“Stop it, okay? Just…fuck!” I didn’t need to hear it, didn’t want her repeating history I knew all too well.

Aly woke something in me I hadn’t let fly since that day on the lake. Even before I knew it was her, when she was just the faceless dancer moving her glorious hips against my body, or when she sang a song about freedom and loss like she knew what each word meant—she had released that buried hope inside my chest, the one that promised I would survive. I couldn’t lose that, didn’t want to be free of even the smallest chance that Aly promised.

Like always when I was around her, my body acted, and my steps felt heavy as I stalked toward her, knocking that angry frown from her face with my arms caging her against the mirror.

“Tell me,” I said, keeping my voice even. But Aly’s eyes had gotten glassy and her chest moved up and down, breath panting like she was scared, like she was turned on. “Why did you leave?” I asked.

I wouldn’t let her look away from me. Not until she answered. Why did you leave? But what I was really asking was why did you lie?

Aly’s throat worked slowly, and her breathing became less frantic before she flicked her gaze up and watched me with her chin lifted, defying me with a look to argue. “I wanted to help you.”

My jaw ached from how tightly I tensed the muscles there. “I don’t need your help.”

“Bullshit, Ransom. You’re lost. You’ve been lost a long time. I wanted to help you find yourself just for one night.”

She didn’t move from the wall when I backed away from her. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“It is,” she said, catching me in my lie, taking two steps to stand directly in front of me. “You wanted to know why I didn’t tell you it was me dancing for you at Summerland’s? Because you wanted to know if there was anything there with that dancer; not me—her.” I could only stare back at her when she came closer, unable to do much more than breathe. “You wanted to know if you could feel that way again, the way you had the first night. Before there was even a possibility of us.”

My hands came down on her arms, holding them firm before I could think much about moving them. The past two months, Aly had been an anchor, the one person that could calm me. Right then I wasn’t calm, I was confused and frustrated and utterly incapable of doing anything but watch her. “I don’t care that you danced for me. I don’t care if you needed the money…”

“It wasn’t the money, Ransom. Not the second time and I didn’t do it for anyone else. Just you.”

“Why?” I held my breath, not understanding why I was so desperate for her answer.

“Because I wanted you to smile again.” She reached for me and I knew, before I felt her fingers on my skin, that I would let her touch me. “I wanted you to smile and mean it.” But Aly didn’t touch me, hesitated too long before she dropped her hand to her side and I couldn’t push back the voice that time, the one that taunted and laughed. The one that told me what an idiot I’d been.

“Aly…I…” There was a hint of mocha on her breath, something warm and spicy. That smell had my stomach tightening, had me fighting the voice in my head that told me she wasn’t worth the effort. I knew better than that, but was too much of a punk just then to think about what I was feeling. Out of habit, I reached for my chest, needing that slight comfort of the tattoo, but didn’t touch it. “I can’t smile again no matter what you do. It’s just not going to happen for me, but I can make sure my family is taken care of.” I moved my gaze from the floor back to her eyes, scared when the glassy glean flooded. “Why can’t you help them? Would it really be so bad?”

“I won’t be around you,” she admitted, holding herself tight, as though she needed to protect herself from me.

“Aly, please…”

“I can’t be around you. It…it hurts too much,” she clarified and suddenly there were tears on her face.

There was something else —that hurt expression maybe, or the way her chin moved as she tried to hold herself back from sobbing. I didn’t understand what all that meant at first. She couldn’t be this upset about our argument or be this damn devastated about losing whatever friendship we had. And then, just like that, the flood of awareness hit me straight in the chest and I understood where her attempts to help me and the source of her tears came from. What she felt was written in the way her eyes had lightened, how the pain in them transformed the bright color to something washed and transparent.

It felt exactly like believing something your entire life and then discovering that none of that belief held any truth. Shock, doubt and the sickening sensation of a truth you never expected.

“What… I don’t understand. You’ve only been around me for two months. You can’t be…”

The sound of her harsh, bitter laughter felt like an insult. “Two months? My God, Ransom, open your damn eyes.” Aly rubbed her neck, stepping away from me as though she needed the space. “Try over a year,” she said when I shook my head. “You have no fucking clue how good you have it. You have a family who loves you, who is so damn proud of you and you have…you had me and you didn’t even know it.” That quiver in her chin didn’t stop and as I watched her, that raging voice in my head went quiet. All I heard was her, Aly, as she continued speaking.

“I drove myself crazy with just the damn thought of you. Watching you week after week, fall further and further away from everyone who loved you. And you didn’t know, couldn’t see. You still don’t know how beautiful you are, and how lost.” She swiped at her wet face like her tears were an irritation. “I can’t watch that anymore. I won’t. I tried to help and it blew up in my face. I tried to heal you as much as you would let me but you only wanted the dancer. Not me. Her. And still, I tried…even if it wasn’t me, I tried.”

“Aly…” She stopped me with a shake of her head. She moved too quickly, her reaction to my upheld hands, defensive, but still I tried. “I didn’t know…”

“But that doesn’t matter, don’t you see? It doesn’t matter whether you knew or not, because you’re still stuck in the past. It’s where you want to be.” Aly’s hands shook violently but her tears had dried on her face, letting me know she was either absolutely terrified or in such a rage that she didn’t care about hurting me. “It’s safe for you there. All that damn guilt, it keeps you from facing everything around you. You don’t want to live anymore, Ransom, because life is too damn hard. So you stay in the past when things were easy, where you didn’t have to move past anything, where you could just wallow in your own world. It’s where you are now and I will not stay there with you.” There was an echo on the floor when she walked away, her anger, her frustration thicker than the heat coming from the vent. And I let her walk away from me, knowing that she was right. Why fight for someone who’d given up on you?

“As much as I want to save you like you did…like you’ve done for me, I can’t. I can’t be with you in this limbo of grief and I cannot compete with the specter of Emily. So I’m not even going to try.”

I couldn’t expect her to, right? How could I expect anyone to fight for me, to challenge me to live when I’d given all that up? Over a year, she’d said. She’d watched me from the beginning then. She’d waited all that time for me to leave behind the heartache I’d created.

And now, son of a bitch, she wouldn’t wait anymore.

But then something else hit me. What had she said? As much as I’d saved her? When did I ever…. Oh God. There was a memory, of something that happened before the accident, before I lost Emily… Dammit, it was so hard to recall anything that happened before the accident…. But there was something…

Then it suddenly flooded into my head—a memory of Aly and.... Yes. That asshole in the parking lot, her in the loft. She was the girl who needed a bed. I should have known that. I should have remembered. Why hadn’t I remembered?