Tingles spread along my neck, then rocketed down my spine.

“I don’t know what it was,” he continued with a soft reverence. “I guess I liked the way you followed us around. I liked that you couldn’t keep up and that I had to take care of you. I liked standing up for you. Protecting you. I liked the way you looked at me like I really mattered. I liked that when I thought back about you and Christopher after I was gone, I was thinking about the good times I had in my life.” He squeezed me closer to him and pressed his mouth to the top of my head.

“But I don’t get to have this, Aly.”

I shifted to lay my cheek on his chest. Sadness crashed over me in a breaking wave. I knew there was nothing I could say that would sway him, that there was no convincing him otherwise. He’d already promised me that last night. Instead I just held on to him, told him through my touch how much he meant to me and that he deserved happiness, too, whether he found that with me or someone else.

“I ruin every fucking thing I touch, Aly, and I refuse to ruin you.” His hold increased. “Fuck,” he groaned under his breath, tipping his face down toward mine, grief striking like a match in his eyes. “I shouldn’t even be in here with you.” He squeezed my back in emphasis. “Hanging out with you like this has absolutely been the most selfish thing I’ve done in a long time.” A short breath filtered from his nose. “I can’t do this with you anymore… this whole friend thing. I can feel it coming, Aly, that something bad is gonna happen and I’m going to hurt you, and I refuse to do it.”

“You’d never hurt me,” I said. This time I couldn’t keep myself from refuting his words.

Dry laughter filled my room. “You’re right… because I won’t ever let it get that far.”

Pain fisted in my chest. I was wrong. He could hurt me. He already was – hurting me and hurting himself.

But I guessed hurting himself was what he knew how to do best.

I laced my fingers through his right hand, lifted them so our hands shone in the dim light. My skin looked so pale woven with his, his skin darkened with the sun and his fingers marked with the year of his birth: 1990. Life.

I squeezed his hand, willing him to hang on to it.

He pulled our twined hands to his mouth and pressed gentle kisses to my fingers. He ran his lips along the back of my hand, brushed them over the puckered scars on the outside of my thumb. My throat constricted, and I was struggling to hold back tears.

“I need to go, Aly.”

Panic rose in me, and I struggled to hold him tighter. “Please,” I begged, trying to tug him down, “just lie with me. Just for tonight.”

His sigh was heavy and filled with sadness. But in it was his surrender. His arms tightened around me, and he pressed his lips to my forehead. His warm breath filtered all around me, wrapped around and cocooned me, and I shuddered as I fell completely into his embrace.

Maybe if I lay here and never closed my eyes, I’d be able to hang on to him forever.

And I tried. But inevitably they drooped and fell because there was not a safer, more comfortable place than resting in the security of Jared’s arms.

In the morning, I woke to an empty bed.

I hadn’t expected anything different. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. For a few seconds, I held my eyes closed because I didn’t want to face the wedge Jared had driven between us last night.

Rolling to my side, I pulled the sheets with me as I sought some form of comfort. Something crinkled on my pillow as I moved.

I lifted my head. A small piece of parchment paper sat folded on my pillow. My throat constricted, and I turned onto my stomach, eyeing the washed-out tan piece of paper, one side tattered from where it had been torn from some sort of journal. My fingers trembled as I reached out to take it in my hand. Slowly I unfolded it.

Tears welled in my eyes when I saw the simple statement written in a strong-handed scroll.

When beauty sleeps.

Turning onto my back, I held it against my chest, cherishing the words that Jared otherwise didn’t know how to say.

Two weeks had passed since the last time Jared left my room. He’d become distant. Withdrawn. Rarely was he at the apartment. I’d hear him creeping in at ungodly hours of the night and he was usually gone before I got up, as if he could hardly stand to be anywhere in my space.

And I missed him.

The hardest part was in those moments when he was in the apartment and I’d catch him looking at me.

Looking at me as if he missed me as much as I missed him.

Just as quickly, he’d look away, drop his gaze, and pretend all those nights he’d spent lying with me in the sanctuary of my room had only been figments of my imagination.

As if they didn’t matter.

As if they hadn’t changed who we were.

But I didn’t push him. The last time it had backfired. He’d panicked and had driven this unbearable space between us.

Somehow I knew if I pushed him any further, I’d never see him again.

Sighing, I forced myself from bed. Exhaustion dragged my feet. Restful sleep had been scarce for the last two weeks. There was always that hope, this little flicker of anticipation that he might come back, slip inside my room, wrap me up in his arms, and whisper that he’d made a mistake.

But he never did.

It didn’t mean I didn’t spend most nights awake trying to will it to happen.

Now I crept out into the hall. Stunned, I stilled when I found Jared sitting silently at the bar, sipping from a mug of coffee.

Motionless, I indulged, appreciated his beauty in a moment when he had no idea he was being watched. He wore a pair of jeans and a thin white V-neck tee. His bare feet were propped on the footrest, his elbows heavy on the marble bar. He seemed consumed in his thoughts, a million miles and a hundred years away. His hair was all unruly, and it appeared as if he hadn’t shaved in at least three days, this coarse stubble shadowing his strong jaw.

My fingers twitched.

I wanted to reach out and run them down the side of his face. To whisper his beauty against his ear. To tell him I saw the good, that it was alive, so transparent in his words and in his eyes.

Instead I slinked by and murmured, “Good morning,” as I passed.

I could barely discern the subtle flinch in his muscles, but it was there. I’d taken him by surprise.

He mumbled, “Morning,” into his coffee cup.

I went to the fridge, grabbed the orange juice, and poured a glass. With my back to him I spoke. It was hard to do, but I didn’t want this unease to eat at us forever. “So, no work today?”

He grunted. “It’s the Fourth… boss closed up shop today.”

The Fourth of July.

Right.

I didn’t even realize the date.

Guess I’d been fixated on something else.

I leaned up against the counter that Jared had backed me into all those weeks ago when he’d first confronted me, and thought about the day. It was funny, how much I used to look forward to this holiday, the days dense with summer’s heat, our revelry shared out in our field as we played the sunlight away. How the excitement would build as the sun began to set, and our families would gather to turn our faces to the night sky to witness the beauty of the fireworks.

It had always struck me with an overwhelming awe.

I remembered how deeply it always struck Jared, too.

I stared at the floor. Off to my right, his presence tugged at my spirit as if mine were chained to his, a tension that wound through my consciousness and congealed in the air between us.

I doubted now we’d ever escape it.

Christopher suddenly shattered the strain wrapping up the room by barreling down the hall.

“Morning,” he said as he clapped Jared on the back and came around the bar and into the kitchen. He dropped a swift kiss to my cheek. “And good morning to you, little sister.”