The file was accompanied by a threat. As Jack strode back into the room, Raven beckoned to her, all the blood in his body rushing to his heart. Making it hammer. Stealing his breath. They read the message together, hunched over on the bed: Burn the file or the police will find out that Jack burned your clothes last night.

14 I Will Not Lose You Again

Jack stared at the message for several seconds. She closed her eyes. She opened them again. The words started to blur, but they didn’t rearrange themselves, and the accompanying video kept playing over and over on repeat. She could see herself feeding Raven’s T-shirts to the fire. His jackets. His jeans. Even worse, she could feel his body tensing beside her with each passing second.

She wanted to bolt from the room and never return.

Carefully, with fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking, she guided the phone out of his hand and hit delete. The message vanished but the damage had been done. “Raven, I can explain.”

“You stole my clothes?”

A beat, during which she swallowed, but the pain in her throat didn’t go away. “I only meant to borrow them. Actually, I didn’t even mean—”

“Jack.”

“I just missed you, so I snuck through your window one night, like I had a million times when you lived at home, and I walked around your room. Your drawers were open. I saw one of your T-shirts, so I picked it up and…” She was practically crying. She wasn’t crying, because she didn’t want him to pity her on top of hating her. She took slow, steady breaths, swiping at her eyelashes as the tears started to form. “I just wanted to feel close to you, at first.”

His head swiveled toward her, his brown eyes narrowed. The room had grown heavy with shadows, making it difficult to read the expression on his face. It was almost as if he wore no expression at all. “You did it to feel close to me,” he repeated, his voice emotionless.

Jack nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“At first,” he went on, and all his missing emotions seemed to rush into her. She felt the beating of two hearts. The rush of too much blood in her ears. She shouldn’t have been so honest with him, but she couldn’t take back the words now. He’d already heard them.

And so, like she had with the changing of her name, she tried to brush it off like a casual thing. “You know how it is for me at home. My mom hands me down these ridiculous outfits. Sequined tops and miniskirts. I mean…” Jack huffed, shaking her head. All of this was a lighthearted conversation. She didn’t want to usher him out of the house, lock the front door, and never open it again.

Stay protected. Stay safe.