“You’re such a fucking Neanderthal, Ky,” Ashlee said once we were back in the car. I turned to her, but she was smirking. “It’s kind of hot.”

We skipped the food and went back to her place, where we repeated the events from earlier that night.

Halfway through the second round, my phone rang. It was Christine. I ignored it.

Two minutes later, it rang again. Jax.

I looked at the time. It was past midnight—past curfew. I switched it to silent. I didn’t want to deal with it. I wanted to forget this shitty night. And Ashlee—she was helping me do that.

We fell asleep in each other’s arms and didn’t wake till morning. The panic I felt when I initially woke was nothing compared to how I felt when I looked at my phone. Over a hundred missed calls—all from Christine and Jax. The panic increased tenfold when I called Christine to apologize. Her voice was a shaky whisper. “You need to come home, Ky. Right now. It’s Jeff.”

When I got home, Christine was sitting on the couch, Jackson next to her, holding her hand.

Christine didn’t even look up when I called out to her. “He’s gone, Ky. Jeff...he’s gone.”

Jackson wrapped her in his arms.

He, too, refused to look at me.

While I was too busy thinking with my dick the night before, Jeff and Jax had set up the Xbox. They’d been playing for a while when one of the controllers died. Jeff went to the store, no more than five minutes away, to buy new batteries.

He got the batteries, but he never made it home.

He was T-boned at an intersection by a drunk driver who’d run a red light.

They barely spoke to me in the three days leading up to the funeral. I saw them leaving once and asked where they were going. Jackson answered— said they were picking out the casket.

They didn’t ask me to join them.

I wasn’t even mad.

Ashlee, being the perfect girlfriend, sat next to me and held my hand the entire funeral. Christine sat on my other side, holding my other hand, and Jackson sat next to her with his arm around her.

Ashlee went home after the funeral to watch her little sister.

I felt like a stranger.

Christine and Jackson cried. A lot. I tried to force myself to cry, but I just couldn’t.

I carried too much guilt to mourn.

It should’ve been me in that car.

If I’d stayed home and hung out with Jackson like I should’ve, it wouldn’t have happened—at least not to Jeff.

Jeff—he was the greatest man I’d ever known. What other kind of man willingly saves a kid—allows him into his home without question...he went out of his way to make sure I was part of his family. And what the hell did I do to repay him? Nothing.

Not a goddamn thing.

After an hour of being invisible, I left and drove to Ashlee’s house.

It was then I realized Ashlee wasn’t the perfect girlfriend—that was made evident by the moans she emitted while some guy fucked her in the same bed we were in the exact moment Jeff died.

She screamed when she saw me.

The guy jumped up, naked as the day he was born.

I didn’t know him.

And I didn’t care to.

But my fist did. It went through eight blows to his face of caring.

Ashlee cried and called after me.

I got in my car and drove back to the cemetery where I kicked the fresh dirt lying on top of Jeff’s body.

Then I fell to my knees.

And it finally happened.

I broke.

And I cried seventeen years’ worth of tears.

And it didn’t fucking help.

Not even a little bit.

Not even at all.

5

KY

DOCTOR AROMA TAPS her pen on a notepad a few times while she openly glares at me. I glare back. I’ve been in her office a good ten minutes and neither of us has spoken a word. I don’t know what game she’s playing at—but I can go with this shit all day long. Finally, she cracks, breaking the silence with a sigh. “So are you ready for the list of boys I slept with during college?”

“Is this how you get all your clients to talk to you?”

She nods, her smile full force. “It works.”

Leaning back in my chair, I rest my ankle on the opposite knee and wave a hand in the air. “Ask your questions, Doc.”

“Nah.” She shrugs. “I think I’m just going to let you talk this session.”

“I think I’d rather sit in silence.”

“Okay then,” she says, her eyes never leaving mine.

And so the game begins again.

Only this time, she doesn’t stare at me. She starts to scribble in her stupid notepad. I sit up higher, curious to what the hell she could be writing. This goes on for ten minutes. Occasionally, she’ll eye the ceiling as if deep in thought. Then she goes back to writing.

“What the hell notes could you possibly be obtaining from me sitting here?”

She shakes her head. “These aren’t notes about you. It’s a list of my college conquests.” She looks up at me quickly. “You wanna see?”

“No.”

“Want to talk then?”

“No.”

Pressing her lips together, she looks down at the page. “Colin. Freshman year. He was so dreamy. Wait. I think his name’s Colin. Could be Chris. Or Craig. Either way—”

“So I met a girl,” I blurt out.

Her smile is instant. “Oh yeah?”

I clear my throat. “Yeah.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

“Really?”

She releases the tiniest of laughs. “No. Not really. Tell me about her, though,” she says, setting the pen and paper down to give me her full attention.

“There’s not much to say, honestly. She’s my neighbor. We had pizza. Then I guess I maybe tried to kiss her.”

“And how did that go?”

“She squealed and slammed the door in my face.”

Doc laughs again. “And how did that make you feel?”

Excited, I want to say. But instead, I play it down and shrug.

Her smile gets wider, as if she knows my real answer. “Have you wanted to punch anything since said door-slamming incident?”

“Nope.”

DeLuca: Meet me at O’Malley’s bar at 1600, soldier.

Ky: I’ll be there.

I call Jackson from my department issued phone on the way home from therapy.

“DeLuca contacted me. I’m meeting him this afternoon.”

I hear shuffling at his end. “Nothing has registered on your phone.”

“Yeah, you’re going to have to somehow transfer my real number to this one. I don’t want to give him a new number.”

“Shit. I should’ve thought of that beforehand.”

“Hey, you’re the detective.”

“Smartass.”

“Love you, too.”

***

Madison’s the first thing I see when I step off the elevator on my way to meet DeLuca. Again, she’s standing in front of the mailboxes, peering inside hers. “You must really like mail.”

She turns around and laughs when she sees me. “I think it’s more the element of surprise that I’m drawn to.”