Jared’s fingers remained lightly on my upper back. “Were you thinking about Lydia?”

He knew I’d been there when a girl from my school had died. And he knew that my whole life had changed because of that day. He assumed, as did the rest of the world—including my parents, sister, and guidance counselors—that all of my issues stemmed from the trauma of witnessing Lydia’s death.

And, yeah, okay, I’m sure a lot of them did. But it went so much deeper than that.

You know that saying Pride comes before a fall? Well, for me, it wasn’t just pride. It was…happiness. Security. Comfort. Contentment. I’d been so positive I knew what I was doing. How can you be that confident and still be wrong? And then, once you’ve realized how horribly wrong you were…how can you ever be confident again?

The fact is, you can’t. You just spend your whole life waiting for the next piano to fall out of the sky and smash you.

“You lost someone.” There was a gruff intimacy in Jared’s voice. He brushed the hair away from my eyes. “And that hurts. A lot. But it’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

I sniffled and nodded, then looked up into his endlessly deep eyes. It was as if there were ten layers of Jared behind the one he showed the world. When he gazed at me like this, it was like a few of the layers had been peeled back, revealing some hidden, tender thing.

He seemed to be holding his breath. He tucked my hair behind my ear…and then his fingers continued along my jawline, lightly lifting my chin.

There was a sudden heaviness in the air between us—that moment where things get fuzzy and the universe takes over.

Then we were kissing.

It was unlike any kiss I’d ever experienced. When Carter and I were a couple, it was all about the happy. Kissing was an extension of that, a celebration. A little party between us, amplifying our naive joy, our faith that the world was delighted to give us just what we wanted.

Between Jared and me, I felt a different kind of amplification, an ache inside my chest. It was like a fight for survival—two people coming together because they need to be touching to keep from fading out of existence. It was as if we were trading sad secrets.…

And I totally didn’t want it to stop.

Then I realized what I was doing and jerked out of the kiss, holding my hands up like a robbery victim.

“My God.” Jared jumped back and stared at me, horrified. “Alexis, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—I mean, you were sad, and I—I shouldn’t have.…”

I took a dizzy step away, unable to tear my eyes away from his. Should I tell him not to blame himself? Could I do that without somehow implying that the kiss was a good thing?

All right, yeah, it was good—but that didn’t make it a good thing.

“I should go,” I managed to say. “We’ve been gone for a long time. My parents will worry.”

He was watching me, still in shock. Then he collected himself. “Of course,” he said, straightening his already-straight jacket. And just like that, the moment was gone.

To my utter surprise, I felt a pang of regret.

I mean, it wasn’t like I hadn’t kissed back.

The gray afternoon sky was sliding headlong into a purple twilight. The low sun shone through a tangle of bare branches in a spot of brilliant white. For the first time all day, Jared looked cold. And tired.

And lonesome.

“Come on,” I said, reaching out to untwist his camera strap. “You’re going to freeze to death out here.”

His mouth quirked up in an almost-smile. His dark brown hair—as long as the Sacred Heart Academy dress code would let him wear it—hung down over his forehead. His cheekbones were chiseled, as if he’d been sculpted from marble. He looked like an aristocrat. And his lips had a slight natural downturn, which made his smiles feel like something you had to earn.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s getting late.”

We walked in silence, eventually reaching the thick wood stumps that marked the edge of the parking lot, which held only three cars—his Jeep, my mom’s gray sedan (which I’d borrowed), and a little blue hatchback.

Near the blue car, in the dim light, I saw a small scuffle, and then a girl cried out, “No, Spike, come back! Sit! Stay!”

A little black dog came tearing across the parking lot toward us, dragging its leash behind it.

“Please stop him!” the girl called.

In one motion, Jared whipped the camera off his neck and handed it to me. Then he took off after the dog.

The girl came up to me, huffing and puffing. I recognized her right away—it was Kendra Charnow, a girl I knew from school. As soon as she saw me, she came to an awkward stop. “Alexis!?” she said. “Um—which way did they go?”

I pointed back down the path, and we both started running. But just around the bend, we found Jared, leading the dog by its leash.

“Thank you!” Kendra scooped the dog off the ground and kissed its tiny snout. “He’s a rescue, and they told us he was a runner, but I didn’t know…”

Then she got a good look at Jared.

Not being his girlfriend, I could watch her behavior objectively, like a scientist taking notes in the field. And it was always the same when girls noticed him.

Kendra’s shoulders went back, her stomach magically sucked itself in, and she fluffed the red ponytail sticking out from underneath her beige baseball cap. Then she tilted her head in that See how cute I am? way.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said to Jared. “I’m—”

“Glad to help with your dog,” Jared said. “I’m really sorry, we’d better get going. It must be close to freezing by now.”

Maybe it was the pull of my old Sunshine Club etiquette instincts, but I felt obligated to introduce them. “Jared, this is Kendra. She goes to Surrey.”

Kendra gave him a smooth smile. “I’m a friend of Alexis’s sister.”

Right. Not a friend of mine.

“Nice to meet you, Kendra,” Jared said, putting his hand on my elbow almost protectively. “Have a good night.”

“Good night,” she said.

And that was that. Jared walked me to the door of my mother’s car and waited while I seat-belted my camera into the passenger seat.

I looked up at him, struck slightly dumb by the way the pale gold light of the sunset lit up one side of his face like a Renaissance painting, touching off the edges of his hair with a thin halo of fire. And then, on the shadow side, his skin was as cool blue and smooth as ice.

He looked like a half-man, half-god.

And he wouldn’t even blink at another girl.

What was wrong with me?

“Take a picture,” he said, a smile spreading slowly across his lips. “It’ll last longer.”

I smiled back. That had been one of the first things I’d ever said to him.

If I were a girl who knew what she wanted—a girl who knew the difference between what she could have and what she couldn’t have—a girl who was able to let go of the past and move on—I would get out of the car, grab Jared, and smother him with kisses.

But I’m not that girl.

“’Night,” I said. You will make someone so insanely happy, I thought.

He smiled. “’Night. Call me when you have some time.”

“I will,” I said.

And I would. Next time I was lonely, or feeling sorry for myself, or just needed to look at a face besides my mother’s, father’s, or sister’s, I would call him—and he would come.

As I texted Mom to tell her I was on my way home, I kept an eye on Jared climbing into his Jeep.

SEE YOU SOON <3 U, Mom replied.

I dropped my phone into the cup holder and switched on the radio, watching Jared turn left on to the quiet highway and disappear down the narrow strip of road.

Something is seriously the matter with you, Alexis.

I’m not a complete idiot. I know I’m not special enough to play hard-to-get and hold the attention of someone like him for any amount of time under normal circumstances. Jared had his own baggage. It wasn’t just me who needed him—he needed me, too.