“No, but you should plan something. You don’t want to be stuck here for the rest of your life do you?”

I shrug. “It was good enough for Mom and Dad.”

Penn looks thoroughly disappointed in me. “Fine. I’ll be back before dinner,” he says as he jogs through the doorway into the living room.

“Mom and Landry won’t be home, so make yourself a sandwich!” I yell after him, but I can’t tell whether or not he can hear me over his music.

A second later, the front door slams shut.

My phone buzzes with a text from Jake.

on my way

“I’m not even sure why I’m here.” Jake sinks into the wobbly chair in front of my desk.

That’s new. Before we broke up, he always flopped onto my unmade bed.

“I don’t care about the stupid duffel bag. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Everyone’s saying you found a dead body.”

He frowns when I close my bedroom door, because we’re the only ones in the house. But I don’t want to be overheard if my mom or my brother comes home early. Or if Landry changes her mind about the sleepover.

“What’s going on, Beckett? Did you actually find a dead body?”

“You really don’t know?”

I study his face, looking for a lie in features I know as well as my own. We were together for nearly a year. I would never have gotten through what happened with my dad—not just his death, but all the crap that led up to it—if it weren’t for Jake. In fact, he slept over three nights in a row after the funeral, when it all really hit me, and Mom was so out of it that she didn’t even notice.

That’s why it hurts so much to know he was cheating. But this … The baby in his gym bag … That’s something else entirely.

“I only know what I’ve heard. What am I doing here? Where’s my bag? I hadn’t even realized I’d lost it until you texted.”

“That’s your story? You’re going to go with ‘I lost it’?”

“What’s going on, Beck? Why would that be a story?”

I watch dawn fade into dusk in his eyes, and suddenly I realize what this moment is for him. He thought I wanted to start over, like he suggested in the parking lot. He thought his duffel bag was just my excuse to get him over here, and that light dying in his eyes … that’s the death of hope.