She turned her face and sniffled. “I’m not a grown-up.”

“What is even the matter?”

“I don’t know what to say to people.”

“It’s a movie. We’re not saying anything.”

“But if we were talking. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

I didn’t know the first thing about how to cure a hypothetical problem that I would have barely understood even if it hadn’t been hypothetical.

Which meant that a few moments passed, during which Sofia grew more upset and I grew more angry and thought more about dead people and how my brother was one of them, dead in a hole instead of in a clean white box in California.

“Hey,” said a voice behind me. Against all reason, it was Jeremy. He was all unthreatening and hunched over, tucking one bit of hair behind his ear. “It’s me. I came to see if everything was okay?”

“Oh, she’s . . .” upset with life.

His presence pushed Sofia over the edge. She wailed, “Now I’ve really ruined things!”

I snapped, “You have not.”

Jeremy said smoothly, “Oh, hey, no. Cole’s just on his date with Leon; they’re having a grand old time. So hey, hey, do you mind if I try something? It’s this thing I learned in, like . . .”

He’d moved around me to face her. And something about his expression must have looked more comforting than mine, because Sofia gulped down the latest batch of tears and met his eyes.

“You just get overwhelmed, right?” Jeremy asked. He gestured while he said it. He had long, long fingers. Bassist fingers.

He started to tap his breastbone with one hand, and with the other, he took her limp wrist and made her mimic the gesture on herself. “Tap here and just say something with me. Just say, like, ‘We’re all cool here. They like my smile.’ ”

What the hell.

Sofia offered him a shy smile.

What the hell times two.

“Now tap here,” Jeremy said, and started tapping his chin. I expected Sofia to refuse — I would have — but she did as he did. “And say, ‘We’re all cool here. They think I’m nice.’ ”

Times three. What. The. Hell.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Is this happening?”

“Isabel,” Jeremy said mildly, “this is a positive space.”

Sofia suppressed a startled and watery giggle. I rolled my eyes. “Will this be long?”

“Is eternity long?” asked Jeremy.

“Oh my —”

He grinned. “I’m totally kidding. It’ll be five or ten minutes.”

I pointed outside. “I’ll be out there. Are you okay with that, Sofia?”

She was. Of course. Imaginary creatures are always happy with other imaginary creatures.

I had only made it a few yards out into the darkness when Cole appeared right in front of me. His eyes were hungry.

“Isabel —”

I just had enough time to feel his fingers seize my hand, pulling me aside, and then we were around the side of the mausoleum and kissing. It was such an instantaneous thing, something I’d wanted so much, that it was impossible for me to decide if he had begun it or if I had. Everything in my brain shut down except for his mouth, his body, his fingers banded tightly around my upper arm, the other hand hitching my skirt.

His hand on my thigh was a question: My hands pulling him closer was the answer.

It wasn’t really dark enough to hide us, Sofia could come out with Jeremy and see us, I was not supposed to be getting in too deep.

It didn’t matter.

I wanted him.

A flashlight swept across our faces. A warning.

“Hey, kids,” said a guy. Standard-issue security guard. “Get a room.”

Cole stopped kissing me, but he didn’t let go.

“Yeah,” he said, flashing a tense smile at the guard, who moved on. Then he whispered in my ear, all tongue and teeth, “Come back with me.”

My pulse crashed in my stomach and my thighs. I knew what he meant, but I said, “I was on my way back.”

“Not that,” Cole said. Then repeated, “Not that. After.

Come back with me.”

He wasn’t talking about making out. He was talking about sex.

I said, “I have to take Sofia back home.”

“I’ll pick you up,” Cole said.

My body hummed an answer for me. I tried to think clearly.

“How would I get home?”

“Home?” Cole echoed, as if he had no idea what the word meant. “Stay. I’ll take you back in the morning. Isabel —”

“Stay!” I whispered, suddenly hot. It wasn’t staying that I was afraid of. It was that I might like staying, and then what happened when one of us got tired of the other? I’d seen those sorts of fights often enough at the House of Misery to know I didn’t want it. Two days ago, he hadn’t been here, and now he wanted me to spend the night with him. Maybe he was a coolass rock star who’d laid a ton of girls, but I was just a possibly ex-Catholic girl who had gotten to third base a few times.

“What do you want from me?”

“I told you,” he said. “Dinner. Dessert. Sex. Life.”

Somehow hearing him say it sort of hurt, because of how much I wanted to believe it versus how much I really did believe it. I told him, “You’re saying that because you think you look good saying it.”

Cole made a dismissive sound. “I am, but I also mean it.”

I removed his hand from my ass so I could think better.

“Slower, Cole.”

He sighed, noisy and melodramatic. Then he dropped his head onto my shoulder, breathing into my collarbone. For once not moving, not needing, not asking, not doing. Just holding me, and letting me hold him up.

It was the most shocking thing.

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

And here was what I was most afraid of: that Cole St. Clair would fall in love with me, and I’d fall in love with him, both of us human weapons, and we’d both end up with broken hearts.

Chapter Fifteen

· cole ·

Isabel didn’t come back with me, which meant I was still in the apartment alone, the giant moon observing me through the glass deck doors. I wanted her so badly that I couldn’t think.

There were an uncountable number of minutes between now and morning.