She looked well and truly disturbed. “You should’ve said something. You should’ve—”

“I should’ve never touched you,” he said simply, cutting her off with a firm look. “You were his. Even after he was gone. Even now.”

She frowned.

“You were never going to forgive me for that night. Our friendship went up in flames the moment we crossed that line. The trust was gone. There was no point in sticking around to watch it burn.”

She gave him a disbelieving look. “Just like that. You got to decide that with no input from me? I was freaking out that night, Ash. What we did… I earned that freak-out. When I kicked you out, I expected we would fight about it the next day. I didn’t expect you to drop our friendship like it was a piece of trash, to drop me like I was a piece of trash. Real friends don’t bail like that. You were my person. I had no one when you left. You wouldn’t even take my calls.”

He looked down, shame welling in him. “I couldn’t be around you. It was all…too much. I needed to block everything out, pretend Long Acre didn’t happen for a while.”

She sucked in a breath. “Pretend it didn’t happen? How could you—”

“It was the only way I could handle it, all right?” he said, his words sharper than he intended. “I’m not saying it was a good way or a noble way, but it was the only way I knew how to survive.” To not feel. To cut off all that empty, bottomless grief. The black guilt. The broken heart. To block out that he’d lost everyone important to him in one fell swoop. He refused to drown himself in a bottle like he’d wanted to, but he’d disappeared in another way. He’d jumped right into a summer program at college. He’d buried himself in his first attempt at a novel, living in the head of his character instead of residing in his own.

“You can’t just pretend something like that away, Ash,” she said, hurt simmering there. “You pretended me away.”

“And you pretended I was someone else.”

She winced, confirming that her calling him Graham back then hadn’t been a slip of the tongue.

“How’s that coffee coming?” Grace called from the living room. “Do you need any help?”

“No, we got it. Be there in a minute,” Kincaid called out, voice pinched. She paused for a long moment and then let out a defeated breath. “I hate this.”

“What?” he asked, voice quiet.

“This. It’s exhausting.” She rubbed the spot between her eyes. “This is not how I live my life. You had your way of surviving. Well, mine has been that I refuse to let the past drag me down. I don’t want that tragedy’s fingerprints all over my life. And this—this ugly thing between us—it absolutely sucks my life force.”

His shoulders sagged. “I don’t want to do that to you.”

She gave him a pleading look. “So why do we do this to each other? What good does it do? It’s not going to bring Graham or anyone else back. It’s not going to erase the fact that you left me behind or that I apparently took your virginity, that we used each other in a way we shouldn’t have because we were young and grieving and stupid. All it does is make me freaking miserable anytime I’m around you. What’s the point?”