“I know. You’re having a panic attack. This happened after your father died. Remember? We were lying in your bed, and you woke up from a nightmare, and you said you felt like your whole body was in a vise. No, wait, you said something about a full-body corset.”

I do remember that. The full-body corset. That’s how I feel now too. Like there’s something constricting my lungs. My entire chest.

“Take it slow.” Jake rubs one hand up and down my back while I clutch at his sweater, my face pressed into his shoulder. While I suck in breath after breath through the loose weave. “In and out. You’re fine.”

I close my eyes and fight to slow everything down. To breathe evenly, despite the panicked insistence from my brain that I suck in as much air as possible, as quickly as possible. And gradually, the world returns to normal. The room steadies around me. The dark smudges fade.

My chest still feels bruised, as if it’s had to work too hard for too long. But he’s right. I’m fine.

Fact-Check Rating: Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Come sit.” Jake leads me back to my bed, where he settles next to me. And for a couple of minutes, we just sit there, his arm around my waist. My head on his shoulder. “Can you tell me what you were talking about?” he says at last, whispering into my hair. “Are you ready to let it out?”

“I saw the pills.” Saying the words feels like jumping off a cliff, waiting to feel my body smash on the rocks.

Telling the truth is supposed to feel good, isn’t it? Liberating?

This doesn’t feel like that at all.

“What pills? Beckett, what are you talking about?”

“The night my dad died. I saw the pills before I went to bed. I saw the bottle. I knew what they were, and I knew he wasn’t supposed to have them. But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say anything. I could have grabbed them and flushed them. I could have told my mom. I could have actually called my dad on his bullshit, right to his face. Any of that could have changed that entire night. I could have saved his life, Jake.”

He’s already shaking his head. “No, you—”

“But I was a coward. I was afraid that if I said anything, I’d be starting another fight between him and my mom. Or that Landry would hear, and she’d figure out he was using. Or that he would … that he would be mad at me. I was afraid of making things worse. So I did nothing. And two hours later, I woke up and found him dead on the floor.”

Jake blinks at me. He looks really, really worried. “Beck, that doesn’t make it your—”