Page 87 of All the way home

“It’s not a moral thing,” Kieran clarifies. “So I have no issue with you drinking.”

“Reassuring.” Zach sits back and folds his arms. Even after nearly seven hours together, Kieran is such an enigma.

Kieran raises both eyebrows. “What? Does that bother you?”

“Not at all.”

“But . . .” Kieran prompts.

At last, Zach gives in to curiosity. “Well, I saw Lucas at the gate before I found you.”

There’s a note of caution in his tone when Kieran asks, “And?”

“He said things got hairy after I left.” Zach lets the statement hang.

Kieran takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “It did. Rena and I had an argument.”

Zach winces. “Not my fault, I hope.”

“No.” Kieran’s expression darkens. “There’s . . . kind of a lot going on.”

“I see,” Zach says, and leaves it open, a path Kieran can follow if he wants to.

But he clearly doesn’t. Clearing his throat, Kieran gives his head a little shake and sips his iced tea. “Nothing that time won’t help. The worst is over.”

And Zach cannot tell if Kieran wants him to believe it’s true.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Rena

“Are you okay?” Even after everything—even after a year and a half of radio silence—all Rena can hear is concern.

“Sahar,” Rena manages, a constricting sense of panic tightening. Wildly, she takes stock of her surroundings—escape routes everywhere, but none that won’t make it obvious she’s running away.

You know that’s not . . . normal, right?

Just like the night of her high school graduation, a pervasive sense of wrongness crawls over her like bugs across her skin.

“I’m fine,” Rena says. “It’s—just—what are you doing here?”

“Want to have a crack at it?”

Rena flushes.

There’s a definitive note of warning in Sahar’s face as she evaluates Rena, unsmiling. She’s always had the uncanny ability to shut down any attempt at deflection. A determination that could cut through steel.

Standing in front of that determination, Rena doesn’t feel steeled at all. She feels like one cutting look and she’ll fall to shreds like tissue paper.

“How have you been?” Sahar asks.

“Fine,” Rena says, terse and automatic. “Why?”

Sahar blinks slowly. “Because . . . I haven’t seen or heard from you in a long time?”

Rena winces.

“Because it’s been almost a year and a half since you were willing to give me the time of day?” Stepping forward, Sahar shakes her head, curls bouncing. Her new hair suits her, shiny under the terminal lights.