. I got arrested and charged with so many felonies, I can’t even name them. Mom hired a lawyer to try to get me out of it using temporary insanity as a defense, but it’s a small town. I ruined people’s businesses, their incomes, their livelihoods. It didn’t matter that I was still hurting. I caused more suffering than Jeremy’s death had caused me. It was like a witch-hunt, pitchforks and everything. They probably would’ve burned me at the stakes if they could. But not Jake’s dad. For some reason he felt for me and he helped my mom get rid of her hired lawyer and he offered her a deal. Pay off what the insurance doesn’t cover for the damage caused and six months of home-arrest. Ankle bracelet and everything. My mom took it. I was too fucked up to care. Mom lost all her clients. Then she had to sell the salon to pay everyone and I started to drink. After a while, I couldn’t stop drinking. And Mom didn’t stop supplying it. It was easier for her to deal with me in a sedated state of constant semi drunk than deal with watching my emotional pain.”

Dylan takes a huge breath, his chest heaving and pushing against my side. “Riley. What happened to you, the way people treated you… that’s their shame to carry. Not yours,” he says, repeating my words.

I face him, watching him blink back his own tears. “It took me a long time to work that out. A really long time. And when I did, I just got more pissed because they weren’t fucking there, Dylan. No one was. They weren’t there when I was sinking, drowning, trying to search for Jeremy. They weren’t there when I finally found his body, eyes open, laying cold and still under the water. They weren’t the ones who tasted the blood in their mouths… or woke up for weeks after… dreaming of that same blood-stained water drowning them and killing them. They didn’t feel the burn in their lungs when they screamed for help, their mouths and lungs filling and dying for air. I swam to the shore and screamed and screamed and nobody came. Nobody heard me. Nobody saved him. I was the one who dived back in, who kicked and kicked and used every single bit of strength I had to get him out. His eyes were still open, Dylan. His beautiful lifeless eyes were still there, but they were dead. And so was he. His head was on my lap, his blood on my hands, and I knew he was dead. I just cried and held him. I didn’t know what else to do. People came, people shouted, people cried. And the next thing I knew, I was being pulled away from him—the boy I love. They were taking him away from me. And the first thing they did was close his eyes.” I choke hard on the sob and finally release it, my breaths as weak as the rest of my body. “Those eyes were mine. They belong to me and they took them away from me.”

He kisses away my tears, his body warm against mine.

We breathe through the pain, apart but together, and we hold each other. We hold on to the only thing that makes sense in an otherwise messed-up world and we allow ourselves to hurt and to grieve and to love and to forgive. We watch the sun move across the sky, feel the wind envelop us. And we keep close the chaos we created and the truth that releases it.

We bleed our hearts, bare our souls, and in the end, we hold on to a once untouchable reality.

He pulls away, his hands cupping my face and his eyes searching mine. Then he smiles—a childish innocent smile his mother gets to witness. And somehow, some way, he finds a way to release my hurt. “That’s it? That’s all of it?” he asks.

“That’s it,” I tell him.

He kisses my lips. Just once. “You’re just a little broken, Riley Hudson. That’s all. Now you just have to let me be the glue that keeps you together.”

Twenty-Two

Riley

We drive home in the complete opposite setting to the drive there. I sit in the middle of the seat, his hand on my leg, the afternoon sun beating down on us while he tells me about the engine that’s been sitting in his garage since he was sixteen. Occasionally, he’ll ask if I’m sure I want to hear about it. I tell him he’s stupid and to keep going. Of course I want to hear about it. I write down what type it is so I can google it later and prove it to him. Then I tell him about seeing him the first time when I was twelve and he was in his driveway and how I went home and thought about kissing him. He eyes me sideways, a clear smirk on his lips, then he calls me a juvenile horn-bag and pushes me away. A second later, though, he pulls me back and apologizes. Then he adds that had he known I felt that way, he probably would have walked around shirtless a lot more. I remind him I was twelve. He reminds me of his bacon joke and uses it to prove that in his mind, he’s still twelve.

It’s perfect—better than any dream I’ve ever had.

He talks about his friends and what they got up to yesterday, his generally good mood switching for a moment when he tells me about what they did to his room.

I laugh. I can’t stop laughing. “I have to see it,” I tell him.

So when we pull into his garage, he opens my door, helps me to step out and holds my hand as he leads me through his house. The one and only time I’d been inside, I only really saw the hallway and the kitchen. He shows me through the rest of the house, which is basically just the living room. It’s nice. Neat. But definitely very male. The one thing that stands out are the pictures framed and hanging on the walls. So many pictures of Dylan, of his brother, of his mom and dad, and then of the three Banks Military Men. From babies, to kids, to teens to adults. There’s even a glass case in the living room with all the boy’s trophies and participation ribbons. Basketball for Dylan. Academics for Eric. I point to one of him standing next to his truck, Jake next to him, with the bed loaded. “What’s that?”

“That would be the day I left for UNC.”

“I bet your dad was proud.”

He smiles. “Honestly, I could’ve flunked out of high school and pressed metal over at the factory like he does and he’d still be proud.” He places his hands on my waist and kisses my shoulder. “Okay. My room. Promise not to laugh?”

“I can’t promise that. At all.”

He rolls his eyes but guides me, his hands staying where they are, through the living room, past the hallway, and to his closed door. “Ready?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,” I joke.

He reaches across and turns the handle, then stops. “I just want to make it clear that this isn’t some kind of personal joke or anything. Never, and I mean ever have I mentioned anything about ponies or glitter or—”

“Just open the door,” I say through a laugh.

I try. Truly, I try not to laugh, but how can I not? It’s ridiculous. He gently pushes me inside, while I continue to cackle with laughter, my hands out, moving the streamers out of the way. He stands in front of me shaking his head. “It gets worse,” he tells me, grasping my shoulders and spinning me around to face his now closed door. “High School Musical?” I almost shout, turning to him. But before I can laugh, before I can breathe, his mouth is on mine, his hands gripping my waist, pushing me slowly until my back’s against the door. His tongue parts my lips and I welcome it. I welcome him and his entire body as he pushes up and into me, his leg between mine, his hands gripping my wrists and moving them above my head. He doesn’t stop kissing me, not for a second. When he needs air, he moves from my lips down to my neck and I gasp for breath, but he doesn’t give me long before his mouth covers mine again and I get lost. Completely lost. In this moment and in his kiss and in our mixed moans. He steps back, just enough to shift so his hips are between my legs and I can feel his excitement pressed against my stomach. He takes his hand off my wrists and uses the other to keep both my hands pinned against the door, trapped with his force. His free hand glides down my side, past the swell of my breast and my waist, ending on my bare thigh. He lifts my leg, forcing them both off the ground, using his body to pin me in place before his mouth is on my jaw, my neck, my collarbone, his tongue sliding across my skin.