“I didn’t even miss them.” He tossed her a smile, striding toward the door. “I’ll come back in a few minutes, after you’re dressed, and we can talk about everything that’s happened. All right?”

Jack nodded numbly. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

Raven gave her ample time before knocking on the door. He opened it slowly, peering inside. Jack was sitting on Lily’s bed, her curls damp and dangling over one shoulder. Raven’s white collared shirt clung to her skin. She’d rolled up his jeans on the bottoms, so they didn’t drag on the floor. She looked more comfortable than he’d seen her look since he’d come back from school, and he wanted to empty his dresser drawers and hand over his wardrobe.

Gingerly, he sat on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to tell me tonight,” he began, tracing his fingers along the lace of Lily’s white bedspread. His fingers ached to touch Jack. To trail across her chest until her heartbeat sprang to life and he knew, definitively, that she was all right. “We can talk about Belle, and the detention center, after you’ve eaten and gotten some sleep.”

“I have to tell you now.” She lifted a pillow from the bed, then placed it over the heating vent on Lily’s floor. For years Raven had heard his parents arguing through the vent in his bedroom, because his vent connected to theirs. Lily’s might’ve led somewhere different, but it was better to be safe than sorry. “Belle figured something out about me,” Jack said, returning to Raven’s side, “and I want to tell you before she does.”

“I think I know.”

Her head snapped up, swiveling to look at him. “You know? How could you—”

“Why do you think I gave you my clothes?”

Silence. It was the kind of deep, oppressive quiet that left a ringing in your ears that you knew you were imagining, and yet… it filled everything. There was a keening in Raven’s mind. A sharp, gutting fear that he’d said the wrong thing, or pushed her too hard. But he wanted to know her so badly. And if “her” wasn’t the right word to be using, he wanted to know that, too.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he began, and he already felt like he was rambling. Like there were no right words for what he needed to say. “But I want you to know that I know who you are. Deep down. And nothing you could tell me—”