“My mom cleans when she’s upset,” Conway says, leaning on the counter next to the sink as I wash the dishes.

“I’m not upset,” I tell him.

“Leroy and I were talkin’. We thought maybe we could take Dylan to a hotel or something, just for the night—”

“What?” I ask, my fear turning to confusion. “Why would you do that?”

“Just to give you space, Riley. For him to find—”

“But this is his home,” I whimper, patting my chest with my wet hand. “I’m his home.”

Conway doesn’t seem to believe me.

And neither do I.

He pats my shoulders as he walks past. “Good night, Riley. Thank you for everything.”

I wait until he’s gone before opening the fridge and grabbing a beer.

Just one, I tell myself.

I need it to dull the ache.

Dylan returns a few hours later, his entire frame freezing when he sees me sitting in the middle of the bed staring at the unopened bottle of beer.

I couldn’t do it—not after everything we’d been through to get me here.

I can feel him approach, but I don’t take my eyes off my temptation. He leans over the bed, grabs the beer and takes it away. “I went for a drive,” he says, walking out of the bedroom. I hear the fridge door open and close and his footsteps returning. He sits on the bed, right in front of me, legs crossed just like mine, but I’m too afraid to look at him. “It wasn’t the same without you, Ry.” He takes one of my hands in his, the other going to my chin, forcing me to face him. The anger in his eyes is no longer there. Now replaced with sympathy and regret. I wish I could believe him. “I missed you riding in my truck, sitting in the middle of the seat like you always do.” The corners of his mouth lift as he wipes my tears, adding, “I had nowhere to put my hand.”

I ignore how his touch makes me feel, how his words seem to remove the effects of his actions. “Dylan, you can’t just do what you did, then come back and act like it never happened,” I say, the shakiness of my voice defying the strength I needed to fake.

He just stares at me, all emotion wiped from his features.

“Babe,” I beg. “You have to give me something here. I don’t know what happened.” I reach out to cup his face, but before I can even touch him, he pulls back.

For a split second, the fury flames in his eyes again but it disappears as soon as he must see the hurt in mine. He studies me, for seconds that feel like minutes, he just looks at me. “I’d never hurt you, Riley,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. He releases a single tear, letting it fall, bringing my defenses with it. “You know that, right?”

“I know, baby.” I spring forward, my arms going around his neck, his going to my waist.

We hold each other tight, finally succumbing to the exhaustion of our emotions.

And I fall asleep in the safest, most dangerous way possible; in the arms of a boy I love, a boy I no longer know.

Forty-Two

Riley

I wake up to the sounds of Dylan moving around the room, his footsteps heavy. The bed dips, causing me to open my eyes. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, slipping on his shoes.

“You’re leaving?” I ask, checking the time on my phone. It’s barely seven in the morning. We’d only been asleep for a few hours.

After sighing loudly, he says. “Since you found it so necessary to tell Eric I was back, they want to see me.” He glances at me quickly. “You coming?”

It’s hard not to feel the sharpness of every word spat, each one used to create a wound in my already shattered heart. My voice timid, I answer, “Do you want me to?”

He shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling. “It’d be pretty pathetic if I showed up without you, right?”

I quickly get ready and fake another smile as he tells the guys we’ll be back and to make themselves at home—as if they weren’t already doing that. I take Bacon with us, because I don’t trust him with them, and we get in his truck and drive, me sitting in the middle—both his hands on the steering wheel. I’m glad he chose not to walk, because I don’t think I could handle all that silence.

He turns to me as he puts the truck in park. I can tell he wants to say something and I’m almost positive of what it is. Keep faking it, Riley. So I do. I grasp his hand as he opens the front door to the house and smile beside him like the perfect girlfriend I’m supposed to be, but inside… I’m slowly dying, and right now, all I can think about is running back to my room—not ours, but mine—and letting my emotions get lost in an entire bottle of wine. Or four. Because I miss everything we created in the four walls of that room when the darkness of my grief overshadowed everything else. Until he showed up.

It doesn’t take long for everyone to fall into a natural routine after the initial greetings. We sit at the kitchen table—Bacon in his high chair—and we eat. Eric, Mal and Sydney talk. We listen. Occasionally they’ll ask something of us. We reply as best we can. Dylan takes my hand resting on the table and holds it in his.

Keep faking it, Riley.

“What happened to your hand?” Sydney asks, pointing to Dylan’s hand. I hadn’t even noticed the cuts and bruises until she mentioned it.

Next to me, Dylan tenses. I cover his hand with mine, hiding the evidence, but it’s too late.

“Did you get into a fight?” Eric asks him.