“Jer,” I murmured.
He was already shaking his head, mouth pressed tight. “I’m a friend. Let’s get on the road before the snow comes.”
Jer grabbed my suitcase from Dirks without another word and started for the elevator, his shoulders tense as he walked ahead of us.
“You think he’s mad?” I asked quietly.
Dirks shrugged, but it didn’t look convincing. “He’s... I don’t know. You gotta talk to him. That doesn’t mean—” He stopped short, reached for my hand, and held it tight. “I love you, Luna.”
I squeezed his hand and stepped closer, my heart pulling in two directions at once.
“I love you.”
“Dude. That shitsmells,” Jer groaned as we rode north in Dirks’s truck toward Minnesota. “I don’t know why we couldn’t just get on a plane like normal people.”
“Because nothing says bonding like a road trip,” I said, popping a Gusher into my mouth and sucking the goo out.
Dirks reached down, grabbed another meat stick, and tore it open.
Jer gagged. “Oh myfuckinggod. I’m not sitting up here for ten hours smelling that.”
He chucked his pillow at Dirks’s head, then cursed as he awkwardly climbed through the center console and into the back seat, knees knocking into everything on the way.
I tossed him a Diet Coke without looking. “It smells just as bad back here.”
He muttered something under his breath—full grumble mode—before slapping on his headphones and turning to stare out the window like he was being held hostage.
I smiled, but it faded quickly.
How was I supposed to show him that I wanted him as much as I loved Dirks? That hemeantas much. That it wasn’t second place, or some leftover thing I was holding onto. I didn’t want him to spend the next month buried behind sarcasm and distance, texting me like he didn’t care when I knew damn well he did.
I didn’t just want him in my bed. I wanted him in theroom.
I sat there for another mile in silence before I turned and yanked his headphones off.
“What thefuck, Lune?” he snapped, jerking back like I’d hit him.
“No,” I said, shifting to face him fully. “I’m not driving all the way up to Minnesota just tolivelike this with you acting like a ghost in the back seat. Why didn’t you come see me before we left? Why didn’t youtry?”
“Because, Luna, it’s fuckinghardfor me. I’m the fuckup, remember? Iamgoing to fuck it up again, and then both of you are gonna have to suffer because of me. I needed your signature, not your pity?—”
“Iknowyou need my signature, Jer, but I needyou.”
His eyes burned into mine. “Why? Why do you need me, Luna?”
“Because no one... no one understands me like you do.”
He didn’t say anything at first but pointed to Dirks, who kept his eyes on the road, hands tight on the wheel.
“He does.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“No, I don’t,” Dirks said at the same time.
“You think you’re going to ruin it again. You think if you get too close, you’ll burn it down, and we’ll hate you for it.”
He looked away.
