Did I Mention I Love You? (Did I Mention I Love You (DIMILY) Book 1)

By Friday, I was getting pretty tired of moping around waiting for Tyler to come back. I just wanted to see him, even if it was only for a few seconds while he came home to grab some more clothes. But he never did show up for the week, and he never did reply to my texts, and I never did see him.

It pissed me off a lot more than I thought it would. I knew I’d miss not seeing him every morning, but I never thought I’d grow frustrated and mad at him. It didn’t make sense for him to completely cut me off. When I asked him if he wanted to meet up at the Refinery for coffee (as stepsiblings, of course), I heard nothing back. When I asked him if he was doing okay, I heard nothing back. When I asked him if he even remembers what happened last weekend, my phone had never been so silent. Tiffani probably has him wrapped around her finger.

Tiffani, who absolutely hates me.

Tiffani, whose house I’m about to turn up at uninvited.

Tiffani, who’s most likely going to burst into flames when she sees me.

“Are you going out?” a voice asks from over my shoulder, and I swivel around from the living room window to meet Ella’s curious eyes. She runs them over my outfit, which doesn’t exactly qualify as attire for lazing around the house.

“Am I grounded?” I have a feeling I might be, but Dad’s never mentioned it, so I’m praying he’s letting last weekend slide. Even if I am, he’s not here to reinforce it.

“No,” Ella says. “Where are you going?”

I divert my eyes back to the window as I stand there, staring through the blinds and fixing my eyes on Rachael’s car, which is parked on her driveway. She should be out any second. It’s pouring rain, the dark sky casting a permanent shadow over the city, and I have to squint through the drops on the windows in order to see properly. “Movie night with my friends,” I answer without turning back to Ella.

There’s a silence, and I can hear her shifting across the room to leave, but then she stops walking and takes a deep breath. “Do you know if . . .” she murmurs quietly. “Do you know if Tyler will be there?”

“He’ll be there,” I say immediately. That’s another reason I’ve agreed to go tonight: Tyler. If the only way to see him is by turning up at his crazy ex-girlfriend’s house, then I’m willing to go through the anxiety of the whole thing. I just want to see if he’s okay. Spinning back around, I meet Ella’s sad gaze. “Are you missing him?”

I don’t think she quite knows the answer, because she has to think about it for a second. After Tyler left on Sunday, she spent the entire night bursting into tears every half hour, and part of me wondered if she was crying over more than just the drugs. “I am,” she says, finally, and then moves back into the center of the living room to sit down on the couch. She picks up a cushion and holds it in her lap, gripping it tightly. “The house feels empty without him, and I know that sounds weird, because he was never here half the time anyway, but there’s just something odd.”

I know what she’s talking about. She’s talking about the way the house is quiet and the way the vegetarian food in the refrigerator hasn’t been touched, she’s talking about the fact that there’s an empty seat at the table each morning, and she’s talking about the fact that her son is no longer stumbling home in the middle of the night, even more lost than he was the night before.

“Yeah,” I say. “I get it.”

“I’m just worried about him,” she admits, and I like the way she’s being honest with me, just like she has been the entire summer. Ella’s not that bad for a stepmom, despite my first impression of her when she paraded me around the back yard at the barbecue introducing me to every single neighbor. She felt too obnoxious, too loud. Only now does it occur to me that perhaps it was fake, nothing more than a brave front, the same way her son has built up a façade to make him seem like he’s fine . . . But they’re not fine.

It feels like I’ve spent the whole summer being blind. Everything is so obvious now, and I just wish I’d been able to piece it all together weeks ago. I should have figured Tyler out a long time ago; I should have tried to better understand his aggression toward his father. It feels the same way with Ella. I was so adamant that I’d dislike her that to begin with I never understood anything about her. But now I’m starting to appreciate her for her vulnerability. Now I understand her.

Tears threaten to fall, so I turn back to the window and blink them away before Ella notices, but I think she already has. Rachael still hasn’t come out of her house yet, so I glance down at my feet and swallow back the lump in my throat. “Tyler told me about his dad,” I say quietly.

I hear Ella take a sharp breath and I’m almost afraid to turn around in case she’s furious at me for bringing it up, but I’m alone in the house with her and it feels like the right time to talk about it. Dad’s taking Jamie to get his wrist checked out, and Chase has gone along for the ride. And Tyler . . . Well. He’s still gone.

“He told you?”

I crane my neck to look at her, taking in her wide eyes and furrowed brows and parted lips, and then I make my way over to the couch and sit down beside her. She stares at me in surprise. “At the weekend,” I tell her, but I talk slowly to ensure nothing slips out, like the fact that I ended up sleeping with Tyler too. “He told me everything.”

“He actually told you?” Ella’s just blinking at me now, and when I nod she hugs the cushion to her chest and looks away. “I can’t believe he told you. He doesn’t like to talk about it. I’m . . .” She tapers off and just shakes her head, still a little shocked. “I just want him to be okay. That’s all I want.” Her voice sounds delicate and hushed, her eyes flickering between me and the wall. “Not a 4.0 GPA or a tidy room or to wash the dishes, just okay, and he’s not even that.”

Hearing her talk like this makes my eyes well up again, so I can’t even bring myself to reply. If I open my mouth, my voice will sound choked, and if my voice sounds choked, the tears will escape. So I just sit there, holding my breath and biting down hard on my lower lip, because I really don’t want her to see me crying.

“I’ve been in discussion with some people . . .” she says slowly, which thankfully saves me from having to speak, and I wait for what she’s about to tell me. “They run events throughout the East Coast. Awareness events for . . .” She takes a deep breath and starts again. “They raise awareness of different kinds of abuse.” Turning her head away from me, she draws her lips into her mouth and composes herself before glancing back over. “The organizers want Tyler to be a speaker.”

“A speaker?”

She nods. “They want him to represent physical abuse. They have other teenagers standing for domestic, emotional . . . They want him to tell his story, over and over again, for a year. I don’t think he’d be able to handle that, because he hates talking about it. That’s why I’m just so surprised that he told you.”

I take a minute to process this information while the rain batters against the windows. Last week it was so difficult for Tyler to tell me the truth, and I can’t begin to imagine how tough he’d find it having to tell the story to strangers. But at the same time, he’d get to meet others who have been through the same things he has, and it just might help. “It could be good for him . . . You know, to talk about it.”

“It’s a really great opportunity,” Ella adds, but she’s staring off into the carpet, almost like she’s weighing the pros and cons in her head. “He’d have to straighten himself out first though.” That’s a pro. This could be the kick that he needs to put him on the road to giving up on distractions, to becoming a person who doesn’t depend on alcohol and drugs. “And he’d have to move to New York for a year, starting next summer.” That’s a con. A huge con.

I try to meet her eyes, but she’s still staring at the floor. “Is that what my dad was talking about last week? When he mentioned New York?”

Another nod. “I haven’t told Tyler yet. Now isn’t the best time.” She glances sideways at me with a small smile on her lips, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. That’s something I’ve always found odd, people smiling when they’re sad. There’s no such thing as a sad smile. Just a brave one.

“You’re a really good mom,” I say, because they’re the only words running through my mind as I watch her overthink the situation with Tyler, and they suddenly seem to spill out on their own accord. She only wants what’s best for him, and sometimes that’s not enough. But she’s trying.

Her lips part in surprise. She looks like she’s about to say something, but she’s interrupted by the sound of a car horn blasting. The horn blows three times.

“That’ll be Rachael,” I say as I get to my feet. I smooth out the creases in my jeans and offer her a smile, because somehow in the past ten minutes I feel like I’ve gotten closer to her. For the first time, I really do see her as my stepmom. “I’ll see you when I’m home.”

The corners of her lips pull up into a smile to mirror mine, and this time her smile isn’t brave. It’s sincere.

Outside, Rachael has reversed out of her driveway and is furiously revving up her engine out front of my house instead. She rolls down the window as I approach and yells, “You were supposed to be looking for me! We’re wasting valuable time!”

I throw open the door and slide inside, barely getting my seatbelt on before the car takes off down the avenue. The seat is wet from the rain. “I was talking to Ella,” I say, but I don’t want to leave room for her to ask what we were discussing, so I quickly add, “What’s the plan?”

“Stop being curious,” Rachael orders, lifting a hand off the wheel and wagging a finger at me. I scoff. Curious is all I’ll ever be. “You don’t even need to do anything. You’ll mess it up, so let me talk.”

I roll my eyes and adjust my seat, pushing it back to give me more legroom, and then I slump down and heave a sigh. “Where did this rain come from? It feels like I’m in Portland,” I murmur, tapping my knuckles against the window as I try to distract myself, because nerves are rattling me. But I can’t let Rachael know this, because then she’ll wonder why I’m nervous, and there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to tell her that I’m panicking beyond despair over the fact that Tiffani is going to flip when I turn up at her front door.

So for the five-minute ride I act as normal as I possibly can. I text Amelia, rummage through the CDs packed into the glove box, adjust the heating, and, of course, listen to Rachael. She’s telling me about Trevor again, and she’s gushing over the fact that he’s started adding hearts to the end of their texts, and she’s blushing as she tells me how sweet he’s suddenly being.

By the time we’re nearing Tiffani’s house, the nerves are almost completely gone because of my desperate need to escape Rachael’s Trevor drama. I’d rather throw myself into Tiffani’s arms than hear about how nice Trevor’s shoulders are.

But the second we pull up outside, I revert to my original mindset. Tyler’s car is parked on the driveway, side by side with Tiffani’s, and suddenly I’m terrified again. I have to deal with both of them at once, and I’m certain that Tiffani will rip out my hair, and I have no clue what Tyler will say to me. That’s if he even decides to talk in the first place.

I relax only slightly when I spot Dean’s car and Jake’s. The more of us, the better. If I make it over the threshold, at least they’ll be there to make the situation less daunting. Even Jake seems like fun to hang out with right now.

“Remember, leave me to do the talking,” Rachael says as she grabs her purse from the backseat. Quite frankly, I don’t want to do the talking, so she really has nothing to worry about.

We lock up and run across the lawn to the front door, which Rachael promptly shoves open and drifts through. She never knocks, and this is something I’m still getting used to. That being said, not only do I feel unwelcome, I also feel extremely rude. Nonetheless, I follow Rachael into the house and a waft of fresh popcorn overwhelms me.

Immediately to the left of the open-plan area, Jake and Dean are stretched out on the L-shaped couches that run around the room. Meghan’s not coming tonight, because she’s grounded after last weekend, but Dean does sit up when he sees us so that he can acknowledge our presence with a nod and a smile. Other than that, both of them look bored and out of place. Jake’s playing around with the remote for the TV, flicking through channels and sighing in between each one. Usually on Fridays we’re at parties. Usually we’re not having movie nights.

There’s a laugh from somewhere to my right and my eyes immediately snap over to it. The first thing they land on is Tiffani. She’s pulling out a bowl of popcorn from the microwave and then carelessly dropping it on the worktop as it burns her hands, laughing all the while and looking totally normal. Normal, not heartbroken. But it makes sense, because Tyler is standing right by her side, sighing at her ridiculous attempt to prepare food. He tries to laugh, but his lips only pull up into another one of his fake smiles. As usual, it doesn’t reach his eyes.

I wonder what he’s thinking about and what he’s planning to do. Right now, he’s stuck living at Tiffani’s house, believing something that might not be true, something that Rachael is adamant on proving false. What are his thoughts? Are they going to get back together? It would be horrible if they did. Tyler’s only just managed to get himself out of the grip she had on him and I’d hate to see him get wrapped up in that mess again.

The two of them are so distracted in the kitchen that they haven’t even noticed Rachael and I entering the house, so I interlock my hands and twist my fingers around each other anxiously as I make my way over to the living room. I try to force a smile on my face, but my frown only ends up deepening.

Dean must notice my scowl. He sits up, his blue T-shirt contrasting with the brown of his eyes, and then whispers, “This is so awkward.” He nods behind me to the pair in the kitchen. Tiffani’s running a hand through Tyler’s hair, her eyelashes fluttering. “They broke up but . . .”

Tell me about it, I think. We’re all just as confused as each other. Have they broken up? Are they just friends now? Are they back together already? What the hell are they, besides incompatible?

Rachael’s still standing by the front door, just staring at the two of them in disbelief. She cranes her neck to look at Dean and me, pointing a thumb to Tiffani while mouthing, “What the hell?” I’ve discovered by now that Rachael is very anti-Tyler-and-Tiffani.

Both Dean and I shrug, but really I just want to tear the plaster off the wall or smash the TV or set the couches on fire. I want to do something that will release the anger that’s fizzing inside of me, and I can’t even seem to figure out who I’m mad at. Part of me is mad at myself for finding myself in this situation, where I’m stuck between my stepbrother and his ex-girlfriend, or girlfriend. I don’t know anymore.

“Rachael!” Tiffani’s voice calls across the room, and both Rachael and I whip around to face her. She’s hugging the bowl of popcorn to her chest and grinning. But it doesn’t last long. Her eyes drift over to meet mine, and the second she lays eyes on me, her smile falters. “Eden?”

“It took you long enough to notice us!” Rachael complains jokingly as she pads across the carpet toward the staircase.

Tiffani’s still staring at me, still glowering. “Sorry,” she tells Rachael, but her eyes never leave mine. I can feel her glare boring holes in my skin and I try to glance down at the floor, but I can’t, because I’m staring at the person standing two inches away from her.

And he’s looking straight back.

Tyler’s lips are parted and he’s biting the skin on the inside of his cheek, his head tilted slightly. He looks paler than usual and his eyes are set deeper in their sockets, which makes him appear almost lifeless, like he hasn’t slept for days and is about to pass out any second.

Rachael clears her throat from the staircase. “Tiff, can we talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure,” she says bitterly, and with the flick of her hair, she spins around and slams the bowl of popcorn down onto the worktop.

I can feel Dean watching from behind me as she makes her way over to Rachael, and I can hear Jake watching football on the TV, and I can see Tyler edging his way over to the living room, wearing a pair of sweats and a faded T-shirt. It makes him look at home, and this makes me uncomfortable. Tiffani storms up the staircase, leaving Rachael to motion for me to join them. So I do, because although I’m terrified of Tiffani right now, I need to know if she’s lying or not. But as I’m scrambling over to the stairs to catch up with them, Tyler grasps my elbow in passing.

He yanks me back, moves his lips toward my ear, and then hisses, “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” I mutter. Shoving his hand off me, I fix him with a glare that quickly turns into a disappointed frown. Something in his eyes shifts, the same way they were constantly altering last weekend, but before I can begin to process the change in his expression, he’s already turning away from me and heading over to Dean and Jake.

I hover for a moment. I contemplate pulling him back and telling him that Ella misses him, and that there’s a perfect opportunity waiting in New York for him, and that he doesn’t need to stick around here wasting his time with Tiffani. But Rachael yells my name from the top of the stairs, so I have no choice but to follow the sound of her voice, leaving Tyler behind.

And at the back of my mind, there’s only this: We are never going to be able to be together.

Upstairs, Tiffani is standing at the door to her room, her arms folded across her chest. To begin with it looks like she’s blocking us from entering, but then I realize she’s waiting for us to hurry up and get inside, so Rachael leads us in.

Immediately I notice that the room is different from the last time I was here. There are clothes scattered all over the carpet, and I realize that they belong to Tyler.

Rachael notices too, and, of course, she has something to say about it. “Is your mom seriously letting him stay here?” She kicks a pair of jeans to the side.

“Yes,” Tiffani snaps. She’s clearly pissed off by this point, given that I’m here standing in her room, not to mention that we’ve just separated her from Tyler. “Now what is it?”

She glances between the two of us, awaiting an answer, while I stare at Rachael and Rachael stares at her. I’m not planning on doing any talking whatsoever. If I do, like Rachael said, I’ll only mess up. So I wait for her to execute her brilliant plan, growing even more anxious for the truth.

“I’m not even going to do this subtly; I’m just going to ask you straight up,” Rachael says, and the atmosphere in the room thickens as we all wait for the question I know she’s about to ask. With her purse resting over her arm, she taps her foot impatiently on the carpet and locks eyes with Tiffani. “Are you pregnant?”

I stare at Rachael. That’s it? That’s her clever plan? It does, however, do a good job of startling Tiffani and taking her by surprise. She’s so flustered by the abrupt question that she just stares at Rachael with wide blue eyes and parted lips. And then she fires her eyes in my direction.

They’re like ice as she grits her teeth, grinding them together while fury washes over her. She knows I told Rachael. I’m the only person who could have. She takes a while to respond while the rain batters against the window, the sky an ugly gray. “Y-yes,” she manages to stammer.

I raise my eyebrows and exchange a glance with Rachael, who nods and then directs her eyes back to Tiffani once more. “Okay,” she says as she reaches into her purse and begins to rummage inside, “you shouldn’t have a problem with taking a couple these then, right?” Just as the words leave her lips, Rachael pulls out two drugstore pregnancy tests, her expression taut as she waves them in the air.

And it only takes these two items to scare Tiffani to death. She’s staring at them, wide-eyed and blinking furiously, while the corners of her lips twitch as though she’s fighting for words to rise in her throat. I can see her digging her nails into her palms. “No problem,” she squeaks, finally, but her voice is so shaky that it becomes obvious that it is a problem.

“We’ll just sit here and wait,” Rachael informs her with a tight smile as she passes the two small boxes into Tiffani’s trembling hands.

Tiffani studies the tests, gives Rachael a shaky nod, and then forces her body toward the bathroom. Her steps are slow and unwilling, her breathing fast and uneven. When she reaches the door, she places a hand flat against it and comes to a halt. Quickly, she spins around and there are tears rolling down her cheeks, her face red. “Fine! I’m not!” She screams the words across the room at us and she bursts into tears.

Rachael throws me a triumphant grin, but I’m in no mood to start grinning back. I feel numb. Tiffani did lie. It sickens me that she had to resort to such a pathetic act, and it worries me even more that she was planning on misleading Tyler. For how long? What was she going to do? Feign a miscarriage and hope the two of them would live happily ever after?

“What the hell is wrong with you, Tiffani?” Rachael snaps, and I’m thinking the exact same thing. You have to be a pretty terrible and desperate person to do something like this.

Tiffani’s sobbing, the rain that’s pelting against the window drowning out the sound of her sniffing. Everything feels so loud all of a sudden and the only thing I can think about is Tyler.

He’s downstairs, totally oblivious, and still believes that he has quite possibly made a huge mistake. None of this is fair on him. He’s probably stressing out over the whole situation, wondering how he’s going to break the news to Ella and figuring out what’s going to happen with Tiffani. But now he has no reason to stay with her, because there’s nothing holding him to her.

“I’m telling Tyler,” I splutter. My heart is beating frantically in my chest and I know I need to tell him as soon as possible, and I don’t trust Tiffani enough right now to let her fix her own mistake, so I throw open her bedroom door. “He needs to know.”

“No!” Tiffani screams, but I storm my way along the hallway before she can stop me, too furious to worry about what she’ll do. She still knows our secret, but right now I’m so zeroed in on Tyler knowing the truth about her that I don’t even care if she tells or not.

When I jog down the staircase, Tyler’s lying on the couch staring at the TV screen alongside Jake and Dean, watching some football game that I don’t take notice of.

“Tyler,” I snap, loudly so that it’ll grasp his attention, “I need to talk you. Right now. Kitchen.” I blurt out the words as quickly as I can, and although they come out blunt, Tyler can hear the strain in my voice, and he immediately knows that something’s up.

He gets to his feet while Dean raises an eyebrow curiously, but I move away and as far into the kitchen as I can go so that neither he nor Jake can hear us. Tyler comes padding across the carpet in his sweats, a puzzled look on his face. He stops directly in front of me, and I quickly steal a glance over his shoulder to ensure Dean has looked away. He has.

“Tiffani’s not pregnant,” I hiss, my voice hushed but frantic. “She’s faking it so that you’ll get back together with her.”

He quickly takes a step back, appearing slack-jawed as he blinks at me. “What?”

“She just admitted it to us!”

For a long minute, he just stares at the wall as the expression in his eyes shifts, his breathing slow. I wait. I wait to see which expression he’s going to end up with. I keep waiting. He clenches his jaw, his hands curling into fists, his features hardening, and soon he’s livid. He looks like he’s only just stopping himself from punching the wall, so I place a hand on his arm in an effort to comfort him, but then immediately draw it away when I hear footsteps on the staircase.

Tiffani comes bounding down, tears streaming down her face, her eyes searching the living room. Both Jake and Dean stare at her with parted lips, because the sight of her crying is enough to draw their attention away from the game. She spins around from the living room to the kitchen, and it’s then that Tyler’s eyes meet hers.

And she must be able to tell by his expression that he’s furious at her, because she cries even harder as she rushes across the room to us, her eyes swollen. “Baby, please, I’m sorry,” she tries, but it just sounds choked and unintelligible. “I’m so, so sorry!”

She tries to reach out to touch him, but he swiftly angles his body away from her outstretched hand and yells, “You’re a psychopath!” It’s so loud that everyone falls silent.

Rachael’s standing at the bottom of the staircase, her eyes fixed on the scene, and Dean and Jake have paused the TV and sat up to watch.

“I hate you!” Tiffani screams, but when I glance back over to her, she’s not looking at Tyler. She’s looking at me. Her eyes are fierce, and I can place a bet on what’s running through her mind right now. And so I think: Here it goes. She’s going to tell them all our secret, because now she has every reason to.

I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for it, for her voice to yell out the truth and for the rest of them to gasp, but no one’s saying anything. When I steal a glance through my half-closed lids, her lips are pressed into a firm line, and she just continues to stare at me. And then, for the briefest of moments, I swear she almost smiles.

And right then, I realize she’s not going to tell them. At least not now. It’s obvious she’s planning on holding on to our secret for a little while longer.

And this absolutely terrifies me.

She bursts into tears again and buries her face in her hands, turning away from us, spinning back around to the staircase and pushing Rachael out of her way.

Tyler’s still furious, and he slams his palm flat against the worktop before pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He exhales slowly, his eyes closed. “I’m leaving,” he mutters when he opens them again. “I’m not staying here. She’s insane.”

I hear a door slam somewhere upstairs, and the five of us just exchange glances, unsure of what we’re supposed to do. Tyler, on the other hand, knows perfectly fine what he’s doing. He’s making his way across the kitchen to grab his car keys from the worktop, his muscles bulging as he does so, and without another word he storms over to the front door and wrenches it open. The rain finds its way into the house, leaving drops of water on the carpet, just before Tyler disappears through it, slamming it shut behind him.

Silence. Tyler’s just stormed out, and Tiffani’s upstairs having a mental breakdown, and we’re all just sitting here in her house trying to process what’s just happened.

“So I take it they’re not together?” Jake says with a slight laugh.

From across the room, Rachael’s staring at me with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. I don’t think she was expecting it to play out like this; I don’t think she was expecting me to throw myself into the middle of it. She looks like she’s trying to decide whether or not she should go upstairs and check on Tiffani, because she keeps shifting her weight from one foot to the other, moving up and down the stairs while she contemplates it all.

Somewhere amidst the hammering rain, I hear the sound of Tyler’s car rev to life, its engine roaring from the driveway. My conversation with Ella floods my mind, and I quickly try to remember everything she said, everything about New York. I might not know where Tyler’s planning to go right now, but I do know where he should go. Home.

I hug my hoodie tight around my body and prepare myself for the run, yanking the hood over my hair and making for the door, praying that I catch him before he takes off. Without a word, I pull open the door and the rain blows into my face, freezing my nose. I hear Rachael calling from behind me, asking where the hell I’m going, but I’m too focused on Tyler’s car to pay attention to her.

Holding onto my hood, I run along the stone path and come to a halt by the driver’s side, and the windows are so tinted and the rain is so heavy that I can barely see him. I rap my knuckles against the glass, squinting as drops of rain roll down my face. It feels just like an October morning in Portland, only heavier.

Tyler rolls down his window an inch and yells, “Get in!”

I jog around to the front of the vehicle and quickly slip into the passenger seat, heaving a sigh when I slam the door shut behind me. I’ve only been outside for a matter of twenty seconds, but I’m soaked straight through. I push my hood down and blow wet strands of hair out of my face, and then I turn to Tyler.

His hair is wet and ruffled as he presses his lips into a firm line and puts the car in drive. “Ready to go?”

“No, Tyler.” I shake my head. The rain sounds louder in here as it hits the bodywork of the vehicle, and the pitter-patter begins to drum in my ears. “I’m gonna go back inside.”

He pulls a face as if to say I’ve lost my mind. “Why the hell did you just come out here?”

“Because,” I say, but it comes out as a pant while I wipe the back of my hand across my face, “I need to talk to you first, so listen. First things first: Please don’t ever go back to Tiffani.”

He snorts, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Screw Tiffani. She’s unbelievable.”

I stare at the windshield, watching the water roll down the glass, and for a moment it feels relaxing. I glance back over to him, but his eyes are fixed on the wheel. “Tyler,” I say quietly, trying my hardest to draw his gaze to meet mine, and he slowly does. His cheeks are a little red, which contrasts with the paleness of his lips. “Please go home and talk to your mom. She’s there alone just now, and trust me, she’ll let you back into the house. She has something she needs to tell you, and it’s really, really important.”

He clenches his jaw then and turns his head away, staring out his side window to the lawn, but it’s blurred through the rain. “I’m not welcome there,” he says stiffly.

“I’m serious.” I angle my body around to face him, so that I can see his eyes. They’re vibrant yet somehow calm, and I can almost see the gears in his mind shifting as he considers what I’m telling him. “Just hear her out, Tyler. Go home and ask her about New York.”

His eyebrows draw together as he glances sideways at me. “New York?”

I exhale before softly saying, “Talk to your mom, Tyler.”

“Okay.” He lets out a sigh while running a hand through his damp hair, and right then I want to kiss him again.

I want to swing over onto his lap just like I did weeks ago at the pier, I want to crash my lips into his like I did the first time in his room before we left for Meghan’s birthday party, and I want to feel his touch the exact same way I felt it on Saturday.

I want to do all of these things, but I can’t bring myself to.

There’s something in the back of my mind that’s telling me there’s no point. Just because Tyler and Tiffani are clearly not getting back together doesn’t mean that Tyler and I will automatically get into a relationship. We can’t. There’s just no possible way for us to be together, and this hurts me more than anything else. It hurts more than Dad walking out. It hurts more than Alyssa and Holly’s cruel comments.

It isn’t painful.

It’s agonizing.

It’s all I’ve thought about the past few days. I thought about the fact that I’m going home next month. I thought about the fact that our parents would kill us if they ever found out what we’ve been up to. I thought about the fact that this is wrong, and it’s impossible to convince myself otherwise.

I want to be with Tyler. I do. More than anything else. I want to be with him more than I want to get into the University of Chicago. I want to be with him more than I want to be skinny. I’d do anything for it to happen. But it never will, and so there is absolutely no point in wasting our time.

Tyler notices my stare. “What?”

“I would kill to be able to kiss you every day,” I admit quietly. I will myself not to break down. I know putting a stop to us is the best thing to do for us both. It’ll be too hard to keep going. Too complicated. Too wrong.

“You can,” he tells me, and he’s almost whispering as he turns to face me, his eyes studying me delicately, like he’d snap my body in half if he were to narrow them. “Every single day. I wouldn’t mind.”

“Me either,” I murmur. I can feel a dryness in my throat as I build up the courage to just get this over with, to just blurt it all out at once in hope that it’ll hurt less. “But that’s the problem, Tyler. We wouldn’t mind. What about everyone else?”

He takes a moment to process my words and the pained look in my eyes, to understand what I’m trying to tell him. And when he figures it out, I can see the hurt flashing across his face. He has to glance away as he swallows, and when he looks back, his eyebrows are furrowed, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “We can get around everyone else,” he tries, but his voice is weak and he has to pause for a moment while he finds a deeper tone. “We can figure this out. They’ll understand. Maybe not at first, but they will. Seriously. We’ll manage. We’ll . . . We’ll do it.” He moves his hands as he speaks, as he babbles an endless list of reassurances at me, but none of them are helpful.

“Tyler,” I say, and he stops breathing heavily for a moment while he listens. And it’s then that the tears press at my waterlines, because I know exactly what I’m about to tell him next. I fear that hearing myself say it will only make it feel all the more true. “We can’t be together.”

And it does feel true now. It is the truth.

Tyler grits his teeth to stop his lips from trembling. He shakes his head slowly, his eyes squeezing shut as he exhales through his nose. He just sits there for a while, not really doing anything, just holding himself together as best he can. While he does, the tears roll down my face and I have to quickly dab at my cheeks to wipe them away. Crying always makes things seem worse than they are.

But I think this is the worst this situation could possibly be. So I’m allowed to cry. I’m allowed to stare at Tyler’s quivering lips through blurred eyes and I’m allowed to feel like I’m dying inside. I’m allowed to, because I am. My entire body is going numb. My chest is tightening. My heart is contracting.

Tyler finally opens his eyes again. The emerald within them has faded, his pupils are dilated with pain, and he’s inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. He lifts a hand to his hair and pulls on the ends. “You didn’t just say that,” he says, his voice a feeble whisper.

His reaction only makes me cry more. The tears well endlessly in my eyes and fall so quickly that I can’t even keep up when trying to catch them. “We just can’t do this,” I croak. It’s beginning to hurt when I talk.

“Don’t do this. I swear to God. Please, Eden,” he begs suddenly, his voice fast and raspy. It cracks at the end and he jerks his head toward the window, breathing against the glass. It steams up. “We’ve come this far already. You can’t give up now.”

“We have to.” I don’t even care now that I’m a bubbling mess. Each word escapes my throat as a ragged splutter and I’m unable to pull myself together. I want to be strong enough to do what’s right, but I’m not. I’m weak.

Suddenly he spins around, urgency in both his actions and his words. “Tell me what you want me to do it and I’ll do it. I’ll make this work.” One hand grips the steering wheel; the other reaches out to touch my knee.

I glance down at his fingers as they touch my jeans. I just stare at his hand as I force down the bile in my throat. I don’t look back up again. “Don’t make this harder.”

“I need to be with you,” he whispers. His fingers move from my knee to my hand, and he grasps it in his and presses his thumb down hard on mine so that I can’t possibly shake him off. He interlocks our fingers. I have no choice but to glance back up, to meet his eyes as they well up, and I’ve never seen him look so . . . so torn apart. “Don’t you get it? You’re not my distraction. This is me, Eden. This. Right now. You’re making me a goddamn mess, but I don’t care, because it’s me. I’m a mess. And the thing I love about you is that I’m allowed to be a mess around you, because I trust you. You’re the only one who’s cared enough to figure me out. I want to be your mess.”

“I’m still going to care,” I manage to say, even though by now there are so many tears flowing down my cheeks that I can barely see. “But as your stepsister.”

“Eden,” he pleads once more, squeezing my hand even tighter, like he’s terrified to let go. “What about last weekend? We . . . Was all of that for nothing? Has the entire summer been for fucking nothing?”

“Not nothing,” I say, but I’m staring at our hands, at the way they fit perfectly together. My stomach knots. “We’ve learned a lot.”

“This isn’t fair!” he yells at the exact same time he slams his other hand against the steering wheel. He grips it so tight afterward that his knuckles turn white. “I told you everything about me. I told you the truth. I broke up with Tiffani, and now she’s probably already planning how she’s going to ruin my life even more than it already has been, but I don’t care, because I thought it would be worth it. I thought it would be worth it, because I was thinking of you. I was putting you first. You know what the only thing running through my mind was when I walked out of that house right now? I can finally be with Eden.” He falls silent, taking a moment to rub at his eyes as he exhales. His chest is rising and sinking rapidly as he releases his grip on me and places both hands back on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the rain that’s rolling down the windshield. “And then you come out here and tell me that you don’t want to.”

“Do you think I want to do this? Because I sure as hell don’t, but I’m doing it because it’s better for us both.” I’m trying to force his eyes to meet mine again, but they never do. He just keeps staring at Tiffani’s driveway, at the rain, because right now the weather outside beats the storm that’s taking place in here. “I don’t want to see you get worse if this goes wrong. What are you going to do if our parents find out and absolutely hate us? This isn’t the right time. We can’t handle this. You need to fix your life as it is, because you need to go to New York, and you don’t need any of this added on.”

“What the hell is in New York?” he yells, exasperated, his fierce eyes snapping back to mine. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

“Because your mom wants to,” I tell him, but I sound like a sobbing catastrophe. I sniff a few times as I try to regain my breath, slowing down my breathing and attempting to compose myself. It doesn’t really work. “Whatever there is between us, we have to ignore it from now on. We need to stop this now before we get in too deep.”

He shakes his head, eyes tightly squeezed shut. The rain is still hammering against the windows, loudly and relentlessly. “If that’s what you really want,” he eventually murmurs in a low voice, but I just know he’s hating this as much as I am. “If you really, really want us to ignore this . . . Then I guess I have to.”

I heave a tremendous sigh. I want this to be a nightmare. I want to wake up in Portland and for Mom to tell me that I’ve never stepped foot in Santa Monica before and that I don’t have a stepbrother called Tyler. I don’t want any of this to be real. It hurts too much to be real.

When he opens his eyes and turns to look at me, he just stares. I can’t bear the sight of them, pooling with emotion and hurt, but I can’t look away. His breathing sounds louder than the rain and it quickens as he leans toward me, and I know exactly what he’s thinking, and I want to kiss him too. So I do, because it’s the last time I ever will.

I pull myself up onto my knees and climb onto him, stretching out my hands and gently grasping his neck. It’s so sudden, but I can’t stop myself. It reminds me of when he took me to the pier, when we kissed in his car, in this exact position. And just like I did all those weeks ago, I press my lips to his once more.

But it’s so slow this time, so agonizing. Tyler places his hands on my waist and holds me tight against his chest, and all while his lips capture mine for long, drawn-out seconds. Over and over again, he keeps kissing me. I almost feel him sigh against me. It hurts to be kissing him, to know that I’ll never get to do it again, but it’s also calming in a way. It’s like closure.

The sound of the rain is drilling into our ears, and our bodies are damp, and my hair is all over the place, and Tyler almost just suffered a mental breakdown, and I’ve cried enough tears to fill the pool in our back yard, and it’s all just so messy.

It sums up our situation completely.

And for that reason, it’s perfect.

Tyler groans as he pulls away. When his lips finally tear themselves away from mine, my stomach drops, and I refuse to let go of him. Instead, I hold him there, his face by mine, and I exhale against his cheek. My eyes are still closed. I’m not sure if his are too.

“Stepsiblings,” I whisper, breathing the words softly yet firmly. “Nothing more.”

“Nothing more,” he confirms, but then his head hangs low and he pulls away from me, so I finally have to let go. He turns his face to his window and places his hands back on the wheel. I think he’s finally given up.

Reaching for my hood and pulling it back over my head, I tuck strands of wet hair behind my ears and rotate my body toward the door. I reach for the handle, pausing for a moment to see if he’ll say anything, but he doesn’t, so I step out of the car.

And just like that, I’m walking away from him. From us.

Quickly, I slam the door shut behind me to stop the rain getting in, and then I make a dash across the lawn. I glance over my shoulder and rain blows into my face again, but it doesn’t stop me from seeing Tyler’s car peel out of the driveway and head west. Hopefully he’s making his way home. I stand there, out on the lawn in the pouring rain, waiting until his car disappears into the distance.

The thing I like most about the rain is that people can’t tell whether or not you’re crying. And right now the tears are streaming endlessly down my cheeks and soaking into my hoodie. The wind whips around me and I turn around and run back to the front door. Thankfully, when I get there Dean is swinging it open for me. I stop the second I get inside, letting the water roll off my face, my messy bun toppling over to one side.

“Are you crazy?” he asks, but he’s laughing. “Hang on, I’ll grab a towel.”

He rushes off into another room, probably the bathroom, while I stand dripping wet next to the living room. I notice that both Jake and Rachael have disappeared. The house still smells like popcorn and I can hear the low volume of the football presenter commentating on the game, and then Dean comes padding back over to me with a huge white towel in his arms. He unfolds it and throws it over my shoulder, and I immediately pull it around me and dry my face. I feel like I’m drowning.

Dean still has a playful smile on his lips, but the more he studies my expression, the more it fades away. Soon he’s frowning. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” I say, but it’s bullshit. Everything hurts and everything feels broken. I don’t know if I’m going to be fine, but I can’t let Dean know this, so I sniff and nod to the staircase. “Are they with Tiffani?”

“Jake and Rachael? Yeah.” He bites his lip as he laughs. “I look like a crappy friend standing down here instead of offering her moral support, but I was actually about to leave.”

“Leave?” I echo. “Where are you going?”

“La Breve Vita are playing another gig downtown,” he says quietly, and I like the way he mumbles, shy about the fact that he’s totally obsessed with this band. It helps to distract me. “I was gonna catch the end of their set after the movie, but I’m going to head over there just now instead. Hey, you can come! If you want to, of course. I mean, you’ve probably got better things to do with your time and you seem kind of upset, but I’m pretty sure they’d help cheer you up.”

“I’ll come,” I say gently, and I can’t help but smile as I let down my hair and attempt to towel dry it. Suddenly Tyler’s obsession with distractions is starting to make sense. Right now, I’m trying to distract myself with Dean, because the less your mind thinks about the things that are tearing you apart, the better you feel. “I really like them.”

“Are you sure?” He tilts his head and studies me, taking note of how soaked I am.

“It’s just water,” I say with a shrug, and then drop the towel to the floor as I gather my hair and throw it up into a damp ponytail. Right now, I couldn’t care less about how I look. My eyes and my cheeks burn. They sting. “I’ll dry out on the way there.”

Dean looks as though he’s about to protest, but then he just grins and pulls out his keys. “You have to go back out there now.”

So I steal the towel. Holding it above my head like a makeshift umbrella, I run outside to the car with Dean sharp on my heels, and we both dive inside the vehicle as quick as we can. The heating goes on full blast and La Breve Vita’s third album starts up in the CD player and Dean cracks a couple jokes about the towel, which aren’t even funny but I laugh anyway.

“I was right about the rainstorm, see?” He leans forward over the wheel as we make our way to the gig and he glances up at the sky through the windshield for a moment. He blows out some air and then leans back in his seat again. “It’s always so crazy.”

“How long does it last?” I ask. My eyes are fixed on the wiper blades as they struggle to keep up with the amount of rain that’s blurring the windshield, despite already being on their fastest speed. It’s been raining this heavy since morning.

“All day,” Dean says, but his tone is a little off as he grips the steering wheel and concentrates on the road. “Really, it’s hard to say.”

The gig is in the same venue as before, with the same crushed cups scattering the floor and the same cologne wafting around the air. Through the darkness, Dean leads me over to the back again, where we linger by the far wall. No one shoves you out of the way back here. I shrug my shoulders into my hoodie, giving up on getting dry. I just started to dry off in the car when, of course, I had to get straight back out and into the rain again. But Dean’s soaked too, and so is everyone else, so no one seems to give a shit.

“They’re working on a new album at the moment,” Dean tells me over the noise. The band is on the stage, but they’ve paused for a few minutes to drink some water and to tune the guitars. “It’ll be released in January. I’m stoked. It’s gonna be awesome!”

I smile at his excitement and enthusiasm, because it really is adorable seeing him get so hyped up about it all. His eyes are sparkling, but then he seems to think he’s embarrassing himself, because he looks away and rubs the back of his neck.

We’ve arrived just in time for the beginning of the next song, and the lead singer steps up to the microphone. He clears his throat and then squints at the small crowd through half-shut eyes. “It’s awesome to see so many of you here tonight despite the shitty weather,” he says with a hearty chuckle, “and it’s even more awesome that you’re here to see us. We’re about to perform one of my personal favorites from our second album.” The crowd cheers in anticipation of what song it might be, and I can see Dean biting his lip, his eyes glued to the stage. “We wrote this song a few years ago now, and it’s actually a pretty cool story, how this song came to be.” He rubs the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and then begins to pace back and forth across the stage, his head tilted down and his eyes on the floor. “I had this friend . . . Let’s call him Bobby. So I had this friend, Bobby, and Bobby was a hell of a guy. I went to college with him and we shared the same dorm building, and Bobby was majoring in law. And you know what? Bobby fucking hated law. Bobby wanted to major in musical theatre, but he stuck to law, you know why? Because society is a piece of shit.” He shakes his head and pauses for a moment before continuing. “Bobby went through hell and back to finish that major. He wasted four years doing something he didn’t want to do, because all through high school people talked smack about him because of what he was interested in. You know how Bobby feels now? He feels pissed off that he’s stuck with a bullshit law major. So screw whatever the hell anyone else thinks about you or your decisions. If you’re gay, then hell yeah, embrace that shit! If you want to start up your own paint store, then start up your own goddamn paint store. Stop holding back from being you.” He clears his throat again and steps back into position in the center of the stage, his eyes flickering up to look at us all again. “So if you haven’t guessed it already, here’s ‘Holding Back.’ Enjoy. Tanto amore. Much love.”

I don’t know what it is about this band, but suddenly I adore them even more than I did before. I already loved the song, and I already understood the message it was trying to convey, but listening to the singer be so straightforward and to the point only makes me appreciate the lyrics even more than I already did. I can relate to them a hell of a lot. Especially this song, because it makes me wonder if I’ve done the right thing, if maybe I should run back home and tell Tyler I’ve made a huge mistake, that I really do want us to be together. But in my heart, I know we have to hold back. We have no other option. Tears spring into my eyes again as I listen to the song. It’s bittersweet.

I feel a huge pang in my heart, but I bite down on my lip and keep my eyes trained on the stage. The guitarist starts strumming, and then the bassist joins in, and then the drummer, and then finally the singer, and soon the song is blasting around us, deafeningly loud but all the more exciting. I can feel the music vibrating through my body as goosebumps surface along my arms, the hairs rising.

And it’s then that I feel Dean’s hand slip into mine.

He takes me by surprise, but his skin is warm, and he squeezes my hand tightly before rubbing soft circles on my skin with his thumb. I don’t let go. It’s partly because it’s so sudden and out of nowhere that I’m not quite sure what to think of it, and also partly because it feels almost . . . comforting. Dean’s always made me feel comfortable. And right now, of all times, I need all the comfort I can get.

When I glance sideways at him, his eyes are locked on the stage and he’s nodding his head in sync with the kick drum. But most importantly, he’s smiling.