“I fucked up…” I sniff, tears breaking free. “I fucked up and I-I—”
“Hey,no,Milo,hey,don’t cry. Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I say, my voice far more desperate than I’ve ever heard it. I straighten, moving away from her until her hands fall to her sides, then cross in front of her chest as she nervously watches me pace. “I don’t know how to fix it.” I wipe my face, looking up at the night sky as my sister stares up at me,clearly at a loss for what to say. “I don’t know how…how to make it right. Ineedit to be right, Nads. I need to fix it. But—”
“Tell me,” she says, placing her hand on my arm. “It’s okay. We can figure this out.” She turns to look over her shoulder, as if she’s looking for someone to help us both—as if we’re those same two idiot kids who needed adult supervision but had only each other and Nik. “We’ll sort it…Whatever it is.”
“I love her,” I say aloud for someone else to hear for the first time. “I love her and she—”
“Doesn’t love you back?”
I shake my head instinctively. No, right? She does, doesn’t she? I don’t know. Maybe she did. Maybe not anymore. “I don’t—”
“You two all right?” Nik’s loud voice booms from the entrance. He studies us both for half a beat before his boots sound off against gravel, jogging over to us. “Shit, what happened, man? You look…” He stops, eyes narrowed on my face. “Where’s Prue?”
“She’s at home,” I answer, my voice breaking. “She asked me to leave.”
He looks between Nadia and me, then nods, his brows inching closer and closer to each other by the second. “Okay,” he says calmly. “Why’d she do that?”
I tell them both everything that’s happened since the day on the dock with Tom, right up until the last ten minutes when my heart broke in a way I hadn’t imagined possible before moving here. Beforeher.
“Shit,” Nadia mumbles, her eyes shifting side to side. “That’s…”
“Milo, that’s hard…” Nik says, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, man.”
“I know I fucked up. You can tell me.”
They share a quick, uneasy glance, then both look back at me.
“Should you have told her? Probably, yeah.” Nadia answers her own question, her head leaning side to side. “But I think all three of us can wager to guess why youmayhave not wanted to piss off a fatherlike figure…especially since youlikehis daughter so—”
“Love,” I interrupt, apparently not able tostopsaying it now.
“Especially since youlovehis daughter,” she corrects, before rubbing her lips together. “I think he put you in a really fucked-up position, honestly.”
“Right. But—”
“Agreed,” Nik says, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “And, yeah, it’s not fair to Prue, and it’ll obviously affect her life too, but Tom is the one who’s sick, and he asked you to not say anything, so…” He winces, looking at the ground. “I don’t know if I would’ve told her. I don’t know…. It’s hard.”
“She’s really, really mad,” I say, scratching at my jaw. “Sh-she looked at me like…well, like she was disappointed, I guess. But it was more than that…. I’m used to disappointing people. I’ve been seeing that sort of expression since I was a fucking toddler. But Prue, she looked…surprisedby her disappointment. Like she’d expected more. Like shethoughtmore of me. No one’s ever been surprised before.”
“Milo…” Nads whispers, uncharacteristically soft.
“An-and she wouldn’t even hear me out, you know? She kept interrupting and—”
“I mean,duh…” Nik says. “How would you feel if you found out your whole life is about to change for the worse and the guy you’ve been screwing knew but didn’t give you a heads-up?”
“Fuck.” I press the heels of my palms into my eye sockets. “Fuck, this is bad.”
“It is,” Nik agrees. “But I don’t think it’s past fixing.”
“No?” I ask, unable to hide the hopefulness I pour into the single syllable.
“No?” Nadia repeats, obviously surprised. I turn toward her, my eyes wide and urgent and searching. “Sorry, Mi, it’s not…I don’t know. I think you deserve a second chance, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t know if I could trust someone again after that. Being vulnerable is scary as fuck.” She laughs, looking at the strung-up lights above us. “I just think it would be really difficult to open yourself up to being hurt again…. Wouldn’t it?”
“You’ve seen them together, Nads. There’s something there. Somethingbig.That doesn’t just go away because of one argument, no matter how…messy it may be.”
“Doesn’t it?” she asks, two words containing a spark I well recognize.
