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My lids flicker closed, a half second of unwillingness.

“My mom is opening an orphanage and Juliet and I are going to help.”

The room goes quiet, aside from the music that’s still playing. Danny wants everyone to celebrate this news the same way they celebrated Luke’s triumph, but it’s the wrong crowd for that. No one envies us. They don’t want to be in our shoes. And plenty of people in this room—Luke especially, based on the look on his face—think it’s fucking insane.

He rises, looking only at me. “Are you serious right now? How long would you go for?”

I stare at the floor while Danny answers. “I don’t know,” he says. “Probably for good. You guys will have to come visit though. Seriously, the surfing there blows California out of the water.”

Harrison places a quiet hand on Danny’s shoulder. “That’s great, man. I hope it works out.”

“Tell me something, Danny,” Luke says, still staring at me. “What precisely does Juliet get out of this deal? Or are you just assuming the pleasure of cooking and cleaning for you is enough for her?”

My heart thuds loudly in my chest. I squeeze my eyes shut, praying that this moment just ends. Or that it hasn’t happened at all.

Danny stiffens, and his arm around my waist tenses until it feels more like a shackle. “I’m not sure you need to worry about my fiancée, Luke.”

“Someone fucking needs to,” Luke snaps.

Beck jumps to his feet, moving between them.

“Stop,” I whisper, because it’s all I can get out. I pull away from Danny and walk blindly out the door, down the stairs to the beach as tears run down my face.

Despite the storm coming in, it’s a beautiful starlit night. I feel nothing at all looking at it. I feel nothing at all most of the time, now.

What a fucking disaster this is.

Luke and I, rushing to stop the other or defend the other, all fucking day. Everyone must have noticed it. What will I say if Danny asks? And I’m not sure it’s ever even occurred to him that I don’t want to go to Nicaragua. If he finally asks me tonight, point blank, am I still going to lie?

There’s a shift in the air behind me. I look over my shoulder to discover Luke approaching. “You shouldn’t be out here,” I whisper when he steps beside me.

“Why?” he demands. “Because you can’t control yourself when I’m around? Maybe that ought to tell you something, Juliet.”

I shove my hands in the pocket of my hoodie, hating that he’s right. “Luke, I’m doing my best.” My voice cracks.

His hand wraps around my forearm, turning me toward him. “No, you’re not. Your best would be to say ‘Danny, I love you, but not in the way you want.’”

“You think it’s that easy? You think I can do that to Donna? This wedding is the one thing that’s kept her going the past few months.”

“It’s never going to be easy,” he says, his voice softening. I bury my face in my hands and he pulls them away, holding them tight in his own. “You don’t want to hurt him, but he’ll spend his entire life trying to make you happy and it’ll eat him up that he can’t do it. It’s already eating him up. You saw how he was tonight.”

“God, Luke,” I cry, “I wish you hadn’t come here. I convince myself things feel okay, and then you walk in the room and I realize they’re so far from okay that I must have been crazy to think otherwise.”

He pulls me into him, and his hands slide over my hips as he buries his face in my hair. “I can’t fucking stand this. If I thought you were going to be okay, if I thought you were getting what you wanted in the end, I’d walk. It would hurt, but I’d walk. But Jesus…Nicaragua? Living as a missionary? Name one thing about that whole scenario that’s for you, that’s what you want.”

I’d like to come up with something that proves he’s wrong, but my brain is empty. I can’t think of a single thing about it that appeals to me. “Not everyone gets a happy ending, Luke. Not everyone gets what they want out of life.”

“You think I don’t fucking know that? I know better than anyone alive that not everyone gets a happy ending. But at least I’m not handing mine away. At least I’m willing to fight for it.”

His breath skates over my face, his eyes on my mouth, and my heart takes on that irregular pattern it always does when he’s too close. I think I’d give up a decade of my life to have him kiss me again, but I shake my head, warning him off.

He releases me. “I’m going to leave now,” he says.

I watch as he turns away, heading for the shore. I wish I could film this, film every minute of him walking and laughing and sleeping and surfing, so I could hold onto him once he’s gone.

He gets roughly ten feet away and turns to look back at me.

“Fuck it,” he says, reaching me in five long strides before grabbing my face and kissing me hard. I don’t stop him. I breathe in the smell of his shampoo, the salt on his skin, taste his lips and try to memorize all of it—his smell, his size, the tightness of his grip.