“Sit,” he said, nodding toward the table. “You want something to drink?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

He stuck a couple of slices of pizza in the microwave and then pulled two pumpkin ales from the fridge. The sleeves of his T-shirt stretched over the bulge of his biceps as he twisted the top off each bottle. Heat raced up her neck as her mind immediately returned to the image of him without a shirt.

She scarfed down the soggy reheated pizza as she filled him in on what had happened. With every new revelation, his expression alternated between rage and sympathy.

“I should have listened to you,” she said.

Noah lowered his bottle to the table. “Don’t do that.”

“But you were right.”

“I could have just as easily been wrong. You had to see it for yourself.”

“You’re a better judge of character than me.”

“No, I’m not. I’m a cynical asshole who thinks everyone has an agenda, and you’re a goddamned ray of sunshine who automatically assumes the best intentions.”

Alexis laughed. “A goddamned ray of sunshine?”

He gave her a half-hearted smile. “All this wedding stuff is starting to rub off on me.”

“Anyway,” she breathed, leaning back in her chair. “I guess that’s that. I get to keep my organs, after all.”

Noah carried her plate to the sink, rinsed it off, and loaded it in the dishwasher.

“Thanks for feeding me.”

“What are friends for?” He returned to the table and held out his hand. “Let’s start a fire outside.”

She folded her fingers in his and let him pull her to her feet. But as she followed him outside, the fire she was most concerned with was the one that had ignited inside her.

After lighting the fire in the firepit, Noah went back inside for two fresh beers and a blanket. He returned, handed her one of the beers, and then sat down next to her on the cushioned patio sectional that she’d helped him pick out last spring. It cut a ninety-degree angle around the corner of the covered patio where she’d helped him hang string lights and decorate with a row of hanging baskets. The flowers had long since died, but the baskets were still there.

How many nights had she sat here just like this with him? And why now, all of a sudden, did the space seem smaller, more intimate? Her hands shook as she spread the blanket over their laps, and when he slung an arm over the back of the couch, her lungs stopped working at the innocent brush of his fingertips against the nape of her neck.

If he was equally affected, it didn’t show. He stared quietly into the flames, his face cutting a hard angle in the dancing, flickering shadows as he raised the bottle to his mouth. The strong, long lines of his throat worked against a swallow.

He looked over. “Talk to me.”

He’d said those same words to her countless times, but tonight, she understood the simple gift of them. He never prodded, never pushed. He was just there, willing to listen, always. Expecting nothing in return.

“About what?” she asked, breathless.

“About whatever has you staring at me so hard.”

Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. How was she supposed to tell her best friend that she was suddenly overcome with a need to kiss him?

Alexis tore her gaze to the fire. “He didn’t . . . He didn’t even ask about her.”

His fingers brushed her neck again. “Your mom?”

“To not even . . . to not even acknowledge her as anything more than just some woman he’d had a summer fling with.” A tear stung the corner of her eye. “She deserved better than that.”

“You both deserved better.”

“I’m not sure he even cared about her.”

“Would it matter if he had?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Noah set his beer on a table next to the couch and shifted in his seat so he could face her more directly. Under the blanket, Alexis curled one leg under her to make room for him.

“Why does it matter?”

The tear swelled and blurred her vision. “Because she deserved to be loved.”

“You loved her.”

“I know, but it’s not the same. She deserved a true love.”

“Tell me about her,” he said, voice tight.

Alexis leaned her head against his arm. “She loved squirrels. Other people would try to keep squirrels off their bird feeders, but her bird feeders were for the squirrels.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.”

“She loved Fleetwood Mac. And Stephen King novels. She let me read It when I was in middle school, and I didn’t sleep for a year.”

Noah smiled. “Is that why you hate clowns?”

Pain struck her in the chest. “No.”

He didn’t prod. Just waited for her to explain.

“I wanted a clown for my birthday party one year. We couldn’t . . . We couldn’t afford it. So my mom dressed up like one for me.”

“Why did that make you hate them?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe because even as a kid, I knew it was wrong. That she felt bad about it. Like she had failed me somehow. And that wasn’t fair to her. I wish I’d never asked for it.”

The burn of resentment that she’d felt at Elliott’s house once again scorched her throat. “I bet Candi had clowns at her birthday parties. I bet Lauren didn’t have to pick up extra shifts to pay for it either.”

“It’s unfair. All of it.”

Alexis sat up and took a drink of her beer. “You know what’s really unfair? I remember that the doctor was wearing a red tie the day we found out my mom had cancer. But I can’t remember what she wore that day. I don’t want to remember his tie.”

Noah let out a pained breath and leaned toward her. “Honey—”

“Memories are unfair, you know? They don’t tell us until it’s too late that this one, this detail, is the thing you need to hang on to. Why do we remember the weird little stuff but not the big things?”

Noah shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“My mom . . . she told me once that the hardest part about being a parent is that you never know when it’s going to be the last time you do something for your child. The last time you will wash their hair. Fix their lunch for school. Help them tie their shoes. It’s true as a child, too, though. When you watch your parent die. No one tells you this, warns you. That you need to hang on to every detail because it could be the last time you go to a movie together or go shopping together. I remember our last Christmas together but not what she said when she opened my presents to her. Why can’t I remember those things? I want to remember so badly.”

“Come here.” Noah opened his arms to her, and she went into them willingly. It was an awkward embrace, hindered by the way they sat and the tangle of the blanket around their legs, but it was perfect. He was perfect.

“I learned to pretend when she was sick,” Alexis said. “That it wasn’t really happening. You know? Maybe if I just went on with life, just acted like everything was normal, that she wasn’t dying, then maybe she wouldn’t. But then she just got worse and worse, and then came this day and I knew it was over. And I just kept rubbing her hand and saying it was okay. She could go. I’d be okay. I’d be just fine when she was gone. But I’m not fine.”

“I’m sorry,” he said against her hair, one hand cupping the back of her head to hold her against his shoulder. “For all of it.”

“I feel selfish. Making it all about me.”

“Grief doesn’t make you selfish, Lexa.” His mouth was on her hair. “Does it make me selfish that I wanted to tear down the entire U.S. government to get back at them for taking my father away?”

“You were a child. I’m an adult.”

“So am I, and I still hate them for it. So if you’re selfish for being pissed off at Elliott fucking Vanderpool, then so am I. And so what? We both lost our parents when we were far too young.”

“You know what I used to hate?”

He nuzzled her hair with his lips. “Hmmm?”

“Navigating other people’s emotions about my mother’s death. People either have no idea what to say, or they think they do and end up saying something entirely stupid and you feel sorry for them, so you say something to cover for them. It’s exhausting.”

He laughed, but there was no joy in it. Only understanding. “After my dad died, I got to a point where I thought I would punch the next person who tried to tell me how sorry they were.”

“Or ask if there is anything they can do.”

“Everything happens for a reason . . .”

She groaned. “They’re here for you.”

“You’re so strong.”

“As if there is any alternative but to just keep getting up every day and going about your life.”

“Exactly.”

She sucked in a shuddered breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t think I could do this without you.”

“I promise you won’t have to find out.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You don’t have to be so strong all the time, Lexa. Not with me.”

Alexis pressed her face into his neck and breathed in. He smelled like his laundry detergent, and it wasn’t until this moment that she realized it was her favorite scent. It smelled like safety and security.

And desire. Hot, burning need. For him and him alone. And she was sick and tired of fighting it.

* * *

* * *

The first brush of her lips against Noah’s throat felt like an accident. A mere coincidence as she moved in his arms to get more comfortable.

But then it happened again.

He stopped breathing as her lips touched the pounding pulse in his throat and lingered there, hot and soft. And even then, Noah might have convinced himself it wasn’t intentional if she didn’t splay her fingers wide across his chest. If she didn’t nuzzle his jaw with her nose. And if she didn’t lift her head and whisper his name in a voice laced with a tone he’d know anywhere but had never heard from her.