Before I Wake

He sighed, then sat up and met my gaze boldly. “No. You kissed him when you were with me. How was I supposed to know that road doesn’t run both ways?”

“Nash…” I hardly knew where to begin. “If you don’t love Sabine, you have to tell her. You’re all she wants. You’re all she thinks about. You’re all she has.”

“I do love her. How could I not?” he said, and I had no idea how to answer that one. “What did you think this was going to be like, Kaylee? Did you think you could dump me, and I’d bounce back to her and miraculously be happy? I’m not a Ping-Pong ball. You can’t just swat me back and forth and expect me to be content wherever I land. If Tod dumped you tomorrow, would you come back to me?”

I shook my head slowly, pushing myself back and forth a couple of inches in his wheeled desk chair. What had I thought things would be like between us after the breakup? The truth was that I hadn’t given it much thought. I hadn’t expected to live past my own death.

“Look. I love Sabine—I probably always will—but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love you, too. It’s not a switch I can just flip off. I wish it was, because I’d flip it in a minute. I don’t think I even like you anymore, but I can’t get you out of my head, and it hurts to see you, Kaylee.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But you still have to come to school, if for no other reason than that our strength is in numbers.”

“I’m fine. Baskerville starts barking if anything inhuman or undead gets within twenty feet of the house, in this plane or in the Netherworld. How do you think I knew you were here?”

So he hadn’t heard me talking to his mom, after all.

“I’m not worried about you, Nash. But Sabine and Emma are both at school with no Netherworld guard dogs looking after them. Or did you forget that a rogue reaper tried to kill your girlfriend last night?”

“She’s not my—”

“Save it.” I rolled my eyes and walked the chair closer. “You love her and you’re sleeping with her. Do you really think it’s worth arguing over how you define your relationship?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

Okay, he had a point there. But that didn’t change anything. “Get dressed. You’re going to school.”

“I don’t feel like it.” He lay back on the pillow again, and suddenly I understood how my father had felt when I’d refused to get up that morning.

“No one feels like going to school. Least of all me. But if I have to go, so do you.”

Nash shrugged and put one hand behind his head again. “Who says you have to go?”

“My dad. The state of Texas.” When that made no difference, my temper flared. “You want to stop loving me? I think I can help you out with that.” I snatched the T-shirt slung over his footboard, then sat on the bed and grabbed his free hand. Then I closed my eyes and pictured the alley behind the doughnut shop, where I’d seen Thane the day before. That was as close as I could get to the halfway point between Nash’s house and the school —which was as far as I could go with him in tow—and it was the place least likely to be populated.

“What are you—?” Nash tried to jerk free from my grip, but I held on tight, and a second later, I fell onto my butt on rough concrete. “What the hell?”

I opened my eyes to find Nash lying on his back on the ground, propped up on one elbow, one hand still gripped in mine.

“Where are we?”

“Almost there.” I closed my eyes again, and pictured the first-floor supply closet, across the hall from the teachers’ lounge. An instant later we were there, in the dark, Nash sprawled out on the floor with me sitting beside him.

“What the hell, Kaylee?” He jerked his hand from my grip, and when he tried to sit up, something crashed to the ground with an ominous-sounding slosh.

“Hang on.” I stood carefully and felt around on the wall next to the door. When I flipped the switch, dim light flooded the small space from a bare lightbulb overhead, highlighting Nash’s angry face with dramatic shadows. “Here’s your shirt. I think second period’s almost over.”

“Damn it, Kaylee!” He jerked the shirt over his head, then shoved his arms through the sleeves. “I don’t even have any shoes!”

“Don’t you keep cleats in your locker?” I asked as he stood, glaring down at me.

“I can’t walk around all day in baseball cleats!”

I shrugged. “Then go barefoot.”

“Take me home, Kaylee. Now.”

“No.” I crossed both arms over my chest. “You can’t just stay at home and pout when everyone you care about is at risk. All we have is one another, Nash. You, me, Sabine, Emma, and Tod. You owe it to us—all of us—to look out for us like we look out for you.”

“Like you were looking out for me when you kissed my brother?” he demanded. “Or when you framed me for murder?”

“More like when Tod and Sabine kept you from overdosing or hurting yourself when you fell off the wagon. Or when I made a deal with Levi and Madeline to clear your name. Or when Tod got rid of the dealer who supplied you with frost in the first place. Do you even know what he did?” I demanded, and Nash shook his head, brushing dust from the ground off his pants.

“He dropped him in the Netherworld. That’s a death sentence for a human. Your brother killed to protect you from yourself. And that’s not even…” I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying what else Tod had done for him. That wasn’t my secret to tell. “The point is that you’re not alone, Nash, and you have to stop acting like you are. We’re in this together. All of us. And we need you as badly as you need us. So stop pushing us away, because we’re not going anywhere.”

Nash blinked at me, surprise shining in his eyes. But that wasn’t all. In the low light, I thought I saw something else swirling in his irises. Something serious, and…relieved. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Kaylee. In the parking lot. I should have said it before. When I’m thinking straight, I can’t blame you for turning to him.” Tod, of course. Nash still wouldn’t say his name.

“You know it had nothing to do with that.”

“But it did,” he insisted. “If I’d been the answer to your problems instead of the source of them, you would never have even looked at him. So, I blame myself as much as I blame him.”

“Don’t.” My eyes were watering for the second time in an hour. Three hours earlier, I’d felt so empty I didn’t even want to get out of bed, and now I was so full of pain and regret I could hardly make myself breathe. “Don’t blame either of you. I did this. I kissed him.” I glanced at my feet, then made myself meet his gaze again. “I love him, Nash. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

He exhaled slowly. “I know.”

The bell for third period rang then, and we both glanced up, startled, even though we’d known it was coming. “I have to go back for my backpack.” Which I’d just realized I’d left in his living room. “I can grab some shoes for you, if you want.”

“Thanks.”

We parted ways in the hall, and I wondered if anyone had seen us coming out of the closet together, him with no shoes. Then I realized I didn’t care what anyone else saw, or thought, or said about us. Nash and I had been through more together than any of them could ever imagine, and if they couldn’t understand the wounds we’d inflicted, they couldn’t understand how long and bumpy the road to forgiveness really was.

10

I PICKED UP my backpack and Nash’s shoes, then practiced selective corporeality by letting only him see me slide them into his bag during his third-period class. Then I texted Sabine.

Nash is here, and he’s fine. And he loves you.

I’d just sat down at my normal table in the quad—invisible, even though there was no one there to see me—