Her face somehow pales even further, mortification shifting into her furrowed brows and widened eyes, like she can’t believe I’m somehow making this worse for her.
But she doesn’t say a word. She and my dad don’t move a finger as I spin on my heel and run out of the church.
They probably believe they’re giving me space to heal, to be alone with my thoughts. But I think, deep down, they don’t care where I go.
After all, I’m the devil who killed an angel.
CHAPTER 3
LAINEY
ONE YEAR POST-CRASH
Three taps soundon my window—Jensen’s cue that he’s waiting outside on the roof. A fourth knock rings against the glass, and my heart sinks. Four means that it’s an emergency, and when it comes to Jensen, it usually means he’s having an attack.
My walk turns to a run as I race toward the window. I hastily unlock it and throw it open. Jensen falls through the curtains the second he can, crashing into my bedroom, his breathing erratic.
I try to catch him and slow him down, but he collapses on top of me, taking both of us to the floor.
At the last moment possible, he throws his arms out, stopping himself from crushing me completely as his elbows lock into place, positioned on either side of my head. His lips part, and gradually, his breaths even out, caressing my cheek with warmth.
My stomach flutters, and I force the giddiness forming in my chest away—I try to at least.
The chain around his neck dangles between us, brushing my chin and sending tingles up my spine. Bending at the elbows, he lowers down an inch, but, God, it feels like a foot.
His proximity knocks the air from my lungs. I know I shouldn’t feel anything toward him—he’s my best friend. But the way his hair falls down between us, the way his bloodshot eyes soften with every second he looks at me, the way I can feel the most minuscule brush his thumb makes against the side of my ear—it has me questioning everything I’ve ever known.
Luca’s bedroom door squeaks down the hallway, and Jensen leaps off of me, shooting up and adjusting his shirt and joggers, doing everything he can to avoid my eye contact. I quickly stand up and fiddle with the window, pretending like that’s what I was doing the entire time.
I’m not sure why we’re acting so nervous; we weren’t even doing anything, but when Luca sneaks into my room and quietly shuts the door, I can hear my blood pumping in my ears, my heart rate higher than ever.
“Hey, guys,” my brother whispers, not wanting to wake our parents. “Movie?” he asks like that’s not the same thing we do every time Jensen comes over in the middle of the night.
“Yep,” Jensen says, and I can hear the subtle shakiness in his voice. “Scream?”
“Fuck yeah. A classic. I’ll get some snacks,” Luca says before tiptoeing out of my room.
He doesn’t need to pretend to be a ninja to avoid waking our parents. They are fast asleep downstairs, and regardless, it’s a Friday night; they wouldn’t be too upset to find Jensen in here. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be the last.
He’s never said the reason he comes over out loud, but his sporadic visits started last year after Carly’s funeral, after his parents found comfort in fighting rather than loving, especially when it comes to him. Maybe my parents know more than they’re sharing—because I can tell when they “scold” us for letting Jensen crash with us, they’re not actually mad.
I’ve heard his parents fighting occasionally—from their home, across a twenty-foot yard, and through the walls of our house. I wish they would grow up and realize that they hadn’t lost both of their kids in that accident and that the one who survived needs them more than ever. But while they fail to be the support system he needs, we’ll fill the gap. Besides, now, I wouldn’t know what a weekend looked like if Jensen wasn’t passed out in one of our rooms.
Luca leaves, taking the oxygen with him, the air suddenly taut in the room. I face the awkwardness head-on.
“Talk to me,” I mutter, my word ending abruptly as I turn around from the window and find Jensen not a foot away, facing me with a heaving chest.
“I missed you”—he pauses, and my heart leaps into my throat—“guys.”
There it is again—that wall that lives between us, which solidifies the more we lean into it. It grows stronger as we grow weaker, and nothing in the world is more aggravating.
I know it’s for the best—to not ruin what we have now—and I know he’s not in a good mental space. I don’t want him to regretusif we ever take that leap all because he was vulnerable and I was his safe space.
Carly was my best friend. She might have been a few years older than me, but that never felt like a factor in our friendship. I’m scared that the intensity of our connection is amplified because of our shared grief. What happens if a relationship is built on sorrow? Is it doomed? How can someone ever know?
Jensen clears his throat, the rough and deep sound pooling in my core.
My eyes slide down the snug blue T-shirt drawn tightly across his chest, and out of the corner of my eye, I see his fingers twitch toward mine. The smallest, most minuscule movement, which has my lips parting and sucking in a sharp breath.
