Best friends.
That’s all this is.
That’s all it can be.
• • •
We haven’t held hands as much, like we used to when we were kids.
Not like that.
But after everything — he reaches for my hand anyway.
And I let him.
I always let him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD
• • •
There were days like this sometimes.
Not often enough.
But they existed — days where Cassian showed up without the weight of everything he usually carried.
Where something easy moved between us that felt like who we used to be before things got complicated.
This was one of those days.
I’d learned not to expect them.
I’d also learned to hold on when they came.
• • •
It was my idea.
I’d figured out earlier that year that if you went out my window and grabbed the drainpipe on the left side — the thick one, the one that had been there since before we moved in — you could get enough leverage to pull yourself up onto the overhang above the garage.
From there it was an easy crawl to the flat section of the roof above the living room.
I’d done it alone a few times.
Never told anyone.
I told Cassian.
The look on his face was immediate — that flash of something that made him briefly, completely young and carefree again. Delighted in a way he usually kept hidden.
“Show me,” he said.
• • •
Getting up was an ordeal.
