I glanced over at him, startled to see real disappointment there. “Why is that important?”

He chuckled and shook his head. The breeze blew his shaggy brown hair away from his face, letting me watch as his expression changed from smiling to serious. “If I ask you something, Lela, will you promise to tell me the truth?”

My heart dropped into my stomach. “You have a way with the ominous, you know that?” His green eyes met mine, and they pulled the words right out of me. “All right,” I said, my voice choked.

He leaned forward very slowly, his gaze sliding from my eyes to my mouth. The heat of it caught me completely by surprise. His playful, nervous mask had dropped away, revealing a hunger that crackled along my skin and made me shiver.

“Hanging out with you is the only time I don’t think about everything that’s happened,” he said. “I could talk to you for hours, and I could stare at you for longer than that. But no matter how much I do, I can’t figure one thing out.” His face was inches from mine. I could smell the strawberry filling on his breath. “Do I have a real shot here?”

And then his lips were on mine, warm and soft and sweet, paralyzing me. His hand slipped around the back of my neck and held me while he slid closer, blocking out the sun. And my heart … it ached. Because this was everything I could have hoped for, everything I might have wanted in a moment like this. Because he was missing nothing.

But I was.

I laid my palm on his chest, over his heart. And gently pushed.

Ian pulled away, and when I saw the hurt in his expression, I closed my eyes. “Okay,” he said quietly. “At least I know. So will you answer another question for me?”

I nodded.

“Is it me? Or is it that I’m not him?”

My eyes flew open. “Does it matter?”

He rubbed his chest, right over the spot where my hand had been a second earlier. “Yeah, actually.”

What the hell. “It’s not you. This would have been different if—”

“If Malachi Sokol hadn’t decided Warwick High was the perfect place for him to experience American culture,” he said bitterly. “That dude’s timing sucks.” He stared out across the water. “Or maybe mine does.”

I drew my knees to my chest. “Ian, I—”

“No. You’ve done me a favor. Don’t worry about it.”

“A favor?”

“Yeah. It’s been killing me, wondering if it was me. If I’m just not …” he sighed. “But you said this would have been different if he hadn’t shown up. Do you mean that?”