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He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move. He just stands there behind me with his hand still at the side of my head.

“No,” he says.

I expected that.

I’m used to hearing that, so it doesn’t bother me. He isn’t loud. He isn’t saying it like it’s an order. It just comes out of him like a reflex, and I’m aware of the difference.

I turn around.

“Tess,” he says as I look into his eyes.

I know where he is. I don’t have to ask. He’s on my grandma’s porch on Thanksgiving night with the yellow light over him. He’s in that living room with the TV too loud and the smoke hanging in the air, looking at Dylan smothering into the couch. He’s remembering the red mark on my face from Dylan’s hand.

“I just want to drop something off,” I say. “And say Merry Christmas. That’s all.”

He drops his hand. He takes one step back and stands in the middle of his room with his arms at his sides with his jaw working.

“He put his hands on you, Tessa,” he says.

I swallow. “It’s nothing new,” I say quietly. “We fight like brother and sister.”

I look at him, and he looks at me.

“I’m not saying it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing,” I say more quietly.

“Then why—”

“It’s Christmas.”

He stares at me.

And I don’t know how to make it make sense to him. I don’t know how to make it make sense to myself. I just know that I’ve been carrying a brown paper package around in my duffel, and I bought it for her, and I want to see her face when she opens it.

“I want to see my grandma,” I say. “I want to give her something. She took me in when nobody else would, Rafe. I lived in her sewing room for four years. And I don’t—” I stop. “I don’t want Thanksgiving to be the last time I was there. I don’t want that to be the last thing.”

He’s quiet for a second.

“Then she can come here,” he says. “Or you can meet her somewhere. A diner. The Dunkin’ on Main. Anywhere.”

He’s right. It’s a good idea. It’s a better idea than mine. But I don’t want that, and I don’t have a good reason for it. I don’t know how to tell him that I want to go there. And if Dylan gets to decide I can never walk through that door again, then he took more than my breath at Thanksgiving. He took the only place I know as home, too.

“No,” I say. “I need to do it there.”

“Tess—”

“I’m sorry, Rafe. I don’t want you to be mad about it. I know it’s not a good reason.”

He pushes both hands back through his hair. “It’s a fucking terrible reason, and you want to go anyway, and I—”

He stops.

I watch his eyes stare at the ground like he just heard himself. Like he just listened back to the last thirty seconds and noticed what he was doing. His eyes flick up to mine.

“You don’t need my permission,” he says, but I can tell he doesn’t agree with it. “I think it’s a bad idea,” he adds. “I don’t want you going in there. I fucking hate this.” His jaw works. “But it’s your decision.”

I lower my eyes.

He hates it?