We don’t say anything for a long moment, just breathe next to each other in the dark.
“So why me?” I ask finally.
“Why me?” he counters.
I think about it.
“I just remember…I was so mad, so pissed at everyone, and then we were talking, and—it seemed like you were the only one to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Me? When my sister didn’t? When my boyfriend didn’t?”
“He never understood you,” Seth says unexpectedly. “That was always his problem. He wanted you to be perfect. If he really loved you, he would have seen that you weren’t and not cared. That’s what love is. Or at least that’s what I’ve always thought. The kind I’ve always wanted.”
I rest my head in my hand, too, so we’re lying face-to-face. I don’t know if he can see me or not. “So you’ve never had a girlfriend?”
A shake of his head. “I had the kind you have when you’re thirteen and it lasts a week. But not since then. Not a real one. No.”
One of his curls is resting at an odd angle across his forehead. I have to resist the urge to brush it away. Something is blooming up from deep inside of me, something I thought had gone back to sleep forever. I remember all too well why I kissed him.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say.
“Which one?”
“Why me?”
He lifts his hand in the air, hesitates. Then slowly, slowly, he reaches out, touches a lock of my damp hair. “Because I wanted to,” he says simply. “I wanted you.”
He still wants me. I see it in his eyes, even in the near darkness. I wonder how long I’ve known.
It would be so easy. Reaching across those inches between us, wrapping a curl around my finger, the way I did that night. Pulling his face to mine, getting lost in the feel of his hands, the taste of his tongue, the weight of his body. Falling asleep with his arms around me. Feeling safe. Against all odds, feeling safe.
But the last time I did that, my sister had been falling through space. Her neck had snapped at the bottom of the ravine. While I was feeling safe, she never would be again.
Seth’s hand moves higher, his fingers pushing my hair back from my face. I close my eyes.
His hand freezes.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t,” I whisper.
His hand disentangles from my hair. I open my eyes. But all I see is a sadness in his eyes I don’t fully understand.
“Seth.” I swallow. “It’s not…I mean, if it hadn’t been for everything else that night—maybe it wouldn’t have been something I regretted.”
He’s still looking at me. “It’s never been something I regretted. Even with”—he lifts a hand in the air—“everything. I guess that’s the difference between you and me.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
He exhales.
We lie there silently, breathing in the darkness. I turn on my other side again, facing away from him. In the corner, the air conditioner hums. I shiver.
“Seth?” I whisper, wiping away a tear.
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember after…when we put our clothes back on, and you laid your blanket down on the grass, and we just…slept?”
His voice is soft. “Yeah.”
“Can we do that part again?”
I know I don’t deserve it. I drove my mom away, and I drove Gen away, I drove Fiona away, I broke the heart of the only person who was ever stupid enough to love me while my sister was dying, I didn’t save Thatcher, and somehow, in this whole process, I hurt Seth, who is good to me, is still being good to me. I don’t deserve it.
But I want it.
Seth stirs. The bed frame creaks. And then he’s right behind me, his chest pressing up against my back. His arm goes around me, holding me securely to him.
“Like this?”
I exhale. “Like that.”
Even though it’s cold, not hot, and even though we’re tucked up in an attic bedroom in Pennsylvania and not lying on a blanket under the stars of Bier’s End, I close my eyes and feel transported back to that night. Lying in Seth’s arms, sore and throbbing and warm and guilty and happy, a tangle of things I couldn’t even begin to unravel. I know I shouldn’t be feeling like everything is going to be okay. There’s a whole world waiting outside this attic bedroom, a world with Fiona and Thatcher’s killer in it, with truths we haven’t yet blown apart, and I don’t know how damaged I’ll be, we’ll all be, in the blast. I know I shouldn’t be feeling safe. But I am.
Just in this moment, I am.