“I have to go somewhere,” I tell Rachel. “Can you get a ride home?”

“I mean, everyone’s treating me like a leper since Matt and I hooked up, but sure, I guess I can suck it up and get in a car with someone who smiles to my face and trash-talks behind my back.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s important.”

She sighs. “Fine, Brown. But you’ll owe me one.”

“Oh? For driving out to your house and bringing you here, I’ll owe you one?”

“Basically.”

I grab her in a hug, and she stiffens for a second before reciprocating. “Thanks,” I tell her. “For everything.”

“Whatever.”

I drive along the stretch of gravel past the Kincaids’ barn all the way to Beau’s house, rain nearly blinding me despite the rapid-fire swishing of the windshield wipers. I step out of the car amid a clap of thunder and scan the little house and yard in front of me.

It’s the unused rental property with cracked windows and an unshorn lawn, not Beau’s. I let myself in and meander down the damp and humid hallways to the empty room that should be his. I sit down in the corner where his bed should be and focus all my energy on trying to reach him, calling his name and imagining my stomach rising and falling as though I’m floating over immense waves.

I don’t feel him. He’s not here, not even in a different here.

I leave the house again, the screen door swinging closed behind me, and bend my head against the rain as I dash toward my car and click the key into the lock.

“Hey,” says a voice muffled by distance, and I look up, turning in place. I feel him seconds before I see him, standing at the far end of the driveway and cornfield, his hair and clothes soaked through along with the paper bag he’s holding down at his side.

Despite all that, Beau looks happy. Quiet, content.

“Hey.”

He lifts the bag up. “Been lookin’ for you.”

Tears of relief form in the corners of my eyes as I start slowly toward him. He ambles toward me too, and when I break into a jog, he tosses the bagged bottle aside and starts running to me through the rain.

I am so relieved.

I am so near to happy, so close to feeling safe.

I throw myself against him, and he lifts me up, arms enfolding me, mouth on mine as rain slides between and around us. “You’re shaking,” he says, looking into my eyes.

I shake my head. I can’t speak without crying. I can’t tell him that I know everything—that it wasn’t his fault Matt had a problem, even if the Kincaids blamed him. All I can say is “I thought I lost you.”

“No.” His hands glide up through my sopping hair to grasp the sides of my face, and he kisses me roughly before shaking his head. “No.”

The rain’s falling hard, slapping the corn and the grass and the gravel mercilessly, and I can barely hear his voice. “Matt’s an alcoholic,” I say.

Beau’s eyes drop. “I know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

His gaze barely lifts, a pained smile tightening one corner of his mouth. “Where do you think a golden boy like Matt Kincaid learns to drink, Natalie? You think he just stumbles on a bottle of whiskey in the woods one day? Surely not from the loser kid of the alcoholics next door.”

“You drink to help pass between worlds,” I say. “You can’t blame yourself.”

He shakes his head, still avoiding my eyes. “Natalie, you and I both know I drink for all kinds of reasons,” he says. “And you know what’s messed up? I can stop when I want, right in the middle of a drink, with a shot glass against my mouth—doesn’t matter. I’ve lived with enough addicts to know that’s not how it works for them. I never thought—I expected it to be easy for Kincaid, like it was for me. Easier, even. I thought, hell, we lose a game, he’s mad at his parents, he needs to blow off some steam, whatever—we can drink it off. It’s what I’ve done whenever I’ve had a problem since I was fourteen and my mom left us the first time. I didn’t know what it would do to him—what I was doing to him.”

He tips his chin down and scrunches his eyes shut, shaking his head to draw back emotion. “I didn’t know.”

“Beau.” I take the sides of his face between my palms. “Matt’s an alcoholic in my world too. And it’s not because his best friend is Beau Wilkes. You don’t even exist to him. It’s because he has a certain personality type. It’s because we all took it too lightly. None of us knew.”

I tip his face upward, but his focus stays low, avoiding me.

“What happened—it wasn’t our fault in either world. And Matt’s problems . . . you’re not the reason he has them. They were always going to come out eventually.”

Finally he raises his gaze to mine, brow furrowed. “I told you. It wouldn’t matter. My fault or not, I wasn’t trying to stay away from you, Natalie. It’s getting harder to find my way back to you, and I’m losing track of time. Big chunks of it.”

My heart stalls in my chest. I thought I’d found the key, unlocked the answer. I thought I could make Beau stop blaming himself and then he’d stop disappearing, and all along, it was out of our control. I swallow a fist-sized knot in my throat. “What do you think it means?”

He slides his hands around my hips and glances down before meeting my eyes. “We’re running out of time.”

I fight back more tears. I’ve been crying too much lately. I’m so tired of crying. I push up on tiptoes and kiss the space between Beau’s eyes, as if to smooth out the furrow there. “Don’t let go.”

And he doesn’t.

Not as we make our way inside the abandoned house, creaking with the swell of humidity and the drop in air temperature. Not as we lie down on the floor where his bed should be. Not all night as we entwine around one another.

He holds on to me with every part of him all night, hardly blinking, until suddenly, he disappears from my arms.

27

“We’re running out of time,” I tell Alice. I finished explaining everything that’s happened at least two minutes ago, but she hasn’t said a word. I’ve seen Beau for a couple of hours the last two days, but both of those visits ended with him disappearing from me—Sunday evening as we sat on the bleachers of the football stadium watching the sun fall, and Monday morning as we lay together in his bed, fingers twirled through one another’s hair. “What happened when you ran out the other day?” I ask. “Did you figure something out?”