I’m not sure what happens after that. All I know is that I crash, my body collapsing in on itself, and every ounce of will that I’d been able to muster since I got out of Shady Harbor evaporates. All that’s left is pain. It’s so bad that I feel like I might die from it. Time speeds up and slows down at the same time, stretching and spiraling thoughts through my head. Declan, kissing me in the playhouse. Declan, the first time I met him, playing that guitar. Declan, singing that song to me on my sixteenth birthday. Declan, dead, his brains splayed out on the plywood wall of the shed. My world is ending. I wonder if this is how he felt before he ended his.

Before I know it, Kane is sitting on the edge of the couch, holding a tissue box, watching me. My face is covered in tears and snot, and I know there’s plenty more where that came from. My parents usually don’t get home until seven on weekdays, and despite the darkness, it’s probably not yet dinnertime. He holds out a tissue, but I don’t have the energy to take it.

“When?” My voice is choked.

“I don’t know when it started. I think after New Year’s, last year. But maybe it was before then, and we just never noticed.”

After New Year’s. After they saw Kane and me kissing. Was it revenge? Was that all it was? Declan didn’t strike me as someone to be vindictive. And I’d apologized, he’d accepted. It didn’t make sense. “Why?”

“I don’t…” He stops. “I have something to tell you,” he says.

Curled in a ball, I don’t say a word. I don’t like the tone of his voice. I don’t really want to know any more. It’s too much. My heart aches. Maybe it actually is broken. It feels heavy, swollen, on the verge of bursting.

“I told you Luisa suspected something was going on between us,” he says. “But she didn’t suspect. She knew. Because I told her.”

I don’t say anything. I was right. I can’t hurt worse. I only feel numb. “But nothing was going on between us.”

“Something was,” he goes on. “I guess you and I… We kissed at midnight. And it was more than a little kiss. It got out of hand, Hailey. Luisa started asking me question after question about whether I wanted you or thought of you in that way, and I…” He shakes his head. “I was sick of it. So I told her. I told her what we’d done when we were fifteen.”