He threw his hands up. “Are you trying to make me jealous? Or this whole summer, you and me, was this you trying to make her jealous?” he asked, voice sad and angry and broken all at the same time. He went for the killing blow. His words were coming out faster and faster. “You must have thought I was such an idiot. Falling for it again.” His laugh was full of biting cold. “All those kisses on the beach.”

My stomach bottomed out. He thought I was just like his ex. Someone who just wanted to use him to make another person jealous. I wasn’t like her; I would never do that to anybody. But I could see from the inflexible set of his face that I wouldn’t be able to convince him of that.

In the thorny seconds that passed, I was drowning. Every breath was a battle, gasped and rasping. My fingernails were embedded in my palms so hard that I knew there would be eight perfect half-moon indents.

My mouth tasted sour like vinegar. Blood rushed to my ears. He was so wrong, and yet, how could I blame him for coming to that conclusion? He’d told me weeks ago what his last girlfriend had done. In his eyes, this looked like a repeat of the same situation.

Realization crashed in his eyes. “So that’s a yes, then. To me being an idiot.”

“No, I wasn’t pretending, I wasn’t faking, it wasn’t like that,” I tried to say, but he wasn’t having it.

“Then what was it like?”

“It wasn’t my secret to tell! I’m out; she’s not! I have no right to tell anyone her business. How are you not getting this?!” My voice cracked, but I kept going. “I don’t want to be with her, I want to be with you! Yes, okay, yes, she wanted to kiss me! But I wasn’t going to let her. I stopped her; I told her I was with you. The only person I want is you, Levi Keller, even if you’re being a huge fucking jerk right now!”

The secret hadn’t been that I’d withheld my ex-girlfriend’s identity. The real secret was that we’d both forgotten how much we could hurt each other. Though I’d been a hair’s breadth away from major drama all summer, it hadn’t touched us much. Even if I’d gotten nothing else right, we had been right. Even though Mom never came to visit me like she promised, even though I never got my perfect summer with my friends. Even if nothing else worked out the way I wanted it to, I’d had Levi, and that had been an awful lot like having a home.

“What else don’t I know?” Levi asked, chest heaving like he was struggling for breath.