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She nodded, to tell him she was listening, though she certainly wasn’t ready for whatever he was about to say.

“You are the other half of me. Miriam might be my kindred spirit, but you are me. I can’t exist without you. I can’t, Tara. We are the other sides of each other’s coins, and if I don’t know you’re on the other end of the phone or a plane ride away, if I don’t believe that I can be hugging you or hearing your voice as soon as I need to, I wither. When you left me to go to school, and I didn’t hear from you for almost a year, I went feral. And when you came back a ghost of yourself, I thought we were both going to die.”

Tara tried to tear her eyes away, to wrench her body out of his hands, but he held her steady.

She couldn’t believe that what he was saying was true. If it was, the reckless way she’d been treating her life was the same as playing with his life, and she would never do that. The only comfort she’d had, all this time, was that no one truly loved her so if she finally burned all the way out, no one would miss her.

“Please listen to me. You need to hear this. You can be brave enough to hear this. You’re the bravest person I know,” he said, and she breathed in, deep.

She wasn’t, but she could pretend for him.

She wouldn’t do it for her, but for Cole? She would do anything.

“Maybe you don’t want to let Holly love you. Maybe you don’t want to let yourself be turned inside out by falling in love with her, although I think it might be too late. But, Tara, you need to hear what she said about you working yourself to nothing. It doesn’t help the cause if you abandon the work because you burned your soul to a crisp. Our soul. Your half of our soul. Because even if you don’t want to belong to Holly, you belong to me, and me to you, and I need you to stop being so damn flippant about that. I need you. For my survival. On this earth.”

It was unfair of him, and hypocritical, to accuse her of being careless with his life, when he lived a life that could, if he were caught, have him in prison for life. It was unfair of him to ask her to be careful for him, because he knew she couldn’t say no.

“You don’t need me,” she whispered, her own eyes pleading. “You have Miriam, and Sawyer, and Carrigan’s. I’m an old friend you used to get into trouble with.”

He shook his head. “Hannah,” he said, “who do you need most in the world? To survive?”

“Noelle,” she said without pausing.

“Levi, you?” Cole asked, his eyes still on Tara’s.

“Miriam,” Levi said. “No question.”

“Mimi?”

“You and Blue,” Miriam said.

He raised his eyebrows, as if to say, See? But she didn’t see.

“Exactly,” she said. “You all have this spiderweb of connections and emotional commitments. I’m not part of that. I was invited for politeness and nostalgia. No one needs me.” Her voice broke on this last word.

“I need you,” Hannah said. “You’re the person I call when I need a perspective outside of this tiny bubble we live in.”

“I need you,” Miriam told her. “Other than Cole, you’re the only friend I had from before who still loves me. You’re one of two people in the world who knew me through my worst time, and now. You always know the thing to say that gets at the hard truth.”

“My wife needs you, so I do,” Levi told her.

“I don’t need you,” Noelle said, “but I like you a hell of a lot. You’re pretty extraordinary, and anyway, we don’t have to need you to make space for you here. We do it because we love you, not because we need you.”

Kringle yowled.

“I need you. Most of all the things. Ever on this planet. I need you more than oxygen or water. Do you hear me?” Cole asked.

She nodded.

“Do you believe me?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know how to.”

He shook his head. “When have I ever lied to you, Tara Sloane?”

“You lie to everyone, Cole. Yourself, us. It’s who you are.” She didn’t want to keep arguing with him, because she could see the pain written across his face and she didn’t want to keep causing it, but she didn’t know how to accept this. He hadn’t even known he was gay until he was thirty-five. What if he suddenly woke up one day and decided he’d been wrong about her, too, when she’d already turned herself inside out, let herself believe in him?

His eyes filled up with tears, and her heart crumbled to dust. He never cried. “Ask me anything. I’ll tell you every detail of my job. I’ll tell you every bank I’ve ever illegally accessed. I’ll tell you any damn thing I’ve ever thought, or felt, or hoped, or dreamed.”