My fingers stumble.Do I need to know anything now?
His response comes seconds later.Not while you’re driving. Look after her.
I send a final reply, telling him where we’re going. Movement catches my eye, and I slip my phone into my pocket as Kennedy jogs down the steps.
I run my eyes over her as she climbs back in, flushed cheeks and another one of those god-awful sweaters. “Sorry. I had to shower.”
“I don’t mind. I didn’t realize you had such a thing for turtlenecks. It’s going to be a hot day.”
She offers me a quick, closed-lip smile. “They’re easy to throw on, I guess. Must have been a sale when I bought them.”
But Kenny doesn’t wear turtlenecks. She wears band t-shirts and old, faded flannel shirts, and steals our hoodies when shethinks we’re not looking. She always hated having anything around her neck at all.
I scan her again. My eyes catch on her left arm. It looks a little bulky, not quite smooth. She catches me looking, raising her eyebrows. “Are we going or what? Day’s wasting.”
“We’re going.”
Kennedy
Istudy him as he drives.
Nerves knot my stomach, dry my mouth, tighten my throat. It’s easier to focus on Theo, to pretend this is nothing more than an easy drive to a pretty place.
He runs a hand over his stubble, cheeks tinging pink when he catches me looking. “I need to shave.”
No, he doesn’t. It suits him. “You should leave it.”
He clears his throat. “Maybe.”
But my mind is caught on something else. “Theo… why didn’t you and Oscar go to college?”
I know exactly how hard he worked for his place. I was there for all of it. The late nights. The assessments. The interviews. The sheer joy, tinged with panic, when he opened his acceptance letter. “Oscar’s scholarship—,”
“It’ll still be there.” His hand whitens against the wheel. “We just… it was something we all planned to do together, Ken. It didn’t feel right, and Oscar agreed. So we took a year out. We’ll go back. The plan hasn’t changed. Just moved around.”
His eyes shift to me. “And honestly… I thought you’d be there. I wasn’t ready for that.”
My lips part. “I dropped out.”
Theo brakes. Hard. “Youwhat?”
I jolt in my seat, hissing as my belt tightens against my bandages. “Jesus. Ever heard of a slow stop?”
He twists in his seat to face me. “You dropped out?Why?”
“Same reason.” I blink away the pain. “It wouldn’t have felt right.”
I would never have gone without them. And there wasn’t much point in pushing it back. Not when I wasn’t going to survive long enough to complete it.
I’ve probably had more nursing experience in the past six months than I would have learned in a classroom.
My eyes drop to my lap. “You still want to be a lawyer, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says. I can feel him watching me. “And I will be. And Oscar will still be some sort of complicated engineer that none of us can really explain, I’m sure. We have time.”
There’s that word again. Time.
I can’t dither anymore. I have to make a decision. I have to tell him something – something that won’t tear him apart, that might give him some peace.
