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“He’s worried about you,” Megan continued. “I don’t think he knows how to stop.”

I looked down at the book I was holding.

“He was there when it happened.”

“I know. I was there too.”

There was no accusation in it, but I remembered her holding his bag. Asking whether she should tell somebody where he’d gone.

Watching him leave with me.

“He’s hardly heard a word I’ve said this week without checking where you are,” she told me. “Even when you’re with somebody else. Even when he knows you’re okay.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

I had watched him do it.

“I don’t ask him to follow me around.”

“I know you don’t.” Megan adjusted the notebook against her chest. “But he feels responsible for you. And whenever something happens, he drops everything.”

Had he told her that?

He wouldn’t talk to me about what had happened between us. Apparently he could talk to her.

Maybe he’d only admitted that he was tired. That he didn’t know how to stop coming when I called.

I wondered how much she was softening it for me.

Megan waited until I looked up.

“You need to let him go at some point, Hazel,” she said. “You can’t just keep him close forever, running to your side because he’s worried about you. It’s not fair to him.”

My fingers tightened around the spine of my book.

I wanted to tell her that I didn’t keep him anywhere.

That I had spent two years watching him leave.

That she was the one he kissed in hallways while I tried to remember how to walk past.

None of it answered what she was actually saying.

“He has his own life too,” Megan added. “And I’d like to spend time with him without feeling like I’m taking him away from something.”

There it was.

For a second, being jealous of her was easier than being hurt.

She wanted more of him. I understood that better than she could possibly know.

But wanting something didn’t make her wrong about everything else.

“You have other people,” she said. “Your parents. Sadie. His brothers. It doesn’t always have to be him.”

I could have told her that it wasn’t always him.

Buck had been the one who searched the house. Micah had taken me home from the library. Sadie had sat beside me through things I couldn’t have told anyone else.