I hadn’t heard from Asa or Silas in more than a week. I hoped my brother had taken my advice and found a deserted island to hole up on, but knowing him, I had my doubts. I wasn’t stupid enough to meet Silas alone, so I had given that little book that had turned my life so upside down to Lou, and had Silas come to the Goal Line to get it. Lou was cool about it and didn’t ask a million questions. Plus, he had the benefit of looking like he could pull Silas’s arms off and beat him with them with very little effort, so I felt safer having him take care of the hand-off.

I tried to call my mom and explain the whole situation to her, but she was as disinterested as always, and wanted to talk instead about some guy she met at a bar. Apparently, he wanted her to go on the road with him in his big rig and she was all excited about it. As usual, I tried to be the voice of reason, telling her she didn’t know the guy, and that if they got into a fight or she decided she didn’t like him, that he could end up leaving her stranded wherever he liked. She didn’t want to hear any of it. She didn’t even say thank you or seem at all grateful that I had come up with a way to keep Asa breathing, at least for now. All of it reminded me why I had been so desperate to get out of Woodward in the first place, and why I wanted my life to look so different now.

Adam had taken to calling once or twice a day, now that he knew Jet and I were no longer involved in whatever it was we had been trying to do. I could tell he was honestly concerned about how I was doing, but I had had to tell him more than once that I just wasn’t interested in dating or starting anything with someone else. The fact of the matter was that no one was ever going to be safe in a relationship with me, secure financial future and corporate career or not. The things in my past, the people in my life, were always going to be a threat and there was just no way that I ever wanted to risk subjecting someone I cared about to that. It wasn’t fair.

When I got back to the house, I stopped to catch my breath and I stumbled a little, because Jet was coming out the front door and headed down the steps. He stopped short when he saw me and looked down at the toes of his combat boots. The look in his eyes broke my heart, and all I wanted to do was wrap him in a hug and tell him everything would be okay. I knew that wasn’t really true, so I just propped a hip on the wrought-iron railing and looked up at him.

“Are you okay?”

He didn’t even look up at me, but I saw his shoulders tense and his nails dig into his palms. I didn’t know if I was in love with this man, but I thought I was, and I knew for absolute certain that all I wanted for him was that he never feel the way he was obviously feeling right now again. If I had to stand between Jet and whatever was making him sizzle and pop with anger the way he was at the moment, I would do it, even if that meant I kept myself away from him as well. He deserved some measure of peace, some respite from the demons that constantly hounded him, and even if it meant not being part of his life, I was determined to see that he got it.

“I’m fine.”

He lifted his head to look at me and those eyes were so dark and so angry that I felt them singe across my skin. I understood better than he could ever imagine about being hurt by someone who you loved, and I wanted to tell him, wanted to explain the entire ugly mess to him. But then he would just want to fix it and there was no fixing Asa, and no going back in time and fixing the girl I used to be. There was just moving forward and getting the things we had worked for, and building a better life from here on out, and hopefully being better people along the way.

“Well, have fun on tour. I’m sure you’re going to be amazing.”

It was stilted and awkward, as all conversation between us was anymore. We used to be able to talk to each other, just look at each other and know what the other was thinking. Now we were just two people hurting for different reasons, trying to pretend like it didn’t rip us apart to breathe the same air.

I wasn’t expecting him to move but suddenly he was in my face with a rattle of the chains that hung from his wallet to his belt, and a clinking of the rings on his fingers. He grabbed the metal rail on either side of me. Those blazing eyes were millimeters from my own, and I could see the way his anger pulled down the corners of a mouth that had loved me in so many different ways. I knew Jet had a lot of rage inside him, knew that he struggled to keep a lid on the volcano of emotion that roiled inside him, but I never expected to see it unleashed on me. It burned and popped across all my exposed skin and all I could do was stand there and take it, while he glared at me and growled,

“Does it even matter?”

I wasn’t scared of him, wasn’t scared of that anger. What terrified me was being another person who had ultimately let him down, who had picked someone awful and abusive over him. That wasn’t my intention, but it was what I had done nonetheless.

“Of course it matters. What was between us always mattered; you matter. We both knew going in that it was never supposed to be long-term, just a good time remember? We aren’t good for each other, Jet.”

The words tasted like dirt on my tongue. I wanted him forever, wanted him to sing me to sleep every night, wanted to watch him onstage and know he was coming home with me. I wanted all of it, and none of it was the future I had ever planned for myself, but more than that, I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him to have something that no one could tarnish or soil; not his dad, not his mom, not me, and sure as hell not my jackass of a brother. He was great and more talented than one person should ever be, and I knew he deserved greatness. I refused to stand in the way of that.

He bent down, leaning in even closer, so that our noses were practically touching. I was shivering from head to toe, because it had been far too long since I had pressed up against the long, hard lines of that lean body. I was always going to want him, always going to be tempted by him, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to grab him and slam my mouth over his, not to beg him to come back to me, not to demand that he keep it in his pants while he was on the road. But I didn’t have the right to do any of those things, so I just watched him carefully and tried not to quiver.

“Why can’t you just say I’m not good for you, that I’m not what you want? It doesn’t have anything to do with me or what I think or want, Ayd. I could see forever with you, and could promise you every day that it’ll just be me and you.”

That made my heart seize. I wanted to grab his face, wanted to kiss that mouth that looked like it tasted sour and bad. I just wanted to make it better, but there was no way I could. I sighed and shook my head a little bit.

“I want what’s best for both of us. I know you don’t understand that, and I can see that you don’t really believe it, either, but it’s true. I know I’m not what’s best for you, Jet. I have things going on and so do you, really. I don’t think the universe or that girl from my past was ever going to give us a fair shot.”

I wasn’t ever going to be what was best for anyone, but that was neither here nor there.

He was looking at me like I was killing him slowly, over and over again. He pushed off the railing in a violent move that made me flinch a little. He scowled at me and shoved his hands through his messy hair. He took a few steps down the stairs, so that I was standing above him. When he looked up at me, the pain in his eyes tore away whatever was left that I was hiding behind. None of it mattered anymore and the truth was just too strong to ignore.

I loved him, loved him like I had never loved anyone or anything ever, and I realized that was why I could let him go. I could see how much it hurt him, imagined that I looked just as bad, but knowing I was doing it for the right reasons, because I did love him, made me believe we would both be okay in the end. Letting him go for his own good, to protect him from all the things that he could suffer from if he loved me back, was worth it.

“That’s funny, Ayden, because when I’m with you, I feel better. I behave better, I sound better, and some of the nasty shit that eats me up inside doesn’t seem so bad. No one has ever done that for me before, so if you aren’t what’s best for me, I can’t imagine what you think would be.”

I bit my lip and caved. I hopped down to the next step and grabbed his frowning face in both hands. His rough cheeks abraded my palms and he was warm, as if all that stuff he was feeling on the inside was trying to find its way out through his skin.

“You don’t need anyone to make you better, Jet. You’re already the best.”

I meant to just brush my mouth across his, to just touch lips to lips, to try to soothe some of those broken edges we seemed to keep stabbing each other with. As usual, when it was me and him, it went from sedate and light to a full-blown inferno in half a second. My hands wrapped in his hair, his hands locked on my waist, and it went from a good-bye peck to the kind of kiss people share when they know there is a very good chance they will never see each other again.

His lips were hard and his tongue was insistent against my own, and there was a level of desperation in both of us that made the kiss twist into something more dangerous than I could handle now that I realized how deeply I cared for him. Everything about Jet was passionate—his mouth, his hands, and the way he held me like I was going to escape and run away at any minute. He kissed me like he loved me and it broke me even further. I had no doubt had we been inside, and not standing in front of the house when the van with the rest of the guys in the band pulled up, that they would have interrupted something a lot more intimate than us kissing.

Someone honked the horn and Jet pulled away. He left a little bite to remember him by and now, instead of being angry, those oh-so-pretty eyes with that gold halo just looked sad.

“Bye, Ayd.”

I had to hold back tears. I put his shaking fingers to my mouth, like maybe I could hold him there, keep him with me forever, and whispered back, “Bye, Jet.”

He hauled all his equipment to the van and I stood frozen to the spot. Right before he closed the door, he looked at me and forced a lopsided grin. I lost it. Before the van was gone from the front of the house, I bolted to my room and threw myself across the bed. I cried because I couldn’t help but feel like he was telling me good-bye forever, and I cried because there was no way I could have him. I cried because my mom was never going to grow up, and I was never going to get my childhood back. I cried because, as awful and manipulative as Asa was, I still loved the rat bastard. But mostly, I cried for me. I had spent so much time trying to deny who I was, and working toward a future that was secure, that I wasted Lord only knew how long avoiding and denying the one person who wanted to actually promise me a forever. It was a mess.

I didn’t hear Cora come in, but I felt my bed sink down when she sat on the edge of it. Her fingers were cool when she pushed my hair off my face.

“That was brutal.”

I sniffed and tried to wipe the moisture away with the pillow case, but my eyes kept on leaking.

“How much of it did you see?”

“Enough to watch two of my best friends’ hearts break. Come on, Ayd. Why are you doing this? Clearly you guys belong together.”