In the beginning, it was cute. Towards the end, it was infuriating.

Now? Now, I don’t know what to make of it. Of any of it.

“Babe—” he starts to say.

But that’s the last thing I want to hear. I don’t want “babe” or “Junepenny” or “I’m sorry.” I want answers, goddammit.

“Don’t call me ‘babe,’” I snarl ferally at him. “And stop the fucking car!”

His jaw clenches hard and his fists clench harder. But finally, he veers the car to the left and stops on the side of the road.

“There, the car is stopped,” he says wearily, as if I’m the one being ridiculous. He still doesn’t release the child lock, though. I decide to ignore that for the time being. “I know you have questions—”

I twist around in my seat so I can face him head-on. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

He nods. “I know, and like I said, I have every intention of explaining—”

I reach out and pinch him in the chest as hard as I can. “Ouch!” he yaps, pulling away from me.

“Okay,” I say calmly. “So you’re not a ghost.”

He scrutinizes me with scrunched-up eyes. “You’ve changed.”

“Five months ago, your body was burned to a crisp and you were put in the ground,” I retort. “So apparently, I’m not the only one who’s changed.”

“You have every right to be angry—”

“Gee, thanks for the permission.”

“But a part of me was hoping that a small part of you might feel a little… happy?” he ventures, looking at me like I’m a ticking time bomb that might go off at any moment.

“Which part am I supposed to be ‘happy’ about, Adrian?”

He shrugs. “That I’m here. That I’m alive.”

I breathe out and count backward from ten until I’m composed again. “You always did ask a lot of me,” I say softly. “Too much.”

He reaches out tentatively and pushes back a stray lock of my hair. “Junepenny…” he whispers, voice cracking with pent-up emotion.

Hearing that word in his voice does what the pinch and the breath couldn’t: it makes me finally believe in this. It’s not a dream and it’s not a hallucination.

He’s here.

He’s real.

As for what that means… I have no idea.

I close my eyes as my skin pricks up in goosebumps all over. The blast of the air conditioning from the vents is frigid. Graveyard air. Morgue air. The air of dead things.

“Do you remember why I started calling you that?” he asks suddenly.

I cross my arms and turn my face away from him. Some things hurt too bad to look at. Wounds are always the worst when you don’t know they’re coming. If you can brace for the pain, prepare for it, then you can survive it.

But maybe I wasn’t meant to survive these games.

“I picked you up, and my luck changed,” Adrian continues. “You were my lucky penny. My Junepenny.”

Despite my best efforts, I can feel tears at the edges of my eyes, fogging up my vision and making me feel extraordinarily exposed.