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When I wake from the dead for the second time, it feels much less time-travely and much more like I actually got to rest. There’s a large glass of water on the nightstand—one that kills my throat to chug, but I can tell I’m too dehydrated not to—and two small pills with little paper signs in scraggly handwriting that say “Eat Me” and “Drink Me.” Very cute.

After collecting my dizzying head and taking the medicine, I slip out of my room and down the stairs to the kitchen to see Knox at the stove stirring a steaming pot.

He looks so…grown right now.

It’s funny, sometimes I look at him and I still see us at eight and nine years old. Running around the ranch, riding horses and jumping off rope swings into the lake and playing hide-and-seek in the barns. But then I will get these glimpses of the future him too.

I see a version of Knox at this stove, a dish towel tossed over his shoulder as he grabs a spice jar and measures out whatever is in it before stirring the pot again. He looks like a man here. Forearms flexing and back stretching as he turns around to wash his hands for what I can only guess is the hundredth time. The shirt he’s wearing is old, one that he got after we both participated in a color run 10k with zero training—I gave up halfway through and he had to carry me to the finish line. We both had shin splints for a week, and his mom gave us endless scolding for not stretching properly. The one good thing we got out of that race was the comfiest shirts in the world.

I still wear mine to bed, though it’s so tight now I couldn’t pull it off in public.

Knox’s shirt is too small, too, and yet it’s just right; color-sprayed fabric stretched along his back, ridges of muscles and defined lines. The fair skin above his shirt leading up to that wavy blond hair that has never once been well-kept a day in his life.

I want nothing more than to run my fingers through it, just like he did mine as I drifted off to sleep.

Maybe I still have a fever.

When he turns back around and sees me, covered up in ducky pajamas I don’t remember putting on and a checkered orange blanket wrapped around my shoulders, the smile he gives me lights me up from within.

“There she is.”

I hum a weakly mustered-up “hi” and slip onto one of the chairs near him. It smells like vegetable soup and clove and him.

“Hungry?”

My stomach rumbles a little and I nod.

Two bowls of soup and another three glasses of water later, I feel much less like a wadded-up snotty tissue and much more like an actual human being. Miracles on miracles.

I take his empty bowl with mine and place them in the sink, glancing out the window to the back patio where there’s a distant view of the ranch in the darkness. When I first moved in here, Knox would call me if he and Walker were on tractors, waving like a madman so I could see him from this window.

“You didn’t have to stay,” I say around a yawn.

He levels me with a look.

“I just want you to know you didn’t have to. I’m surprised Riley let you stay alone with me.”

He laughs a little. “Seems she thinks now would be a time when we decide to not add to the population. And you know that there was no way I was going to leave you alone when you’re basically on your deathbed.”

“That’s what it feels like.”

I take a seat at the barstool and he stands, taking a step between my spread knees to feel my forehead. “You’re still super hot.”

“Thank you, I think the duck pajamas really seal the deal.”

He smiles, lazy and boyish. “Cute. What do you want to do? I brought a couple movies from Dave’s.” Aka the only video rental store left open, possibly in the entire country. I think he mostly does well because of the adult section, but Knox and I have always loved physical media, so we are his best (i.e., normal) customers. “I got How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Oh, and Hacksaw Ridge. And Revenge of the Sith. And Castaway.”

“Wow. That is a big range.”

“I figured the more options, the better. Though, we both know you’re going with How—”

“How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, of course.”

He glances toward the living room, then upstairs. “Couch or upstairs?”

“The DVD player is hooked up in my room, come on.”