“Are you okay?” I whisper.

His lips tighten until they’re white and I worry for a second that he’ll cry. I’m worried I won’t be able to handle it.

“I’m okay,” he finally replies softly, his voice steady. “Are you okay?”

“I talked to Trent.”

His eyes widen. “How’d that go?”

I grin weakly. “I’m here. I’m going to try very hard to be nice.”

He chuckles softly before sitting down in a chair behind him. I don’t know why but I wish he’d stay standing. I don’t feel like I can sit. I don’t feel like I can be still or silent or at ease. I have an overwhelming feeling that there’s so much to do and no time to do it. My head and my heart and my body are all talking at once and I can’t make out a word of it. I don’t even know if I speak the language.

“I’m going to miss him,” I say, trying to purge this squirming thing inside of me.

Ryan nods. “Yeah, me too.”

“He wasn’t really crazy, was he?”

“I don’t know.” He smiles sadly. “I think he was when he wanted to be.”

“I think he was hiding, like me.”

“Whoa.”

“What? You don’t think so?”

“No,” he says, his face still covered in surprise. “I think you’re dead on. It’s just a really insightful thing to say.”

“I’m going to try to not be insulted by that reaction.”

“Well, you’re not exactly—”

“Insightful, I know. I didn’t say you were wrong.”

We fall into a silence that doesn’t feel as awkward as it is. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know. It’s a one-sided feeling of anxiety and dread that he’s blissfully unaware of. One that’s tearing through me like acid in my gut, eating me from the inside out. How he doesn’t see it on my face is beyond me. Maybe he’s too spent. Maybe now isn’t the time after all.

“You seem all right,” he says suddenly.

It’s surprising how wrong he is.

“I am,” I lie.

“When you kicked Bray out I was ready for anything. You being all right wasn’t what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Crying.”

“Ha,” I chuckle nervously. “Not if I can help it.”

“Why then?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you kick Bray out?”

I look away, unable to face him. My heart is racing in my chest so hard it hurts. It’s so loud he has to hear it. He has to know. If only he could know it and I wouldn’t have to say it. I wouldn’t have to be afraid of him. Of us.

“Joss?”

I ignore him, focusing on my breathing. I can do this. I want to do this. I need to do it because I need him and it doesn’t make me weak or stupid. It makes me human. It makes me alive.

“Joss, look at me.”

I shake my head faintly, closing my eyes tightly. I hear him stand up. I feel it in the air the way I felt Bray leave, my skin hypersensitive and wild. He comes to stand in front of me and I’m so grateful when he doesn’t touch me. I’m tense from top to bottom. I’m trembling, shivering, shaking: a convulsing mess as though I’m having a seizure. Maybe I am. Maybe my body is going into shock from the crushing weight of this moment. From the heavy heft of his eyes settled on me.

My hands move on their own, guiding themselves smoothly over his body because my eyes have tapped out—they’ve taken themselves out of the equation. And this thing that I’m doing—that I’m trying to work through—it’s going to have to happen in the dark—in the unknown and the unseen—and it’s sick that I’m steady there. I’m best where the nightmares live. I’m comfortable here.

“No way,” he says deeply, his hands stopping mine. He holds them in his own firmly. “We’re not doing this. You can’t even look at me. There’s no way that’s happening like this.”

“Don’t you want to?” I rasp, my eyes still closed.

He takes a tight, deep breath. I lean forward to lay my head against his chest. I follow it when he blows the breath out, resting my head against him in the safety of his heartbeat. I can feel it pounding against my skin through his thin T-shirt. Erratic. Uncontrolled.

I know how it feels.

“Yeah,” he admits roughly. “More than you know. But not like this. Not with you upset.”

“I told you I’m all right.”

“Joss, you can’t even look at me.”

A hot tear escapes my eye and slides down my cheek. I shake my head back and forth as I try to open my eyes. I try to look at him and see him and know it’s all right. That this is Ryan. That this is right. I know I want this, I want him, but I’m a hot mess and I’m screwing it up. I don’t know how to do this. I can’t do any of this, not like a normal girl. I’ve never been normal and I never will be and I’m so much baggage and crazy that I can’t believe there’s enough room in this house for all of me to be in here at once. I’m shocked by every second that passes when my emotions don’t blow the walls of this place.

My tear drips off my cheek. I manage to open my eyes in time to see it land below me. It drops right onto Ryan’s naked foot.

Immediately he knows.

“And it’s definitely not going to happen when you’re crying,” he says softly.

His arms release my hands and go to wrap around me. He’s going to pull me into an embrace, tell me everything is all right, and he’ll fall asleep chastely beside me, snuggling in next to me and all my issues. It will go on night after night until infinity or we die and he’ll never say a word. He’ll never ask for more. But if I ever want the chance to let him in and watch him chase away my demons the way his laugh lights up a room, I need to man the hell up and offer what he’ll never demand.

I push back from him before he can embrace me, my eyes finding his. He looks so worried it hurts. It almost lets me chicken out and bail on this entirely. It could be an awkward moment we both remember forever but never talk about. It could be the setting of the status quo. The beginning of our ending, riding this even plane until the end of our existence. Never more, never less.

Or it could be what Crenshaw said. The Beginning of Everything.

“I’m not crying because I’m sad,” I say shakily. “I’m crying because I love you and I’m going to give you all of me.”

He stares at me, stunned. I’ve seen Ryan in a lot of dire situations, facing a lot of overwhelming odds and obstacles, but I have never seen him so at a loss before. As the silence drags out between us, I worry I’ve broken him.

“Joss,” he says gruffly, pausing to clear his throat.

Terrified of what he’ll say, words begin to spill rapidly from my mouth. “I know it won’t be your first time, but it is for me so don’t ever tell me. Never let me know for sure. I never want to know a name or a hint or hair color. Warn Trent, too, because he’ll spill it and I’ll kill him and I’ll get mad at you an—”

“I love you,” he cuts in quietly. My mouth clamps shut, making him grin slightly. He lifts his hand to run it along the side of my neck, back into my hair. “I’ve never said that before. You’re my first time.”

I can’t handle this feeling. It’s too full, too big, too much. It’s him, it’s Ryan, and it’s everything in me until I’m bursting at the seams, and while I couldn’t look at him before, now I can’t look away. Not to save my life. Not even to save his. I don’t know what happens to me. It’s nothing I expected and I can tell from his reaction that he wasn’t expecting it either. But when autopilot engages, when my survival kicks in, it’s best to just stay out of its way and enjoy the ride.

I grab onto his shirt, fisting it in my hands and pulling him toward me. The last thing I see is his grin spreading into a smile before his mouth is on mine. Then I’m gone. Lost. All I know from that point is the cold of the room on my rapidly exposed skin, the heat of his body close to mine, the sound of his breath always so close, so desperate, echoing mine. I know fear, joy, want, a pinch of pain and a world of heat that starts in my stomach and burns through my veins until I can hardly breathe and I’m clinging to him as he clings to me, his heartbeat racing against my chest and sending me soaring over the night sky into nothing. I gasp his name, hear him whisper mine, then it’s silence and stillness.