“We have to.” I don’t even care now that I’m a blubbering mess. Each word escapes my throat as a ragged splutter, and I’m unable to pull myself together. I want to be strong enough to do what’s right, but I’m not. I’m weak.
Suddenly he spins around, urgency in both his actions and his words. “Tell me what you want me to do it and I’ll do it. I’ll make this work.” One hand grips the steering wheel; the other reaches out to touch my knee.
I glance down at his fingers as they touch my jeans. I just stare at his hand as I force down the bile in my throat. I don’t look back up again. “Don’t make this harder.”
“I need to be with you,” he whispers. His fingers move from my knee to my hand, and he grasps it in his and presses his thumb down hard on mine so that I can’t possibly shake him off. He interlocks our fingers. I have no choice but to glance back up, to meet his eyes as they well up, and I’ve never seen him look so…so torn apart. “Don’t you get it? You’re not my distraction. This is me, Eden. This. Right now. You’re making me a goddamn mess, but I don’t care, because it’s me. I’m a mess. And the thing I love about you is that I’m allowed to be a mess around you, because I trust you. You’re the only one who’s cared enough to figure me out. I want to be your mess.”
“I’m still going to care,” I manage to say, even though by now there are so many tears flowing down my cheeks that I can barely see. “But as your stepsister.”
“Eden,” he pleads once more, squeezing my hand even tighter, like he’s terrified to let go. “What about last weekend? We…was all of that for nothing? Has the entire summer been for fucking nothing?”
“Not nothing,” I say, but I’m staring at our hands, at the way they fit perfectly together. My stomach knots. “We’ve learned a lot.”
“This isn’t fair!” he yells at the exact same time he slams his other hand against the steering wheel. He grips it so tight afterward that his knuckles turn white. “I told you everything about me. I told you the truth. I broke up with Tiffani, and now she’s probably already planning how she’s going to ruin my life even more than it already has been, but I don’t care because I thought it would be worth it. I thought it would be worth it because I was thinking of you. I was putting you first. You know what the only thing running through my mind was when I walked out of that house right now? I can finally be with Eden.” He falls silent, taking a moment to rub at his eyes as he exhales. His chest is rising and sinking rapidly as he releases his grip on me and places both hands back on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the rain that’s rolling down the windshield. “And then you come out here and tell me that you don’t want to.”
“Do you think I want to do this? Because I sure as hell don’t, but I’m doing it because it’s better for us both.” I’m trying to force his eyes to meet mine again, but they never do. He just keeps staring at Tiffani’s driveway, at the rain, because right now the weather outside beats the storm that’s taking place in here. “I don’t want to see you get worse if this goes wrong. What are you going to do if our parents find out and absolutely hate us? This isn’t the right time. We can’t handle this. You need to fix your life as it is, because you need to go to New York and you don’t need any of this added on.”
“What the hell is in New York?” he yells, exasperated, his fierce eyes snapping back to mine. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because your mom wants to,” I tell him, but I sound like a sobbing catastrophe. I sniff a few times as I try to regain my breath, slowing down my breathing and attempting to compose myself. It doesn’t really work. “Whatever there is between us, we have to ignore it from now on. We need to stop this now before we get in too deep.”
He shakes his head, eyes tightly squeezed shut. The rain is still hammering against the windows, loudly and relentlessly. “If that’s what you really want,” he eventually murmurs in a low voice, but I just know he’s hating this as much as I am. “If you really, really want us to ignore this…then I guess I have to.”
I heave a tremendous sigh. I want this to be a nightmare. I want to wake up in Portland and for Mom to tell me that I’ve never stepped foot in Santa Monica before and that I don’t have a stepbrother called Tyler. I don’t want any of this to be real. It hurts too much to be real.
When he opens his eyes and turns to look at me, he just stares. I can’t bear the sight of them, pooling with emotion and hurt, but I can’t look away. His breathing sounds louder than the rain and it quickens as he leans toward me, and I know exactly what he’s thinking, and I want to kiss him too. So I do, because it’s the last time I ever will.