He chuckled, and good gracious, even that was a caress.

“Ryan,” I murmured.

“Yes?” He dipped closer.

I closed my eyes because I could feel him, his breath on my face. I felt him straining under my hand, holding himself back, and I couldn’t help myself. I moved my thumb side to side over his chest. It was a small touch, but it elicited a groan from him.

“You want to take this somewhere else?”

Yes! But I groaned. “I promised my mom I wouldn’t skip.”

“And that’s important.”

It was. Wait, he was agreeing with me?

I opened my eyes, and he was right there. If I tilted my head a fraction, he’d be kissing me.

What had I been saying before? It felt important, too important to go a day without saying.

I was a mess. Yes. That was it.

I began again, clearing my throat first. “Things are just getting to be a little normal at my house. I don’t know if it’s going to last or what’s going to happen, but I’ve been a mess.” I still was. The hole was still there. She was still gone. I kept going before a different ache had me sobbing in his arms. “I’m trying to tell you that—” I flattened myself back, giving me an inch, and I looked up to his eyes. “When I return your text, I don’t want it to be because you said it. I want to feel it, and I want to mean it, and I want . . .”

Some of the smoldering dampened. “You don’t feel it?”

I pressed my hand against his stomach. “It isn’t that I don’t feel it; it’s that I have too much other stuff going on inside me. My parents are home today. Robbie is back today. Willow . . .”

My stomach knotted, but it was too important that he understood what I was saying for me to stop. “I’ve been trying to ignore that she was gone.” I’ve been trying to ignore a lot of things. “I used you to do that. I skipped school to run away. I tried tequila.” Deep breath, Mackenzie. My heart beat in a rapid staccato. My hand wrapped around his shirt and tugged. “There are layers of pain inside me. Pain that I can’t put into words, and underneath it all is hell. It’s raw and bloody. Agony. Suffering. Torture.”

And denial. That lined the bottom of me. It was a dark, black hole.

His hand curved around my waist, but the touch took on a different feeling. It was more soothing than sensual.

“I can’t text you that back because it isn’t fair to you, or me. I want to say it when I’m feeling that and only that. Willow’s gone, and I’ll always feel as if half of me has been ripped away, but I know someday those wounds might heal over. I’m not saying I’ll completely be right one day, but I’m saying that until most of those layers of pain have gone away, I can’t say it back. There isn’t enough room inside to say it back. Not yet.”

I pulled him against me, feeling his surprise before he caught himself so he wasn’t crushing me against the building. He put an inch of space between us, but that was too far in my mind. I wanted all of him against me, his whole body plastered against mine.

That soothed me, but I wanted more than soothing.

Ryan’s hand cradled the back of my head. His thumb brushed over my cheek. “I know what you’re saying, and I’m not mad.”

“You aren’t?”

He shook his head, his eyes firmly attached to my lips. “When I texted you that, I knew you couldn’t say it back. That isn’t why I sent it. I pressed send because it felt right to tell you. I wanted you to know, but I get it. I really do.” He groaned again and dipped down. His lips finding mine for a brief second before he pulled away.

I went with him, arching on my toes, not wanting to break the kiss.

He rested his forehead to mine, his gaze boring into my eyes. “You say it when you can, and I’ll still be here.”

An eighth piece fit with the other seven.

Five hundred ninety two to go, but it was good. So much good.

I tugged him back to me.

Two months later

COUNSELING SESSION FIVE

I sat on Naomi’s couch, and she took the seat across from me.

To say I’d been a participant—willing or otherwise—in the first four would’ve been an outright lie. I’d walked out of the first one. I’d refused to talk the second one. The third session lasted a few minutes longer as I recited obvious facts, like that Willow had died. And I’d dropped the bombshell about Ryan and me in the fourth one.

Naomi smiled at me. I saw the caution there and felt a little remorse.