He stares at me. “If you need more space, okay. Take it, as much as you want. But breaking up with me isn’t going to make her better.”

“But it will make me better!” I’m shaking now, and this day has to end, it has to. I see Drew, his palm pressed flat against that glass window, watching my sister come back to life. “I think about you … about losing you, and then I make mistakes with my sister because I’m worrying about the what-ifs. And every time I’m with you, I can’t help thinking about it. There are so many ways to die, Ben.”

“Yes. But there are so many ways to live. Together. For as long as we have.”

“You don’t get it! We don’t have time. And River, her telling me to live in the present, just accept whatever is going to happen. Screw that. All that got her was a dead brother. But she’s right about one thing: I need to let go. To not be so attached. So that’s what I’m doing, Ben. I’m too … I’m clinging to you, clinging, and I—”

“Mae. That’s not what she’s saying, not what that means. She’s talking about unhealthy clinging, like with Hannah. Fixing her is becoming your own addiction. And you know how addiction plays out. That’s what she’s talking about.”

I pull my jacket around me tighter. “I’m sorry.”

“Mae.” His voice, gravel and crashing rocks, tunneling to Earth’s core. “I’m not him.”

“What?”

“Your dad. Is that what this is really about?” He steps closer. “I know what he did freaks you the hell out. But I’m not him. I love you.”

I wish this were just about being afraid to be cheated on.

I see Drew, his face ravaged as he leaves Nah’s room. And I see my sister in that room. In that hospital bed.

I don’t know what to say. So I don’t say anything at all.

Ben grips the back of one of the chairs. “You’ve never said it back.”

“If you perform an experiment,” I say, “and every time you do it, no matter the variables, you get the same results, what can you conclude?”

He blinks. “That your hypothesis is either correct or incorrect.”