“Bullshit,” I snap.

“I’m being serious.”

“You’re making excuses.”

She says, “For what?”

“Hell if I know. You’re standing there in a sheet covered in sex and blue paint, trying to tell me that we should be just friends?”

“Think about it! What if we jump into something and it all goes to hell, what then? No more friendship. No more us. No more… anything.” Her voice cracks. “I can’t DO that, Levi. I can’t.” She shakes her head. “Please don’t ask me to risk losing you again.”

“You’re not going to lose me—”

“Please?” she pleads as another tear falls.

I watch her in silence for a long time, half of me wanting to scream, the other half wanting to surrender completely and disappear forever.

“So you want to go back to being just friends.” I nod and take a step back, my jaw still tight. “Like last night never happened.”

I see pain flash in her eyes, but it’s gone just as fast.

“Yes,” she says quietly.

I blink, still baffled. But in the midst of all my bafflement and hurt and silent screaming, there’s a part of me that gets what she’s afraid of and shares in her fear.

“So can we do that?” she asks, waiting. “Can we be just friends?”

I take another step back and raise my hands in surrender.

It was the right decision. It was. Levi and I don’t need to add any more drama or complications to our lives anyway.

I take a shaky breath and knock on Jenna’s door.

It was the right decision.

She answers with a surprised smile. “Hey. I didn’t know you were coming by.”

“I’m afraid of lizards,” I blurt out.

She stares at me. “Okay…”

“And I hate eighties music. I truly do. I know it’s blasphemous to say so, but there it is. I hate Van Halen and Billy Joel and Cyndi Lauper.”

“Cyndi Lauper? Really?”

“And I’m afraid of losing people. Like abnormally terrified. And I’m scared out of my mind that you’re going to die and it’ll be just like Charity all over again and I’ll never recover and I just can’t—”

“Whoa. Slow down.” She holds up a hand. “I’m not going to die, Sarah.”

“But you could.”

“Well… sure. We could all die.” She shrugs. “But that’s just reality. Come here.” She pulls me into her apartment, drags me to the couch, and forces me to sit down. “Now, what is this really about?”

“Nothing. I’m just scared of you dying.”

“So you suddenly decided to knock on my door and confess your distaste for Van Halen? Uh-uh. I don’t think so.” She squints her eyes. “Does this have something to do with Levi?”

“No.”

“Sarah.”

I huff. “Yes.”

She looks at me sympathetically. “What happened?”

I not-so-briefly fill her in on all of the kissing and sexing and painting and crying of the last twenty-four hours—Jenna wanted every dirty detail and I had no qualms handing each one over to her—and for a moment, she just stares at me with her face twisted into a cross between utter confusion and extreme disappointment.

“So let me get this straight,” she says, pressing a finger to her lips. “You had crazy-hot sex with Levi.”

“Yes.”

“And then you broke up with him.”

“Yes.”

“Because you love him?”

“Correct.”

Jenna blinks. “I think we need to brush up on good reasons to break up with a guy.”

I sigh, exasperated. “You don’t get it.”

“Oh, I totally get it. You’re running away again.”

“No, I’m not. I’m making a preventative choice because I’m scared of losing Levi.”

“The same way you’re scared of losing me?”

“Well… yeah.”

“Coward.”

I mock a look of hurt. “I am not a coward.”

“Yeah, you are. Listen,” she says. “It’s okay to be afraid of lizards. It’s really weird, but it’s okay.”

“They’re like tiny, terrifying dinosaurs.”

“And it’s even okay to be ridiculously afraid of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland—”

“It is a really creepy movie,” I say defensively. “There were talking umbrella vultures and mean flower giants and hedgehog croquet balls—”

“But you can’t be afraid to love.” She looks at me seriously. “Love isn’t safe and life isn’t guaranteed. So yeah, I could die and you could lose Levi and your heart could hurt again, but that’s just life. The only alternative—Sarah, look at me—the only alternative is living without fully loving anyone else. And that’s not living at all.”

I really hate that she’s speaking to me like some wise old oracle.

And I really, really hate that she’s right.

I slump against the couch and exhale. “I know.”

She reaches for me with a tattooed arm and pulls me closer, squeezing my shoulder. “Don’t be afraid to live, Pixie.”

I still.

She cocks an eyebrow. “What? I called you Pixie. What are you going to do about it?”

I open my mouth. No one other than Charity, Ellen, and Levi have ever called me that, and Jenna calling me Pixie just feels… well…

Right.

It feels absolutely, incredibly, without a doubt right.

“Nothing,” I say with a slow smile. “You should definitely call me Pixie.”

She smiles back. “I’m glad you feel that way because I wasn’t asking your permission.”

I nod. We sit in silence.

“Hey, Jenna?” I say.

“Yeah, Pixie?”

“I want to let you in.”

She smiles again. “I think you just did.”

It’s been a shitty day. In fact, every day since Pixie basically kicked me out of her life has been shitty. So when I hear the back door of the inn squeak and see Ellen come sauntering over to where I’m replacing a broken shutter on one of the inn’s back windows, I curse under my breath.

“Hey,” she says.

I don’t look at her. “Hey.”

Her focus snaps to something in the distance. “What in the world…?”

I turn around to see two figures, covered in dirt and sweat, staggering toward the inn’s back door—handcuffed to each other.

One is a girl with long, muddy, blonde hair. And the other is…

“Daren?” Ellen takes a step forward as they near.

“Uh, hi.” He smiles sheepishly and starts to wave with his cuffed hand, causing the girl’s wrist to yank up with his.

She whips her arm down and hisses, “Use your other hand, asshole.”

“What the hell…?” I stare, horrified, at Daren and point at his bound prisoner. “Did you kidnap this girl?”

“What?” He makes a face of disgust. “No! Hell, no. You think I wanted to be handcuffed to this girl?”

The girl rolls her eyes. “Oh, like I wanted to be leashed to you?”

“Will someone please explain what’s going on?” Ellen looks around the lavender fields in confusion. “And where you guys came from?”

Daren says, “It’s a long story.”

“It’s a stupid story,” the girl corrects.

Daren glares at her. “Are you incapable of shutting up for even a second?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she snaps back, raising their cuffed wrists. “You’ll have to excuse my bad mood. I have a douche bag attached to me.” She turns to us and holds out her free hand. “I’m Kayla, by the way.”

“Ellen.” Ellen slowly shakes her hand, glancing between the two of them.

Kayla cuts her eyes back to Daren. “See how I used my non-cuffed hand to do that? It’s not rocket science.”

“Yes, well.” Daren smirks. “We’ve already established that you’re an expert on handcuffs.”