Page 59 of Before We Break

She sucks in a breath, and her shoulders draw up. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, Noah. I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have⁠—”

“It’s ok. It was a long time ago.” My first mistake is laying my hand on her thigh.

“Can I ask what happened?”

“Mom overdosed. Dad got high and crashed his bike into a tree a week later.” I swallow against the tightness in my throat. “We were eighteen at the time. Emma was twelve so we practically raised her after that.”

Clio’s hand touches mine, and there’s my second mistake. I don’t pull away. “I know they’re just words, and that won’t bring them back or make the pain go away, but I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

My own words are the nail in the coffin, setting free a series of confessions I’d kept buried beneath the surface. “Everybody always said we were just like our mom. I guess Jonah took it literally.” I resist the impulse to thread our fingers, pulling my hand away instead. “Auggie’s mom overdosed last year. They arrested Jonah on manslaughter charges for giving her the drugs. Emma thinks he’s innocent, but I don’t know what to believe. She’s always tried to see the best in him, even at his lowest.”

“When you’re at your lowest is when you need people the most. Whether you accept that help is a different matter entirely.” Spoken like a true optimist. “Did you ask him if he did it?”

“I couldn’t, but he told me anyway. He said if he’d known what she had planned, he never would’ve let her go.”

She stacks her empty plate on top of mine and wraps her arms around her legs. “Has Jonah ever lied to you before?”

“No, but there’s a first time for everything.”

“He sent Auggie to you for a reason—he obviously trusts you. That has to count for something.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

The quiet call and response of crickets fills the void. A sudden gust of wind rustles the trees below, and Clio shivers against me. I pull the blanket over her exposed shoulder where a constellation of freckles calls to me. I catch a whiff of her orange blossom scent as my fingers graze her cold skin.

She draws in a quick breath, and her eyes catch mine, my new favorite color sparkling in the moonlight. My gaze lowers to her rosy pink lips, slightly parted. If I leaned in just a bit, I could kiss her.

I can’t kiss her.

“Noah?”

“Yeah, princess?”

“Would you… God, this is so stupid. Never mind.”

“Now I have to know.”

She fidgets with that same thread again, and I rest my hand over hers, stopping the motion.

“Would you kiss me?”

I open my mouth, but she cuts me off before I can say anything.

“It’s just that… I haven’t been kissed in so long, I don’t even remember what it feels like.”

“How long?” I ask hoarsely, standing on the precipice of what might be my biggest mistake of all.

“What?”

“How long has it been since you were kissed? And I mean really kissed. Not just some peck on the cheek.”

“Seventeen years.” The words come out on an exasperated sigh.

I repeat them as though they might start to make sense a second time, but no matter how I try to math it out, it doesn’t compute. “Seventeen years…”

“It was Lexi’s dad.”

Something like jealousy washes over me, but that can’t be it. That’s ridiculous.