“This is so not your fault.” Well, a licensed professional might think it was a little bit his fault, since it was his face on the pillow that had started all of this. “I wanted to do this. I want to keep doing this. If you’re okay with it.”

“I told you, I’m all in. That hasn’t changed.”

“Not for me, either.”

“Then it’s decided,” he said with a nod. “Let me walk you out.”

“No, I know the way. You stay here.” I told Magnus good night and gave Noah a dumb little wave and left. When I got outside, I thought about the enormity of what I’d done. I’d intentionally kissed someone. I’d intentionally kissed Noah Douglas. And that anxiety attack, where I’d really kissed someone and hadn’t just come close to doing it, had felt less intense than the others. Whether that was because of the method Noah had me use or just how he’d supported me through it, I didn’t know. All I did know was that it had been better.

He’d been right—I had accomplished something important, and I deserved a little celebration. So I jumped up and threw my fists in the air, feeling like I’d just won a battle. Well, maybe I hadn’t won it, but I hadn’t died in the end, so that was good, too.

Twirling around, it was then that I noticed Noah standing at the front window, apparently keeping an eye on me as I walked back to Gladys’s. I stopped my spinning, dropping my arms. His grin let me know he’d seen all of it.

Thankful he couldn’t see me blushing because it was dark, I bowed to him instead and laughed out loud when he bowed to me in return with a big, courtly hand flourish.

I nearly skipped the whole way back.

I’d forgotten what hope felt like.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The next night Noah texted me to come by at nine. This time I decided to make a little effort. My clothes were pretty much the same, but I showered and actually blow-dried my hair so that it was soft and shiny. I left it down. I put on some eye makeup. Not a ton, but enough to give me a mental boost. I scrubbed my teeth again within an inch of their tiny white lives and left off the lip gloss, because I didn’t need to make an already difficult situation worse by adding pink stickiness on top of it.

When I got to his house, it was the same routine as the night before. I knocked, he yelled at me to come in, Magnus ran over to check things out. And Noah was in the same spot in the kitchen where he’d been before, again, eating a bowl of cereal.