“The boy?” She leans into the room conspiratorially. “The incredibly, ridiculously hot boy?”

I slap my forehead and flop back down. “What time is it?”

“Eleven.”

“Floods, who gets up before noon on a day when they don’t have anything going on?” I couldn’t sleep in the first few days, my well-trained internal alarm jolting me awake immediately. So I’ve started staying up as late as physically possible to force my body into needing the extra sleep in the morning. Who knew being lazy was such hard work?

“He’s already in the room priming. He’s been here for over an hour, told me not to wake you. I figured it had been long enough.”

With a growl I throw back the covers and stomp down the hall to the nursery.

Ry’s in a light-blue T-shirt and worn-out jeans. Three-quarters of the room is already primed, and music plays softly from an iPod dock in the corner. When I demanded that Ry pay me back for advising him on his travesty of a bedroom, I hadn’t expected him to take me up on it willingly—or quickly.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask, squinting against the brilliant light streaming in through the blank, undressed window.

“Hmm?” He looks over, and his face breaks into a smile—chaos, how does he do that? It’s like his whole body glows. It scatters my waking grouchiness, and I can feel a glow warming me, too. “Wasn’t I supposed to help?”

“Well, yeah, but I thought I’d have to drag you over here or something.”

He shrugs and goes back to the wall. “Nah, it’s kind of fun. Sorry for just showing up, but I didn’t have anything else to do this morning.”

“No writing? Your muse isn’t speaking to you?”

“She rarely does. International call charges and whatnot. Besides which, she’s flighty and nearly impossible to understand. And she says I always misinterpret her intentions.”

“Muses. What can you do, right?” I run my fingers through my hair again, back and forth, making it stand up even more. I could use a shower. Then again, if I’m going to paint, might as well wait. And it’s not like I care what Ry thinks of my hair. Or my smell.

I stretch and surreptitiously sniff myself in case. Not that you can smell anything over the itchy chemical scent of the paint, but there’s no reason to stink in front of anyone if you don’t have to. I can let my eye makeup go this once, but I refuse to smell bad, ever.

“All right then,” I say with a sigh, “let’s do this thing.”

The canvas is rough and bunched up under my feet, and I run back to my room to change into a grubbier set of pajamas. I’ve mostly got everything back in order from the break-in, but some of the drawers were damaged and won’t open anymore, so I’ve been using my suitcase as extra storage. Reaching into the corner of one of the gaping pockets, I frown. Burlap? I pull out the tiny package and stare dumbly at it until it sinks in.

Ingredients. Pendants. My mom packed me an emergency magic kit, and these pendants aren’t broken. For some reason it makes me feel happy, safer. Which kind of annoys me.

Skipping back to the nursery, I grab a roller and start at the opposite end of the last wall. I’m glad Ry’s a fast worker—I hate priming rooms. It leaves your whole body sore and accomplishes nothing except setting the stage for more work. Ry doesn’t talk, humming softly along to the music as he carefully and methodically paints.

“What is this?” I ask. We both keep our eyes on our rollers, moving slowly but surely toward each other.

“Hmm?”

“This song. ‘Oh, hey, it’s okay that I slept with you and left the next morning without a word, because someday someone will love you.’ Seriously?”

He laughs. “I dunno, it has a nice message: we’ll all find love eventually.”

“That’s not the message at all! That’s the excuse! He’s saying it’s okay he used her because someday someone will actually love her, unlike him. Dude deserves to be castrated, if you ask me.”

Ry chokes a bit, a strangled laugh. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

“Whatever. See what I mean though? He’s using her; she’s crying and waiting for the day when someone won’t. What kind of a life would that be? Screw it. I can be whole without depending on someone else, thank you very much.”

“You can’t really love someone romantically unless you’re already whole anyway, though. So you’re right on that count.”

“But if you’re whole, you don’t need to love anyone.”

“But how can you really be whole if you can’t allow that part of yourself its portion of your life?”

“Romance is not a requirement for a happy life.”

“I strongly and completely disagree. But however you feel about romance, love is definitely a requirement. Like your family. You can’t be whole without them, right?”

They can be whole without me. All they do is pop out another baby, another battery to brainwash into worshipping them. I jam my roller furiously against the wall, too much paint oozing out of the pores of the roller and splotching my even stroke. “Families make holes. They don’t fill them.”

Brilliant. Now I have to go back over that section to even out the paint. Before I’m finished, Ry’s made his way over and is standing right next to me.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is soft and he stands there, waiting, until I finally look up into his face. “Do you want to talk about it?” I feel his eyes swallowing me, all kindness and understanding. I know I could tell him. Part of me wants to tell him, more than anything I’ve ever wanted, to spill out all the pain and betrayal and years of heartache, let it drop out of me and onto him and finally relieve all this pressure that I carry around until I feel like I’m going to burst from the strain of hurting so much and trying so hard not to care.