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“How are you feeling?” I asked softly. “Any hives? Wheezing?”

She shook her head.

I reached out and put a hand to her cheek to see if she was flushed. She leaned into it and my heart split down the middle.

I just wanted to hold her. Run away with her. Fix everything in her world and keep her insulated from anything that could harm her.

“I keep thinking my throat’s going to close,” she whispered.

“Do you want me to stay with you?”

She nodded into my palm.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “I can sleep in your room on the floor.”

I kept my hand on her face. Mostly because she didn’t seem to want me to move it and touching her calmed me. She looked up at me with those beautiful eyes. Inches between us. Oceans apart.

I wanted to kiss her. Press my lips softly to her mouth, rest my forehead against hers and whisper that I would protect her and make everything okay. I wanted to end this fucking nightmare, the nightmare of not being with her.

But the nightmare would go on.

After what we’d said in the car, we didn’t discuss what would happen next. Because nothing would happen. We understood that and what’s understood doesn’t need to be explained.

I would love her. She would regret picking Mike. And we wouldn’t ever do more than that because anything more than friends would hurt every single person I cared about. No matter what, whether my friendship with Mike continued after today or not.

I could never kiss her. I could never call her mine or lay with her in the dark.

So I gathered her into a hug and held her instead. Something I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing just twenty-four hours before. It wasn’t that it was okay now. It wasn’t, really, especially after what I’d said to her. It was that I just didn’t care. She needed to be held and I needed to hold her. It wasn’t romantic, wasn’t sexual. This was the friendship. Two people, comforting each other after something traumatizing and scary. I needed to feel her in my arms to remind myself that she was safe, she was with me, she was okay.

Tonight I was operating on some primal instinct, telling me to do what felt good and think about the morality of it later. Like stealing food when you’re starving.

Stealing moments.

She breathed out and I tucked her head under my chin and squeezed my eyes shut.

For now she would be taken care of. I didn’t have to worry about what Mike was doing or not doing. I could make her secure. Make her happy. Help her in any way she needed.

Be her friend.

I could do that without hurting anyone.

Except maybe myself.

42

LARISSA

Uh, what are you doing here?” Lexi asked, pausing over her table mid coffee pour.

I’d just walked into Donna’s. It was the day after everything, December 26. I’d taken a rideshare to Mike’s and packed all my belongings in under an hour. Everything I owned was in the trunk of my car.

I snuck out this morning before Chris woke up, tiptoeing over him. He was exhausted and I wanted him to rest, but mostly I didn’t know if I was ready to talk to him in the day about the things said in the night.

It had taken everything in me not to climb down there on the floor and sleep next to him.

Chris calmed me. Just being in the same room as him was like a soft whisper. I wanted to curl up beside him and put my head on his shoulder and let him hold me until we fell asleep—and he probably would have let me. I got the sense he was just as freaked out by yesterday as I was and needed the same thing I did.

But I didn’t curl up with him on the floor. All I could think about was what Mike or Xavier or Jesse would think if they saw us. If they knew I even spent the night at his house.