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My hand falls to his stomach and brushes something else instead. He hisses through his teeth and turns away, rolling onto his stomach.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I know,” he grunts. There is silence. He can’t blame it on needing to pee. “It’s been a really long time,” he finally says.

“Yeah, me too,” I tell him.

I hear his disgruntled laugh. “It’s been a little longer than one night for me.”

“I’m not sleeping with your brother,” I reply, my voice barely a whisper. “It was one of the conditions I set out before I’d agree to come on this trip.”

He makes that noise he does occasionally, as if all the air’s been knocked out of him.

He remains on his stomach but turns his head to face me. “Haven’t you been dating him for, like, a year or two? Why would you suddenly refuse to sleep with him?” His voice is as low and careful as mine.

“We were seeing each other casually before and I ended things last August,” I tell him. “He asked me to give him a chance and I agreed, but I didn’t want…sex confuses things.”

“I’d probably be better off not knowing that,” he groans, turning his face into his makeshift pillow.

And I understand that. I’d be better off too.

I’m exhausted, but I remain awake for a long time after that, wishing I was still just Ilina Andreyev, living in some shitty apartment I can barely afford, and curled under a blanket with a doctor named Josh. Whose brother I’d never met.

29

JOSH

February 1st

I wake in the morning, hard as nails.

It’s not entirely a surprise, as that’s how I spent most of the previous night.

It doesn’t help that I’m currently pressed—insistent and throbbing—against Drew’s ass. I roll away from her, willing it to retreat, and she wakes.

“Is it just me or did the temperature drop about forty degrees?” she asks, yawning.

I’m pretty sure it did—another reason I was up most of the night. Cold weather and significant temperature changes can trigger asthma. I spent the night alternating between checking her breathing and trying to will my erection away. I want to ask her about it even now, but I’m worried I’ll trigger a panic attack if she senses I’m concerned. My fury at Joel has only grown over the course of this trip.

She rolls over, clinging to my back for warmth. I can feel her nipples even through her sweatshirt.

Fuck my life.

"You talk in your sleep," I tell her.

"You're making that up,” she says, but when I don’t argue, she concedes with a sigh. “What did I say?”

"You were talking about how hot I am.” I can feel her cheek curving against my spine as she smiles. "Fine. I might have misinterpreted that part. No seriously, you just kept repeating numbers.”

“That lines up," she says. "I'm extremely good at math, having made it all the way through the eleventh grade."

I laugh. “It was less math and more like…you were ordering Chinese food. You kept repeating the same numbers again and again saying ‘the one-ninety-nine’ and ‘the eight-eight’. Do you remember what it was?”

She stiffens and rolls away. “No.”

There are no jokes about Chinese food or implications that they were sexual positions.

That’s how I know she’s lying to me.