Page 141 of All the way home

She screws her eyes shut, reluctant to hear it, desperate to hear it.

Pulling her back into a hug so tight it’s suffocating, Kieran gasps, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, it’s not, it wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault, okay?”

Rena’s legs give out, but Kieran holds on to her tightly, shoulders shaking.

“I didn’t think it would”—he lets out a shuddering exhale—“I wasn’t thinking at all. I’m so sorry, I didn’t really want it. I didn’t want to leave you. I wasn’t . . .”

“I know,” she whispers through her tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know—I didn’t ask, I had no idea, and then I didn’t know how to talk to you, and—”

“I shut you out,” he whispers. “I was just scared.”

“I would never think you’re weak,” she whispers, breaking out of the hug and stepping back to survey him. Swiping furiously at her eyes, she tells him, “You’re the strongest person I know.”

“Ugh, gross.” Tipping his head back, wiping under his eyes, Kieran shudders. “Don’t say that, you’re going to make me cry.”

Choked, unsettled, relieved, Rena laughs, wrapping her arms around herself. It feels like she’s been walking with lead shoes all this time, and now that they’re finally off, she might just float away.

“And this wasn’t even the code orange!” Kieran drags at the skin under his eyes and lets out a breathless laugh. “Jesus. What are you going to do about Lucas?”

“I don’t know.” It feels a lot less scary to say it, now. “Nothing tonight.”

“Yeah, that would be pretty awful of you,” Kieran says, then pulls a face. “Are you going to want me to be there when you do it? Because I will, but—”

“I’m a big girl,” Rena assures him, even though a tiny part of her is secretly relieved at the offer.

“I know you are,” Kieran says with a soft smile. “I’m not suggesting you need me for any of this.”

“I always need you,” she whispers.

Something bereaved and guilty flashes across his face.

Rena’s breath catches.

“I will always,” Kieran says, eyes glittering, with an unfamiliar, solemn determination in his voice, “always be here when you need me.”

Hour Twelve-10:39 P.M. Chapter Forty-Five

Rena

Kieran reaches over and takes her pinky between his fingers, squeezing it once.

“You should go find your Cinderella,” she says. “Wherever he went. Or be Cinderella. I’m not sure what your whole deal is.”

By the aggrieved, amused face he makes, Rena knows that everything is back to normal between them.

Normal, normal.

Not the tense, uncertain normal they’ve been balancing between them for the last year.

“Cinderella?” He wrinkles his nose. “Really?”

Rena asks, “I mean . . . isn’t it a little bit like a fairy tale?”

At that, he lets himself smile. She sees the involuntary wings of it stretching as his face goes splotchy, coloring like it only ever does when he’s really embarrassed.

“You like him,” she says, as teasing as she can manage.

“You’ll like him too,” Kieran assures her as he checks his phone. “He’s . . . he just says what he’s thinking. No games. Like everything just is what it is with him, you know? Somehow, he seems to like when I’m being real better than when I’m being . . .”