Page 104 of Our Darkest Summer

I shook my head before she could finish. Quiet disappointment flickered in her gaze.

“It’s not important.”You are. We are. This?—

No.

I didn’t deserve her. Why couldn’t she see that?

The warmth of her palm against my skin stripped every shield from my body. How could I stay away when I needed her like the moon needed the sun?

I was a coward. Too selfish to let go.

I closed my eyes and let myself lean into her touch. Her fingertips brushed over my chin, stopping on an old scar. I could feel the question forming on her lips before she even asked it.

“I fell off my bicycle when I was six.”

She huffed, and I cracked my eyes open. There it was. The small, barely-there smile on her lips.

“How can you—”You almost died.

“Smile?” she asked, drawing circles into my palm.

I nodded, slowly.

“I don’t know. How can you make me smile?”

I glanced at her, but then turned away again. “I failed you,” I said, my voice cracking. The moment the words left my mouth, my chest tightened.Why had I said it out loud?

“What?” she asked, though her tone told me she’d heard me clearly. “Why would you say that?”

She sounded concerned. Like I had lost my mind.Had I?

Finally, I looked at her. Really looked. The small sun-freckles over her nose, the messy strands of wood-tangled hair, the way she scrunched her nose when I didn’t answer. And the faint, purple shadows left around her neck. My stomach dropped.

“You almost died, Sage.”

The gun held against her head burned into my brain. It would live there forever, a reminder of what I could’ve lost. An error I couldn’t afford again.

Her fingers trembled against my skin, and I closed my hand around hers.

“I know,” she said softly. “Why do you keep reminding me?”

I blinked. I hadn’t realized that’s what I had been doing. That my own guilt was bleeding into her wounds. I shook my head, my thumb brushing the curve of her cheekbone.

“I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.”

She tilted her head. “Four down. Six letters. Starts withS.” Her fingers traced the edge of my jaw, and I swallowed. “Clue: I’m looking at him right now.”

She paused, just long enough for the ache in my chest to rise.

“You’re so strong, Thomas.”

Me?She should have seen herself. Her gaze searched mine, and I let her in. I was too tired to hold what was left of my walls. And maybe, Iwantedher to see the wreckage.

All of it.All of me.

My hand slid over her thigh, warm and bare beneath my touch, tracing the arc of her waist like I was drawing constellations on her skin. Delicate, slow, I was obsessed withthe shape of her. I wasn’t just touching her. I was memorizing her.

Every breath she took rewrote something broken in me. She was my heart.My Antares.And without her, I was nothing.