She watched him as she turned over what his mother had said. She didn’t want him to be attracted to her only because he wanted to fix her. She kept thinking of his words in her kitchen.

I would have done that much even for somebody I didn’t like.

Of course he would have tried to help her with her cooking and her attacks. He would have been her friend, because he was everyone’s friend. But she wanted to believe there was more between them than that.

Into the silence, she said, “Why didn’t you call?”

His hands clenched together, hanging between his knees. “I didn’t know how to be the man you needed. Didn’t know what to say.”

A thousand rebuttals ran through her mind, but the honesty in his deep voice held her paralyzed. She understood the helplessness of that feeling too well to argue the point.

When LJ spoke again, his words were rough with strain. “I know it ain’t right, but I can’t stand the idea of letting you go so you can look for somebody better.”

“I don’t know what I need,” she said, her voice breaking. “But if it’s not you, I don’t want it.”

Being with him should have fixed her panic attacks. She was more comfortable with him than with any other person on earth. She trusted him, all the way down into her bones. But they could never have a normal relationship with her brain exploding into fear at unpredictable moments and ruining everything. She couldn’t expect him to stay with her when her reactions made him feel like a criminal.

It was an impossible contradiction, but the panic attacks weren’t even the only problem anymore. She’d seen for herself how her presence divided his group of friends and set them against each other. Having her in his life made everything harder, and it was the last thing she would have wanted for him.

His hands gripped each other until she heard one of the knuckles pop. “What are we going to do?” he whispered.

And all she could do was shake her head.

Twenty-six

Andra slipped a little farther down in the passenger seat, the sun baking through the back window of LJ’s pickup as she waited for him. She trailed her finger along a tear in the upholstery, wondering when it had happened. She had so many years of stories to catch up on, and the more she wrangled out of Rose and Ty, the hungrier she got for the few things LJ would share with her. She was afraid the reason he always put her off with a joke was because his past was so starkly different from hers. His present, too.