I blew out a breath and took a seat on his bed, physically weakened by the impact of his words.

“Don’t!” he yelled, pulling me off his bed. “Don’t even think about getting comfortable in here. I don’t want you here. Just like you don’t want me. One week, Chloe. One week, and you’re gone.” His hands were firm against my back as he pushed me through his door and out of his room.

I turned to him just as his hand curled around the edge of the door.

His face was red, fueled by his pent-up rage. “So just do it, Chloe!” He was screaming now. “Just do what you’ve always wanted to do and fuck off! And don’t ever come back!”

I opened my mouth to speak, but my throat closed up. My face was wet from the tears I hadn’t known were there.

“Harry,” I whispered.

But he didn’t hear me. He was too busy slamming the door in my face.

I’d been so closed off, so blinded by the walls I’d built that I hadn’t even realized how Harry felt. He’d called me his sister. He’d told me that he loved me.

And all it had done was give me more reason to leave.

“I’m sorry,” Dean said from the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t offer any more condolences. He just walked away. And I knew why—because he agreed with Harry.

“I’ve been so selfish,” I told Blake. We were in my car, with the top down and the seats reclined, looking up at the clear night sky. It had taken only eight weeks, but I finally had scored from the three-point line. He’d celebrated as if he’d just won a state championship. But his celebration had died quickly when I’d told him that I needed to cut back on spending time with him so I could be home more.

“What do you mean, you’ve been selfish?”

“Harry hates me.”

“What?” he laughed.

“I’m serious, Blake.”

He must’ve known it, too, because he sat up, pulling the seat with him, and turned to me. “What are you talking about?”

“He hates me,” I repeated, my words strained as I held in my sob.

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m leaving.”

He sighed heavily. “Then he has a point.”

“Blake.” I glanced up at him, but the sadness on his face was too heartbreaking, and I had to look away. “You’re not helping.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Chloe. That I think it’s great that you’re leaving in a week?” He reclined his seat back down and continued to stare up at the sky. “I’m not going to lie to you. And you shouldn’t lie to yourself, either. You had to have known there’d be this kind of reaction.”

“You don’t understand, Blake. He was yelling at me. He told me to fuck off and to never come back!”

“Quit sulking,” he said. “I’m sorry that he spoke to you like that, and that your feelings were hurt. But I’m not sorry he said it. Maybe you need to know that what you’re doing—The Road—it’s not just your journey to take. Your plans affect everyone. And I know that you did your best to keep people from caring about you—or whatever—but you’re pretty hard not to care for. You’re pretty hard not to love.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Really hard not to love.”

My eyes drifted shut. I tried to settle the thumping of my heart before I spoke. “Lucky you don’t love me.”

He didn’t say anything, just reached over, took my hand, squeezed once, and never let go.

Blake

I had barely stepped foot in the house before Dad’s voice filled my ears. “You have a meeting with the recruiter at Fort Bragg after school tomorrow.”

I squared my shoulders and raised a hand to my head, saluting him. “Sir. Yes, sir!”

He looked up from his position on the couch in the living room. His hands tightened around the glass of what was, no doubt, whiskey in his hand. “Don’t bring that fucking smartass attitude with you tomorrow, Hunter. You’re not playing a useless game on a basketball court. This is real life. This is your future.”

Chloe had offered to come with me on the hour-and-a-half drive to the army base, but I’d told her not to. She’d just be sitting around doing nothing, and after what she’d told me yesterday about needing to spend time with her family, it would have been selfish of me to agree.

Officer Hayden, the recruiting commander, was in his late twenties. He’d done three tours in Iraq before deciding to stay home with his wife and kid and “settle” as a recruiter. He said that my dad and he had spent a good chunk of time on the phone while my dad basically ordered him to show and tell me exactly what he wanted me to hear. Hayden laughed about it, said that he encountered army dads on a daily basis but none as extreme as mine, which didn’t surprise me at all.

He skipped the formalities of Dad’s standards of the meeting, like showing me around post and introducing me to what career choices I would have if I chose to enlist. He said that after talking with my dad, he’d figured I’d heard and seen it all by now. Instead, he took me to his home on post and introduced me to his wife and his little girl. I didn’t know why we’d ended up there, but I wasn’t going to argue.

He set out two deck chairs in his front yard, facing both his house and the American flag that flew proudly in front of it.

“Why do you want to enlist?” he asked, his eyes never leaving the flag.