Page 662 of End Game

After that, he asked whether I needed help.

I told him I needed twenty minutes alone with Dex before everyone left tonight.

Ronan said he'd handle it.

No interrogation. No unsolicited advice. He didn't even ask to see the ring until three days later.

Cami's voice carries down the stairs. “Dex, if you get orange body paint on that wall, Griffin is going to murder you.”

“He's a paramedic. He can revive me.”

“I cannot,” Griffin calls back.

“Not with that attitude.”

Ronan glances at me. “I will give you as much time as I can, but you may not have more than three minutes.”

My stomach tightens. “That specific?”

“Once Cami comes downstairs, containment becomes unlikely.”

Fair.

She is helping Dex with his orange makeup.

Part of me suddenly regrets deciding to do this tonight… in costume. But I’m not stopping now.

Dex laughs at something upstairs, and the sound catches me in the chest in the same place it always does.

He's been in my life long enough that I don't remember not knowing his laugh.

That's the strange part.

I remember meeting him. I remember thinking he was loud. I remember him moving into the house and filling spaces I hadn't realized were quiet.

What I don't remember is when I started listening for him.

By the time I noticed, it had already happened.

There are drawings of him in sketchbooks from before I knew I wanted him. His hands around a beer bottle. His profile while he watched television. The angle of his shoulders when he played guitar.

There's one page where I drew only his mouth because he'd been talking too much, and apparently some part of my brain thought the solution was to study it.

I found that one again while putting everything together for tonight.

At first it made me laugh.

Then I sat on the floor of my room for ten minutes because I realized I had been falling in love with him long before I knew what to call it.

The kitchen doorway fills with orange.

Dex has managed the pants, tail, fitted orange shirt with black stripes, and black eyeliner. His hair—newly dyed with orange tips—is still damp, pushed back from his forehead.

He looks at Ronan.

Then at me.

Then at the stuffed bear.