Page 112 of All the way home

“Surely I’ve said this by now.”

“Even though I basically went nuclear on you earlier?”

“Riddle me this,” Kieran says, which isn’t yes, but also definitely isn’t no. “What was your worst-case scenario, anyway?”

It feels like Zach’s smile is written on him in permanent ink. “What do you mean?”

“You said you’re always freaking out about everything. What was your worst-case scenario, when you realized we go to the same school?”

“Oh, easy: I’d say something awful, you’d hate me, and then if we ever spotted each other on campus you’d think to yourself, What a fucking weirdo, and then you’d tell all your friends I was a giant loser, and then it would go through the rumor mill and suddenly everyone would point and laugh when I walk by.”

Kieran’s laughter is delighted. “What?”

“You asked.” Zach hides his grin in his shoulder.

The terminal is cold in just his T-shirt. He keeps glancing behind him every few seconds for the security guard, but there’s no sign of him.

“You really are freaking out about everything all the time.” Kieran shakes his head as though it’s a marvel.

“There’s nothing I won’t overanalyze,” Zach agrees, with about as much confidence as he can ever muster.

“But you’ll criticize me for being concerned about the actual heart emoji still attached to your ex’s contact.”

“It is so over, I promise you. He’s not—he wasn’t—” Zach sighs helplessly. “It was never going to work. I wanted . . .”

“The happily-ever-after,” Kieran finishes for him, quietly.

“Okay, what is with you and happily-ever-afters?” Zach grins, ducking away from Kieran’s elbow.

“I’m a romantic,” he says, and even though he winks as he says it, there’s something nearly painfully earnest about it. “Happily-ever-after wasn’t what you were going to say?”

“I was going to say that I didn’t really know what I wanted.”

“And you do now?”

Carefully, folding the paper neatly, Zach takes a moment, then asks, “Does anyone?”

“I do,” Kieran says.

His confidence is almost amusing.

“And you’ll, what, wrestle it into submission?” Zach asks, most of his focus on the tape job. “Or are you going to harass it with objectionable opening lines?”

Kieran does not respond.

Zach looks up from his wrapping to find Kieran’s smile spreading like a slow, incredulous dawn, and that’s about when he realizes what he’s just said.

“I wasn’t”—Zach stammers, pressing both hands flat against the top of his suitcase, cheeks flaming—“I’m not trying to suggest that I’m your—I mean, I was just—”

Wordlessly, Kieran reaches over and touches his fingertips to his knuckles, and Zach—

Zach shuts up.

For a moment, it’s as though the air between them vanishes in a vacuum.

Then, lightly, Kieran asks, “Who’s to say you’re not?”

Kieran’s joking. He’s obviously joking—Zach can see the amusement in the quirk of his lips and the glint in his eye, but at the same time, there’s something searing in the intensity of his gaze.