He sighs. “She’ll come around.”

I nod. I know this, yet it’s unnerving being here, with my uncle, without her as a buffer. I didn’t realize how much I’ve come to rely on her since my dad’s arrest. Between that and what was happening with her brother during that time, we became closer than ever before.

“So what now?” I ask, grateful he dropped the Will thing. I’m probably just being paranoid. There’s no reason for him to suspect it was Will, let alone a guy.

My uncle grips my shoulder, giving me a reassuring squeeze. “Now we make a game plan.”

“That sounds ominous,” I say suspiciously as he walks over to the fridge. He grabs a couple sheets of paper—something he must have printed—and sets them in front of me.

Resignation settles sourly in my stomach as I catch the words “licensed psychologist” and “addiction” and “childhood trauma”—

“Therapy?” I ask flatly.

“Therapy.”

24

24

Will Foster

It’s fucking miserable out.

Fog hangs heavily over the countryside, clinging to the surrounding pine trees like sticky spools of wool. There’s not a speck of sunshine to be seen in the sky. Not a drop of blue. It reminds me of the morning they buried Zayne last January, all gray, gray, fucking gray.

The screen door creaks open on the other side of the porch before shutting with a loud smack. Hesitant footsteps draw near, then stop. “You’re still here.”

I dig my heels into the floorboards, stopping the swing’s momentum. “Didn’t exactly have a choice. My bike’s at home.”

A beat passes before he whispers, “Right.”

The old porch swing shudders and whines as he joins me. He mutters an apology when his knee knocks along mine before he scoots as far away from me as he can get. Which isn’t much; hardly even a sliver of space.

“Aren’t you freezing?” I hear the familiar grind and click of a lighter as he lights up a smoke.

I shrug, the movement causing the brown paper bag still clutched in my hands to rustle. It only took a quick glance inside back in his room to realize what he gave me. I set it down on the other side of me, tucking it between the plastic armrest and my thigh. “I didn’t notice.”

But I do now. How can I not when he’s sitting right next to me, feeling like a fucking furnace while I’m in nothing but a thin white tee and sweatpants? It’s probably no more than fifty degrees this morning. I wonder how long I’ve been sitting out here.

“Here.” He passes me a cigarette. It’s already lit. His version of a peace offering, I suppose. I try not to think about his lips touching the paper as I bring it to my mouth.