"Say it again."
Max sucks in a deep breath, his shoulders heaving up and down. "I–I love you."
"Again."
"I love you, Zero,” he says, barely above a whisper.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die right here on this driveway with this boy in my arms saying my name like it's something holy and I am going to die happy, which is not a thing I ever planned on.
I kiss him again. Slower this time. Deeper. His hands slide up my chest to my shoulders and mine are at the small of his back, pulling him closer, and the bond between us is—I don't have the vocabulary for what the bond between us is. It's not a thread anymore. It's a wire. A live one. Humming so loud it drowns out the night and the gravel and the blood and the letters and every ugly thing waiting for us on the other side of sunrise.
"Inside," I murmur against his mouth.
"Zero—"
"Inside. Now. We'll figure it out in the morning. I promise you. I swear it, Max."
I keep one arm around him. Turn us toward the house. We walk—me limping slightly, the gravel finding every cut on my feet, and Max tucked under my arm with his face still wet and his hand gripping the back of my waistband like I'm going to disappear.
We're halfway up the drive. His mouth finds my jaw. I turn my head and catch his lips and we're kissing again—walking and kissing, stumbling, his back against my arm, my foot leaving a bloody print on the stone—and I can feel the bond singingbetween us, wide and loud and unguarded, and for exactly eleven seconds I forget that the house we're walking toward has other people in it.
The porch light comes on.
I don't register it immediately. I'm kissing Max. His hand is on the back of my neck and my hand is on his hip and we're three steps from the front door and the light is just—light. Porch light. Motion sensor, probably.
Not a motion sensor.
The front door opens.
Margot is standing in the doorway.
Robe. Bare feet. Hair down. The face of a woman who heard a door slam and came downstairs to check and found—
Us.
Her son. Her stepson. My mouth on her baby. My arms around her boy. No shirt. No shoes. Max's face wet with tears and pressed against the bare chest of a man who is supposed to be his brother.
Her face does something I will remember for the rest of my life.
It goes through confusion first. The half-second ofwhat am I looking at—the brain trying to arrange the information into something that makes sense. Zero is shirtless. Max is crying. They're close. Maybe it's a fight. Maybe Max is upset. Maybe Zero is comforting him.
Then her eyes find our hands.
Mine on Max's hip. Possessive. Not brotherly. The grip of a man holding someone who belongs to him.
Max's hand on the back of my neck. Fingers in my hair. The touch of a lover, not a sibling.
Her face completes its journey.
Confusion to recognition. Recognition to understanding. Understanding to horror.
"Max?" Her voice is small. Smaller than I've ever heard it. As if what she just saw has punched all the air from her and she doesn’t know what to do next. "What—what is this?"
Max whirls around to look at her, realizing she’s there. His hand is still on my neck. He doesn't drop it. Doesn't flinch. Doesn't jump away from me the way I expect him to—the way I would, the way anyone would when their mother appears in a doorway and catches them kissing their stepbrother at three in the morning.
He just turns. And looks at her. And doesn't let go of me.
"Mom," he says. Like a murmur, like he doesn’t even believes she’s really there.
