Decker threw his hands into the air. “Really? That’s the answer you’re going with?” He tapped his pointer finger on the window. “They’ll come for us, you know. They’ll ask what we were doing out there. You might want to come up with a better answer than that.”

“Decker.”

He waved me off. “Look, I’m glad you’re okay. More than glad. I just can’t listen to you lie anymore.”

I wondered whether he’d believe me—believe what I’d become, and what I was still becoming. If he’d understand what I could do and what I could not do. Then I realized I was worrying about nothing. Decker was always able to believe in the impossible—that I could live when I was dead, that it could snow in August, that loving me was enough.

“I won’t lie to you,” I said. It was a promise to him and to myself.

“No. It’s what you don’t say. That’s worse.”

He was right. I didn’t tell him I loved him, and now it was probably too late.

“He was sick,” I whispered.

“Yeah, I gathered.”

“No. Physically. He was going to die soon. We both knew it. And he thought—he thought I should’ve died, too. That he was doing me a favor. That you didn’t let me die, and I was miserable.”

He blinked hard, processing, and he looked wounded. “Are you miserable?”

I stood up and walked to the window. I stared out with him, at all the things we couldn’t see. To Troy in the lake and the rift splitting down its center. To Carson dying on the side of the road. To Decker kissing me against a tree.

I didn’t know how to fix us. How to forget about Troy and Carson and Tara. How to go back and unsay all the things I said. How to tell him all the things I’d been unable to say. And after all that, would there be anything left underneath? Was there anything worth saving?

I rested my forehead on the window, and my breath fogged the glass, blocking my view. “Decker,” I said. I pulled my head back and looked at him, because I finally realized that nothing else mattered right then except him.

“Decker,” I said again. He turned away from the window and looked me in the eye. “If you had one day left to live, what would you do?”

He leaned back against the wall, but he kept looking at me. “That’s a pointless question.”

I slowed the words down, more sure of myself this time. “If you had one day left to live, what would you do?”

He tilted his head to the side. “I don’t do hypotheticals.”

But it wasn’t a hypothetical. Really, it wasn’t even a question. Decker didn’t know which day would be his last. Carson didn’t. Troy didn’t. I didn’t. It might just be today. So I said, “Do it.”

He didn’t wait. He pulled the front of my sweatshirt—his sweatshirt—and dragged me toward him, and he kissed me. Which was kind of perfect because, as it turns out, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. And when he kissed me, it wasn’t like against the rough tree when it was a question. This time it felt like an answer.

And after, he didn’t let me go. Everything looked so bright and clear and I couldn’t remember the darkness or the cold or the void. All I could see was his face, and behind him the brilliant white light of morning. And all I could feel was the heat radiating off both of us.

It felt distinctly like the opposite of hell.

Funny how everything can change in an instant. From death to life. From empty to full. From darkness to light.

Or maybe I just wasn’t looking. I hadn’t known that a light could be a feeling and a sound could be a color and a kiss could be both a question and an answer. And that heaven could be the ocean or a person or this moment or something else entirely.

But today, heaven was a wood-floored room with blue walls and a messy desk and Decker not letting go. He was still holding on to me.

Me, the miracle, the anomaly, the mistake. Me, and all the possibilities of who I might become. Me, Delaney Maxwell, alive.