“What?” Her eyes are huge.

   I chuckle. “Not like that—just sleep. I miss you in my arms so much, Kayla. I just want you near me.”

   “Okay,” she says, smiling. She sits down next to me on the edge of my bed. We’re both a little quiet now—thinking, I guess. It will be the first time we’ll sleep together since the bonfire party.

   “Kayla.” I clear my throat. “I need you to do something for me.”

   “Anything,” she whispers.

   “I know that you said you wanted to move out. You have your reasons, and I respect that.” I pause and take a few breaths, because I don’t want to sound angry when I say the next part. “But please, don’t move near that guy. I just don’t trust him, and he obviously wants you—”

   “Jake—”

   “No, Kayla. I know you’re naive when it comes to these things, but he does, and you’re—”

   “Jake, stop. I’m not going to. I know how you feel, and I wouldn’t do that to you. I respect your feelings, and I would never do anything that would make you question mine.”

   I take her hand and kiss her palm. I’ll never understand how some jerk-off had her and treated her like shit. I’m going to be the luckiest asshole in the world when she finally lets me love her.

FORTY-TWO

JAKE

   When I open the front door, I see Kayla sitting at the dining table, a shoe box, a bazillion magazines, and craft supplies in front of her.

   “What are you doing? Decoupage?”

   She eyes me curiously and starts to laugh.

   “What?” I say. “Mom went through a craft phase when she was pregnant with JuJu. Seriously, though, what are you doing?” I drop my gear bag near the front door and walk over to her.

   She’s cutting pictures out of a bunch of teenybopper magazines—Justin Bieber, One Direction, and some dudes from those vampire movies and the show in which kids kill each other. I look at her for a long moment. She stares back. “You’re not going on a stalker road trip with Heidi, are you?” I ask seriously. She laughs.

   I walk to the fridge to pull out a bottle of water. I sit down on the chair next to her, and she gets up and sits on my lap. We haven’t spoken about what happened the night of Logan’s frat party. We haven’t made anything official yet, and we still haven’t kissed properly. The kissing part is quickly driving me crazy. I don’t mind everything else. We sleep in my bed every night, and we more-than-a-lot like each other. That’s enough for me for now—but not forever. Soon, we’re going to have to talk about it.

   I put my hand on her waist, and she wraps her arms around my neck. I kiss her temple.

   “What are your plans for tomorrow?” she whispers.

   “Spending the day with you?”

   She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

   “What’s going on, Kayla? Did something happen?”

   She slides off my lap and sits back down on her chair. She picks up the scissors and starts cutting the magazines again. She’s quiet, and I let her be. I know this side of her. She’s working up the courage to speak, so I wait.

   “It’s Emily’s birthday tomorrow,” she says quietly, putting down the scissors then looking up at me, tears filling her eyes. I pull her chair closer to me then lift her up and cradle her like I used to.

   “We have this family tradition. Every year on our birthdays, we’d sit down and make ourselves these boxes.” She points to the shoe box. “We’d stick pictures on them of things that reminded us of that year—guys, movies, songs, anything we were into at the moment. We’d leave an opening at the top, kind of like a mailbox, and store them in the pantry. Whenever someone did something worth remembering, or something nice, or they made you laugh, we’d write it on a note card and put it in their box. It could be anything, really. I remember one year I put in Emily’s box that I saw her picking her nose and eating it.” She laughs sadly. “We started the tradition when I was about five, and we started to make Emily’s when she was about that age, too.”

   Tears are running down her face, and I wipe them away with my fingers. I try to breathe through the lump in my throat, because I don’t want her to see me crying. I don’t want her to know how much my heart is breaking right now, too—how much I wish that I could fix this pain she has to carry everywhere, every day.

   “Then each year on our birthdays, we’d open our box and read the notes. It was like a year’s worth of surprises and memories at once. We always opened them at our birthday dinner and go through them one by one. It didn’t matter if it lasted for hours. We laughed and cried through every single note.” She’s quiet again as she remembers.

   “It sounds like an amazing tradition,” I say, squeezing her tightly.

   “It was only for Dad, Emily, and me. Mom didn’t get one,” she continues.

   I have to clear my throat. “Why not?”

   “Because, Dad said, we should treat Mom like every day is her birthday. She did so much for the family, and meant so much to us, that we should appreciate her every second of every day. Dad made her a special box out of plastic, and we’d write notes to put in it. Because there were so many, she got to read them once a week. A lot were from Dad, reminding her how much he loved and appreciated her. Some were from Emily and me. We used to write stupid things, but we always meant them—like ‘Thank you for washing my baseball or dance gear,’ or ‘Thank you for encouraging me or helping with my homework.’ She was an amazing woman, and Dad was right. She did so much for us. I’m glad she got to know once a week how we felt.” We’re both crying now, not looking at each other but past each other. I’m trying to imagine her life while she’s remembering it.

   “We kept the old ones from previous years in the garage. The fire took them all. That son of a bitch took so many years of love, memories, and laughter away from me.” She starts to sob as the anger consumes her. “I fucking hate him, Jake. I hate him so much. And I don’t understand why—why he couldn’t just let them go. My parents wouldn’t have done anything if he’d just let them go. It’s not like . . .” She sniffles and has to take a few deep breaths. I just sit there and let her feel, because she’s never spoken about it all like this before. She’s been sad and hurt, but she hasn’t been angry. “It’s not like he turned around and there they were, so he just started shooting. It was one shot each, straight to the head. He must have known what he was doing.”

   She’s crying on me now. The tears soak through my sweater as I hold her. It’s all I can do until both our tears stop. I pull away so I can look at her. Her big brown Bambi eyes look back at me. “What can I do to help?” I ask.