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Silence descended in the room and it felt like it was pressing in on me from all sides, suffocating me, making it harder and harder not to cry.

“Didn’t take you for a quitter, Viper.”

Echoes of the past reverberated in my brain as indignation burned in my chest. I flipped around to face him in the dark.

“I don’t want to be.” A burning lump formed in my throat.

“Everyone else is quitting on me, ” I said, hating how weak I sounded.

“They’re forcing my hand. The world wants me to quit. ”

I waited a full minute for him to respond.

“It’ll be okay,” he said quietly.

“I don’t know about that,” I whispered. “Now everyone knows I’m a bitch. No one wants to be my partner. I ruined it all.”

“Hey,” he growled, turning to face me. “You’re not a bitch. I don’t want to hear you say that ever again.” He sounded mad, like when he was reprimanding those teens back in Chicago.

“But I’m…” I searched his eyes. “I’m not a nice person.”

His face cracked. “Bullshit.”

“I’m not. ”

His jaw clenched as he studied my face. “Did someone say that to you?”

I shook my head.

His face softened. “Then tell me why you think that.”

“I want to win. It’s all I care about,” I said in a small voice.

“Lemme ask you this—do you want other people to lose? Do you want everyone else to fall? To get hurt? To get sabotaged?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t care about anyone else,” I said weakly. “I don’t even think about anyone else. I just want to be my best and win.”

“Well, there you go. There’s a difference between wanting to win and rooting for others to lose. You’re competitive, that doesn’t make you bad.”

His words released me of a little guilt…but still… “People don’t like me the way they like you, Kappy. I have, like, two friends in the whole world.”

He rolled on his back and folded his arms under his head.

“Now that’s just false. Yeah, you have Ali and Mer, that’s two.

Patrick is definitely your friend, that’s three.

You also have me, Colt, and JP, you’re up to six.

Lucy is, like, obsessed with you and wants to be you when she grows up.

” He smirked. “That’s seven. And you know that Hans loves you like a daughter, that’s the only reason he puts up with your spoiled ass.

We’re not going anywhere. You’re not a bitch, you’re a viper, there’s a difference. ”

“Wow, that makes me feel so much better,” I said sarcastically.

“It should,” he said with a deep chuckle. “Think about it this way—Mer Bear gets all nervous and shit, right? She’s like a scared little puppy shaking in her boots.”

“That’s not—”

He cut me a dry look. “Don’t try to argue, I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

Her neck gets all blotchy every time she starts panicking.

But that doesn’t mean she’s weak, right?

And Al Pal.” He blew out a sigh. “She’s got issues out the wahzoo.

Pretty sure that girl is still legally married to that whack job, isn’t she? ”

“Shut up,” I said lightly.

“But we all still want her to move to Chicago to be with us, right?”

Yeah, that was true. I was pretty sure Ali stayed out on cruise ships to avoid bringing trouble to anyone’s door, but we didn’t care about any of that. We just wanted her to come home .

“Which leaves me with you.” He stared at me. “The toughest girl I know, who is secretly a giant softie.”

“I don’t think I’m a nice person though, I—”

He shook his head. “The career I have because of you …” He nodded. “That says otherwise.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he rolled his lips together. “All right, go to sleep, Piper. Things will be better in the morning, I promise.”

“What if it’s not better?” I asked, because with how things were going, I couldn’t see them ever improving.

“Then you get to tell me you told me so.”

I blew out a sigh.

“See, I know you love doing that.” He paused. “Wait, so Patty Boy isn’t coming back to Chicago?”

“I don’t know, prolly not.” I tucked my hands under my cheek. “Why?”

He frowned up at the ceiling like this presented a major problem for him. “I’ll need to find a new trivia partner.”

My face cracked. “What?”

“Yeah, we’re trivia partners at O’Callahan’s,” he explained. I stared blankly at him. “Yeah, ya know, that old Irish bar in Lincoln Park? We crush it every week. He kills it at music, I kill it at sports. We’re the dream team.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“Yeah.” His eyebrows slammed down. “We’re on a 30-week winning streak, you don’t joke about stats like that, Piper.”

A laugh involuntarily popped out of me. How the hell did I not know that? Then again, there were probably a lot of things I didn’t know about Richard. He had an uncanny ability to make you feel like you truly knew him, when really, he was hiding a whole other life.

“The Titanic,” I whispered sleepily.

“Huh?”

“You’re the glacier.”

He cocked an eyebrow up. “How hard did you hit your head earlier? Do I need to be waking you up every two hours?”

“No, it makes perfect sense,” I mumbled, feeling sleep overcoming me. “You’ve got a whole bunch that you hide beneath the surface.”

Staring at the ceiling, his mouth gaped open for a second, like he was struck speechless.

“Kappy,” I whispered sleepily .

He glanced over at me.

“Do you ever wish we could go back and get it right?” I’m not sure what made me ask it.

I could blame it on delirium from lack of sleep, but maybe it’s just that the nighttime has a way of making us admit our true wishes, even if only to ourselves.

And at that moment, I wished more than anything that he wasn’t across the room.

I wished that he was in bed beside me, holding me.

But as his silence stretched on, my heart ached in my chest. It felt all wrong that we were just strangers with shared memories, but that’s what we were. He wasn’t mine. He never was.

Regretting my question and thinking he wasn’t going to say anything else, I let myself drift to sleep, but right before I was pulled under, I heard him murmur, “All the time, Piper. All the time.”