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“You’ve helped me learn how not to take my mother’s disinterest so personally,” he says, quietly enough that I strain to hear him. “That it must’ve taken all her strength to put me in this situation—this better, kinder, more loving situation—and that acting out in bitterness was disrespecting everything she went through to get me here.”

His eyelids are sagging. I keep silent, letting him stroke my fingers.

“I really was…not good, Riley.” He draws another long, winded breath. “I’m in a better place now than last year. Sometimes I have bad thoughts. Sometimes I still get frustrated and want to cave to it. To get into trouble and see what I can get away with. Or even better—get caught and piss people off. Before you, someone pandered to me. They made me feel like my actions were justified.”

My heart sinks into the bottom of my stomach. “Logan?”

He nods. “I excited him. I had a crush on him, too, and wanted to impress him. I think he just tried to make me feel seen and heard, so he never argued with my thought processes or actions. He was in a sort of ‘let him do what he wants, so long as I’m there to stop him from going too far’ mindset. That’s how it was at first, anyway. Until…”

Aaron pauses. His jaw grinds, like he’s crunching up words in his mouth.

“Anyway.” He smirks, his eyes falling fully shut. “Then things fell apart, and suddenly, there was someone else. They didn’t sit and watch while I self-destructed. They put up roadblocks. They made me think. I wasn’t used to it. It irritated me.”

“I bet you regretted making me date you early on, huh?” I ask with an apologetic smile he doesn’t see.

“Maybe,” he says with a short laugh. “I wasn’t used to being challenged. I should’ve expected it. You were always in the background, wagging your finger around. Your parents didn’t like me, but the furthest they went in keeping me away was getting that alarm system installed to make sure Logan wasn’t sneaking out. Otherwise, you were the only person who actively tried getting in my way. Naturally, that didn’t stop just because we started dating.”

I lean against his shoulder so my nose is buried in the crook of his neck. He smells faintly of cologne. And wood. Predictable. “Did something happen, Aaron?” I ask.

Aaron slings his arms around my waist, squeezing me into his chest, crushing my palms between us. “Saw my mom last night,” he whispers. “She was…not good. I’m not sure if she was high, but she clearly wasn’t all there. She asked me more about myself than she ever has before, though, and there was this sick part of me…”

He chokes on the words, his arms firming around me.

“I wished I could see her like that more often. But her sudden interest and energy wasn’t from getting better. Her face was so sunken. She was jittery. I didn’t know what to do. I’m not sure what to tell my dads, if it’s even their business. So when I got home last night, I just laid in bed spiraling and feeling guilty.”

“Did you sleep at all?” I ask.

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Aaron.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. It’s okay that it’s not.”

“Mm.”

“Do you want to talk about your options?”

“No. Not tonight.” Something wet rolls off his jawline and onto my forehead. I don’t bother opening my eyes or brushing it away. “Sorry for ruining the mood.”

“Don’t say something like that,” I murmur, fingers curling into his shirt. “A date is meant for two people to spend time together. That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

“I wanted this to be as fun and romantic as the first night you spent here,” he says, frustration bleeding into his voice. “It was the first time I ever saw you laugh hard enough to cry. I was going to shove gluten-free flour in your face during the baking, like last time, and then it was going to turn into a war. And then kissing. I was going to turn on music so we could drunkenly slow dance to it. Then we were going to wash the flour off each other and enjoy the firepit. Then go to bed together.”

“Well, we can do all that when we’re in higher spirits,” I say, pulling my face out of his neck to lean my forehead against his. When he feels the skin contact, his tired, wet eyes reluctantly open to meet mine. “Why don’t we skip to the go to bed part?”

“It’s eight o’clock,” he protests.

“And you’re falling asleep on the floor.”

“What would you even do?”

“Stare at you while you sleep,” I say seriously.

He huffs. “You’ll get bored.”

“Your face is too pretty to bore me,” I counter, smiling.