“Growing up . . .” He hesitates for a long moment, visibly weighing his next words. “Our feelings—mine, Julia’s, my dad’s—those didn’t matter much.”

His jaw muscles flex as he swallows. His pulse speeds against my palm. “All that mattered was how it affected our mom,” he says. “If we made her look good, then she loved us. And if we didn’t, then we were ‘out to get her.’ Once I had a stomach bug, and she was so mad at me for throwing up in the night. Said I was faking to get out of school, and if I kept pretending, I’d be grounded for a month, so I just went to class the next day, and every time I went to the bathroom, I threw up as quietly as I could. So the school wouldn’t make her come get me. Whenever I did anything that she thought made her look bad, it turned into this huge thing about how I must hate her, to try to hurt her like that. If I was upset, or anxious, or hungry, or even sick, she acted like it was something I was doing to her, and I believed it.”

“Holy shit, Miles.” I pull his hand into my lap, cup it between both of mine.

He drags his eyes up to mine. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” I say.

“That’s the thing, though,” he scratches out. “I need it to be okay. Because I need to be okay. As a kid, I just felt so fucking scared and powerless, all the time, and now I just need to be okay.” He shakes his head. “I honestly think that’s partly why Petra and I worked together. I’ve never met someone who was so . . . ‘in the moment,’ and that’s where I have to be, because if I think too much about the past or the future, I come apart. So I mostly just keep all of that stuff where I don’t have to think about it.”

I drop my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to pry.”

His eyes come back to mine, his voice a scrape. “You’re not,” he says. “I want you to know. I just . . .”

“What?”

He looks over my shoulder. “I don’t want you to look at me like I’m broken.”

“Miles.” I touch the sides of his neck and pull his gaze back to mine. “You’re not broken. You’re okay. But what happened to you isn’t. It’s fucked up.”

“It’s over,” he says quietly, his hands ringing my wrists.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t still have feelings about it,” I tell him.

The corners of his lips flutter, for just a second. “That’s the problem, though. Whenever any of us had a negative emotion, it only made things worse. She turned it around on us, and we’d end up apologizing for being hurt or angry or sad, and I never knew what was right or normal. I mean, everyone who met my mom loved her. Teachers, the other parents, my friends.

“If she wants to, she can make you feel like the center of the universe, like her favorite. I used to love having friends over, because she’d turn into this different person. This funny, warm mom who loved me.

“All I wanted was for that version of her to stay. So I stopped showing it when I was upset, just went along with whatever she said and did. And eventually, I just sort of . . . stopped getting upset. Stopped feeling the bad stuff. And things got better. For me, anyway.”

He looks down, his eyes dark and glossed.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, running my thumb over the hinge of his jaw. “I get why you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s not just that. I mean, I do hate dwelling on this shit, but . . .” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I let her really fucking hurt Julia. And when Julia’s around, it’s hard not to hate myself. All those feelings, they just come back. And my mind starts to feel so loud, and dark. I just want to escape.”

A dagger spears through my heart. I wrap my arms around him and burrow my face into his chest. I don’t want to make him keep talking, but he is, like he’s been uncorked and now it’s all coming out.

I picture it spiraling down a drain, hope that’s what this confession is doing for him, rather than scraping at an old wound.

“She was way worse with Julia than she ever was with me. She’d compare Jules to our cousins, tell her who was prettier and smarter, or better behaved. She’d compare Jules to herself at that age, shit that probably wasn’t true.” His voice wavers. “She’d scream at her for the dumbest shit, as long as I can remember. And I let it all happen.”

I rear back. “What were you supposed to do?”

“Stop her,” he says immediately, like he’s thought this through, knows with certainty the right answer. “Stand up for Julia instead of shutting down. Not run away to the city the second I turned eighteen, and come back once a week like it made any fucking difference.”

“It did make a difference,” I say, “or she wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Maybe.” When he looks up at me, his eyes are stark, tired. “But I don’t even know why she’s here, because she won’t tell me. No matter how hard I try, I always make the wrong decision. I fuck it up and people get hurt.”

“Miles.” I grab his shoulders, turn his upper body toward me, and scoot in close, nearly into his lap. “She got out.”

“On her own.” He shakes his head. “She saw through the shit way before I did. Chose an out-of-state college, and when our mom tried to tell her she couldn’t go, she went anyway. Applied for her own loans, had me cosign, moved to Wisconsin. Mom stopped talking to her to punish her, which completely backfired, so then she did her version of an apology. Sorry I wasn’t perfect, but you’ll understand when you’re a mother someday. You can’t do everything right, and your kids will hate you for it.”

“God,” I say. “I’m so sorry. Is that when you stopped talking to her?”

He laughs coarsely. “No. I wanted everything to be okay so badly. So I tried to broker peace. Just one more bad decision. My mom kept trying to pit me against Julia, and it didn’t matter how many times I tried to set a boundary, she wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t take any blame. Won’t say she’s sorry, or admit she did anything wrong, so eventually I had to cut her off too.”

“And your dad’s just okay with this?” I say.

“Not okay,” Miles says. “Just avoidant as fuck. Travels a lot for work.”

“So he left you guys to deal with all that on your own,” I say, “and you think you’re the bad guy for finding a way to survive. For ‘only’ going home once a week, to spirit Julia away to a McDonald’s?”

His brows draw together. “How’d you know it was McDonald’s?”

“Because she told me, Miles,” I say. “She told me you rescued her, and took her to a filthy play-place and let her be an obnoxious kid and were completely unflappable no matter how terrible she was.”

“I’m not unflappable.” His voice takes on a damp gravel. “Honestly, it’s hard to even look at her sometimes, because it makes me think about everything I should’ve done differently, all the shit I try not to think about, and I just start feeling like I’m about to self-destruct.”

“You weren’t the adult,” I say.

“I was what she had,” he argues.

“And you did what you could,” I tell him.

“That’s the thing, though.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know if I did. I don’t trust my perception of things. That’s what my childhood did to me. Made my brain into a fucking fun house where I might think I’m standing on the floor, but really I’m stuck to a wall. I never know if I’m feeling the right thing, and I’m tired of fucking things up for the people I care about.”

“I don’t think there’s a right way to feel,” I say. “And you can’t control it, anyway. Feelings are like weather. They just happen, and then they pass.”

He rubs his face again. “I’m sorry. This is why I don’t talk about it.”

“Don’t apologize.” I wrap my arms around his waist, and his eyes lift back to mine. “I’m your friend. I want to know all this. I want to be there for you.”

I knew it was true, but when I say it, some crank inside my abdomen is slowly turning, pulling my heart tight against my chest. That’s what Miles needs right now. A friend.

And now I understand what he meant, how risky this really is, not just for me but for him too.

This isn’t just a fun distraction or a rebound anymore. He matters to me, and if this thing between us blows up, there’ll be nowhere for either of us to run right now.

“You should talk to your sister about all of this,” I tell him. “Because I know you think you failed her, but from the outside, what I see is, something’s going on with your sister, and she got on a plane straight to you. Didn’t even ask first, because she knew you’d make space. You’re where she ran when she needed to feel safe.”

“Maybe she just didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he murmurs.

“Maybe,” I allow. “But neither did I, and you took care of me too. That’s who you are. If I had to be marooned, I’m glad it was with you.”

“Me too,” he says quietly, then after a second, “I don’t want to fuck this up. Things are already a mess right now, for both of us.”