Melissa gave us her address and directions back to our hotel before she walked back to the club. Sam insisted several times that he drive her back, but she refused. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know this city, and I’ve walked way farther with way worse going on. I’ll be just fine. I’ll see you guys in the morning.” To my surprise, she surreptitiously squeezed my arm in an affectionate way, giving me a gentle smile before she left. It was nice to know that even though Sam probably hated me, she didn’t. If she even knew the discomfort between Sam and me was my fault, she didn’t let on. I appreciated that. Being treated with any level of kindness meant a lot to me in that moment.

Sam and I walked back to the hotel in silence. I kept my hands shoved deep in the pockets of my coat, steeling myself against the cold. I considered offering up a comment, even a compliment, but I thought better of it. I wasn’t going to be the one to interrupt the quiet, and it was clear Sam wasn’t going to, either. In fact, we made it all the way into our room and shut the door before he finally turned to look at me, his arms crossed. “What were you doing tonight?” he asked, his voice hard. “Did you follow me or something?”

“No,” I said, my voice smaller than intended, and even I realized how pitiable and pathetic I sounded. I sank down onto the edge of the bed, staring at my hands.

“So you were...what? Just hanging out around town with some girl? Being ‘worried sick’ about me?” The way he said that phrase was so sarcastic, it turned my stomach. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard similar words spat at me in that exact tone, and I found myself crumbling under their weight.

“I was worried,” I said quietly. “Really. That was it.”

“But why? I’m a grown-up, Lance. I’ve been on this earth a whole twenty-three years. I told you I was just going to get a drink. Besides, I didn’t think you’d exactly miss me.”

I sighed. “I wasn’t worried for you, okay?” I half-whispered, feeling my skin prickling with shame and humiliation. “I was worried for me. I was worried that you would be gone and something would...happen.” I didn’t add that the thing I was worried about happening was me being alone with my thoughts. After a couple days with my mind being distracted from my usual constant barrage of negativity and brooding, I was terrified of going back to it. It was like I was on a vacation from myself, and there was no way I was willing to leave that just yet.

“You thought something bad would happen,” Sam said flatly. I could see his resolve starting to waver, but he seemed extremely determined to stay angry at me. “So you decided that, to alleviate your worry, you would, what, stalk me?”

The word hit like a punch to the gut.

Stalker. Creep. Weirdo. Pervert. Get the hell out of here before I kick your fucking ass...

Pain shot from my chest to the space behind my eyes, and I found myself blinking back tears. I felt absurd, but I could hardly breathe through my self-loathing and anxiety. My breath caught in my throat, and Sam frowned. A fissure ran through the cold exterior he’d been keeping up, and I saw worry in his eyes. “Lance?”

“I’m sorry.” My voice was shaking. I sniffled involuntarily and closed my eyes, mortified. “I think...I don’t know. I think the last place we stayed really, really scared me. That woman could have died, you could have died, anything could have happened, and...” I shuddered. “I just stood there, Sam. I just stood there and watched. I was so useless. And then you told me that I’d been the reason that...that you’d almost gotten yourself murdered, for Christ’s sake. You said that you read my books and that you took up this insane cause that’s just totally impossible for any one person to carry.” I rubbed my eyes, but when I finally looked up at him, his edges were still blurry. “I was never trying to say that. I know you don’t like hearing that, and I know it disappoints you, but that wasn’t what I wanted people to get out of it. I didn’t want anyone building their life around the belief that you have to fix every single problem that you see. I’m not saying you didn’t do the right thing, because you probably did, but...God, Sam, you’ve put up with enough shit in your life. I don’t want you to think that you shouldn’t get to take a break and look after yourself once in a while.” I laughed a little bit, the feeling coming from bitterness rather than any real amusement. “How could I possibly tell you that you need to make the scum of the earth your bitch when I could have never done what you did?”

Sam crept toward me and slowly lowered himself onto the side of the opposite bed. He watched me, tilting his head to the side. “I don’t think I believe that, you know. That you would never have done it. I think you just didn’t get the opportunity.”

“That’s really nice of you, man, but it’s bullshit,” I said plainly. “The vast majority of the world wouldn’t have stepped in like you did, at least not without expecting to get something out of it. And you didn’t. All you were trying to get was the knowledge that someone else would be safe for another day. You didn’t try to get anything out of her, like getting her to come back to your room with you or pay you off or anything like that.”

“You really think most people would do that?” he asked, sounding a little disgusted.

“Yes. Well, maybe.”

“Is that what you would have done?”

I snorted. “You saw what I did,” I reminded him. “I just stood there and watched it happen. That’s what I did. That’s the person I am.” I sighed and looked up at him, my heart aching in my chest. “You put so much faith in me being a good person, the kind of person who would stand up and say something when things look grim. You believed everything I wrote and I...I let you. I stopped writing, and I let everyone think that’s all there was to the story, and now there are people running around living their lives according to values and beliefs that I don’t hold, and that I don’t think are realistic.” I rubbed at my eyes, and my fingertips came away soaked. “I’m sorry. For lying to you.” I stifled a sob. “I let you down just like everyone else in your life. And I’m really, really sorry that I made it so hard for you to forgive me.”

Sam sighed. He took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose for a second. “No,” he muttered quietly, “that’s not on you. None of it is. I’m the one who expected something unrealistic. I guess I just expected you to be a superhero.”

“I’m not.”

“I know. You’re not a superhero. You’re just a guy. Just a person. Like everyone else.”

“I’m sorry.”

He gave me a weary smile. “What do you have to be sorry for? For being human?” He shook his head. “That’s all anyone is, Lance. That’s the most anyone could expect. I was...unfair.” He thought for a second. “And honestly, I was pissed that I could have been wrong about The Books of Veracity, you know? The idea that I came away from it with the entirely wrong idea hurt.” He frowned a little. “It still hurts, actually. I’ve always been kind of a guru when it comes to the series. Everyone always knew that I was the person to talk to about it. I feel stupid for having gotten it wrong.”

“You’re not stupid,” I said miserably. “I am. I’m the one who still hasn’t finished the fucking series.”

“And I’m the one who assumed I knew more about your books than you do.” Sam shrugged. “And that was wrong of me. I know that.” He cleared his throat and, in a voice that implied he rarely had to say these words, muttered, “I’m sorry.”

I gave him a watery smile. “I would apologize too, but I already did like six times, and I’m pretty sure you would punch me if I try to do it again.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because that’s what Damien threatens to do when I apologize too much.”

Sam let out a bark of laughter, and even I chuckled along a bit.

The two of us laid back in our beds, getting settled in for the night. It seemed our conversation had emotionally exhausted Sam, and he slid under the sheets with his tattered copy of Falling Pages. I followed suit, curling up in my own bed with my phone, scrolling through one of Sam’s fanfics. As much as I felt I should leave him alone, I kept getting distracted by his mere presence. My eyes kept gravitating from my phone to his face. Finally, I couldn’t seem to hold it in anymore. “What makes you want to write this stuff?”

“Hm?” He looked up at me with a dazed expression on his face. He’d been stone-cold sober at the bar, but he looked surprisingly drunk just then. I realized, with a faint sense of surprise, that it was because he was so engrossed in the book.

“Your fanfics. Why do you write them?”

He set his book aside and thought. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I guess I’ve always just wondered what happened in the little spaces in between, you know? There are a lot of things that we don’t see in the books, because there just isn’t time and it’s not really important. But even though it’s not important, that doesn’t make it any less interesting.” He shrugged. “I just want to be a part of that universe. I know I can’t do it for real, but I can at least get kind of close to it that way.”

I nodded. I couldn’t say I could relate—I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to be in a world I created so badly—but I could at least appreciate it. It was nice to get lost in a different world sometimes. That was the entire reason I wrote in the first place: to pretend to be somewhere else for a while.

He reopened his book, and the spine creaked painfully. Just the sound made me wince, but I didn’t dare say anything about it again. Our new truce was still hardly established, and I didn’t want tempers to flare again.

Sam must have seen the look on my face, because he sighed and closed the book once again. “I’m sorry for being a dick about the whole book thing,” he said. “I know you were trying to do something nice for me, but this copy is really important to me. I know it doesn’t look like much, but...” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I can be a little oversensitive about it.”

I thought back to the scattered boxes in Paul’s old man-cave and the way I’d clung to them when Damien tried to throw them away. We can’t get rid of them, Damien! We just can’t! “I get that,” I said quietly. “Getting attached to things, even if it’s not something that other people would understand. I didn’t mean to be insulting, or to, like, flaunt money or whatever.”

“I know.” Sam looked a little embarrassed by his earlier outburst, and I was comforted by the fact that he no longer looked at me and saw some sort of Scrooge who was lording money over him. “I know it’s just a book. A collector’s edition would have the exact words printed in it. It wouldn’t be all that different, logistically. But this was the one my mom gave me.”

My stomach turned over. God, I’m such an asshole. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, well, it’s not like I told you. I shouldn’t have just assumed you would know or whatever. You’re not a mind reader.” He laid back, looking up at the ceiling and folding his hands behind his head. “It was for my birthday. We mostly did homemade gifts in our house because Mom didn’t really have money for anything, but as soon as she found out that the first book had come out, she started squirrelling a little bit away at a time so she could get it for me. She ended up getting so excited she couldn’t actually wait until my real birthday to give it to me.” A dreamy smile crossed his face. “It was the best gift anyone ever gave me, especially because it was so lost on her. Nothing against you, you know, she just wasn’t a big reader. But she knew I would love it.”

I found myself smiling too. “That’s really cool, man,” I said, and I meant it. “I don’t think my mom ever put any thought into anything she ever gave me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. She probably just didn’t know what to do, you know? A lot of parents don’t.”

I glanced over at him and chuckled. “I might agree if she hadn’t given me a gift card to Pottery Barn when I was ten.”

Sam snorted. “What the hell does a ten-year-old want from Pottery Barn?”

“Nothing, but my mom sure had a hell of a wish list.”

“So you just gave it back to her?”

“Oh hell no. She gave it to me. No take backs.” I gave him a grin. “I bought a ton of cinnamon-scented pinecones. They were, like, fifty cents each, and considering how often I got Pottery Barn gift cards, I was pretty much swimming in them within a year.”

“What the hell did you do with a ton of smelly pinecones?”

“Stuck them all in my closet. My room smelled amazing.” Both of us chuckled a little, relaxing into our respective beds. I wasn’t sure about the question I wanted to ask, but I decided to go for it. It wasn’t like I had a reason to be afraid of looking like a jerk; I’d already managed that more than once during the trip. “How is your mom? Is she...doing okay?”

Sam’s smile faded instantly. “She actually passed away a few years ago.”

I winced. Of course she did. “I’m really sorry. That’s awful.”

“It was sad, of course, but I expected it. I kind of always knew she was going to go before her time. She could never stay on the wagon for too long. By the time she passed, it was almost like she’d already been gone for a long time. She wasn’t herself when she was always high.”

I shook my head. “I can’t imagine,” I muttered. I focused my gaze on a little chip in the ceiling’s paint. “I’ve never lost someone like that. It always came as a surprise. That was how it worked with my grandparents. They were just...gone one day.”

“I’m not sure which is worse,” Sam mused. “Watching them decline over time or having it come as a shock.”

“You can lose people in a lot of different ways. I don’t know if it really matters if it’s fast or slow. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter how it happens. Grief is grief at the end of the day.”

I could feel Sam’s eyes on me. “You sound like an expert.”

My skin felt overheated. The chip in the paint was obscured in my vision by Paul’s smiling face. “Not an expert, really. Mostly just the one case.”

“Do you mind if I ask what happened?”

I gulped. My heart was racing; that was what always happened when I thought about Paul. Or at least, when I thought about the end of our story. You need to think it all the way through, a therapist had told me, back when I still had enough hope for recovery to see a therapist. Play the story all the way through to the end. You can’t obsess over the good and push away all the bad.

It was supposed to make me miss him less. Instead, I just missed him while also remembering exactly how terrible it felt to lose him all at once. I could still see his face so clearly, still feel his lips on mine. And I could still hear insults and accusations being hissed at me: Creep. Stalker. Pathetic.

I didn’t realize I was trembling until I felt the mattress dip beside me and I found myself looking up into Sam’s beautiful green eyes. “Hey, it’s okay, man,” he murmured, putting a hand on my arm. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, it’s not that.” I sat up in bed to face him; having him hover over me made me feel like some sort of invalid from the Victorian era. “It’s not that talking about it is the hard part, you know? It’s that it happened at all.”

“That what happened?”

I hesitated. Did I really want to get into this with him? After all, it wasn’t his job to take care of me or put up with my problems. He wasn’t even supposed to be dealing with me anymore. He hadn’t signed up to be my personal confidante. It seemed wrong to take advantage of even this small shred of kindness.

But at the same time, my heart felt like it was about to burst. There was the ache for Paul, the one that always seemed to be there no matter what I was doing, and on top of it was everything I was feeling when Sam was near me. His gorgeous eyes, his soft-looking lips, his broad shoulders. The way he talked without being afraid of what someone might think. How he opened his life up to me and gave me the details, baring all of the goriest, most vulnerable parts of himself to me without fear.

I couldn’t deny it anymore. I liked him. And at the very least, I owed him some part of myself, some snippet of information so that he could know I was damaged and that he shouldn’t be so kind to me.

“I had this boyfriend,” I said haltingly. “He was sort of my high school sweetheart, I guess, even though that term feels so insufficient. I loved him more than anything. I thought we were going to spend our lives together.” My throat closed almost painfully around the lump sitting there.

“But you didn’t,” Sam provided.

“No. No, we didn’t.” My eyes were stinging again. “I’ve never been great at handling things. I’ve always been a little...weird, I guess.”

“Isn’t everyone?” Sam asked, scooting further onto the bed.

“I know, I know. There is no normal.” I sighed; I had heard that from my mother through my entire childhood. It was a nice saying, but it never helped anything. “I more mean that there’s always been this, like, hole inside of me. My whole life, I felt like I was looking around at a world full of people who had something I didn’t, something intangible. Like there was this key part of humanity that I could never understand. It was like...like everyone else just knew how to be happy, somehow. They didn’t have to work at it or find some key to unlock it. They just felt it. And I couldn’t.”

“That’s not being weird, Lance,” Sam said gently. “That’s called clinical depression.”

I huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, I’m more than aware. My mom’s a psychologist. A Freudian one at that. I think she thought I was depressed because I’m gay, and she thought I ended up being gay because I never had a father.”

“Jesus, that’s offensive.”

“Oh, I know, but there was never any telling her that. She just shoved pills down my throat and told me to try dating women, like that would solve everything. Obviously, it didn’t. The only time I actually did feel happy was with Paul. It was like he turned my life into something worthwhile. All of a sudden, there was a person who cared about me, someone who would notice if I lived or died. And then, one day, it all just...ended. He was gone, and I was alone again.”

Sam put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a tiny smile. “Maybe it doesn’t feel like it, but there are a lot of people who would care if you died. I know I would.”

“Thanks,” I said, genuinely grateful. It wasn’t often someone explicitly said they cared whether my existence continued or not. It always surprised me just how much I seemed to need to hear it. “I’ve just never known how to exist with other people. It’s like there’s some barrier between me and the entire rest of the world. I look around and see all these people—people like you—who deserve to be happy, and I just think, ‘I don’t belong with them.’ Like just being around me is enough to depress someone. Hell, Paul was the most positive person I knew, but even he got worn out from dealing with me. I just end up being too much for most people.”

Sam wasn’t just frowning; he looked absolutely, devastatingly sad for me. “It might feel that way, but I’m sure it’s not true.”

“No offense, Sam, but we’ve known each other less than a week and I went out of my way to be silent most of the time, and I still managed to make you hate me.”

He rolled his eyes, but the look he gave me was still empathetic. “Dude, I don’t hate you. Not at all. I just got mad at you. And not even for a good reason. I mean, I was annoyed with you because you know more about your own books than I do. I’m a little surprised you don’t hate me at this point.”

“I could never hate you.” The words came out of my mouth completely unbidden. Quickly, I stammered to add, “I mean, I don’t know you super well or anything, but I really can’t imagine hating you. You’ve been a lot more understanding with me than I think most people would have been. And you’re such a good writer that you made me change my own books.”

Sam’s eyes lit up. He was trying to repress a smile, clearly hoping to keep on his empathetic mask, but his hopeful cheer spilled through. “Hold on. Seriously?”

“Yeah. You were right. Anna Lee and Elinor are perfect for each other. Or they will be, anyway, once my Elinor toughens up a little and gets her shit together and acts a little bit more like your Elinor.”

I tried to smile at him, but he didn’t take even a moment to look at my face before tackling me. My mind jumped to the conclusion I was being assaulted, but fortunately, my body didn’t know what to do with that information, so I just laid there with Sam’s arms wrapped tightly around me. I could practically feel my blood pressure rising from the contact alone, but when he pulled back and I saw his massive grin, I decided a cracked rib or two from the assault would be completely worth it. “This is literally the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he gushed, staring down at me, his glasses knocked slightly askew. His face was only a few inches away from mine, and I was acutely aware of how tightly he was pressed up against me. It had been a long time since I had anyone pinning me to a bed, and I prayed that my dick would respect me enough not to become noticeably hard.

“I’m sorry that this is the greatest moment of your life,” I half-joked. “That must be depressing.”

“Not even a little bit. This is my dream. This is every fan’s dream.” He was beaming, absolutely radiating joy. Normally I couldn’t stand being around someone who was so aggressively, mercilessly happy. I always found myself wondering why their joy never touched me, even when it was pouring out of them by the bucketful. Instead, I would always just become bitter and irritable, pushing them away as hard as I could.

But in that moment, I thought I understood the idea of infectious happiness for the first time in my life. It may have been a trick of the aggressively bright hotel lighting, but I could have sworn there was a halo around Sam’s head. I could feel myself grinning like an idiot, and without thinking, I reached up and adjusted his glasses.

I expected him to pull back, but instead, Sam just laughed, his voice a little breathless. Spots of color appeared on his cheeks, and his eyes surveyed my face, darting from feature to feature with no hesitation. “I can’t thank you enough,” he said, and I told myself I was just imagining the slight huskiness in his voice. “I’m so happy I could kiss you.”

My heart fluttered. A chorus of angels screamed “HALLELUJAH!” in my ears. My entire body buzzed with energy, and I felt my lips part of their own accord. Everything in me was begging to lean into it, to take the bait presented to me.

Then came that nasty little voice again. Creep. Weirdo. Pervert.

And I choked.

I wriggled out from under Sam, both disappointed and panicked. I couldn’t spend another second so close to him, even though every part of me sang from the contact between us. “Sorry,” I said lamely, “but I was having a little trouble breathing.”

“Oh. Yeah.” His blush deepened, and I took a second to admire how nicely his pale skin flushed. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.”

The silence that followed was even more awkward than the hug, and it didn’t even have the added benefits of arousal. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I grabbed his book from his bed and handed it to him. “Here. I’m sorry I cut into your reading time.”

“It’s okay,” he assured me, but he was still bright red. He glanced from the book to me. “Um...Can I ask you a weird question?”

Considering how weird the night had already become, I didn’t see a problem with that. “Sure.”

He held up the book. “If you don’t like rereading things, then does that mean you’ve never read through your old stuff?”

I had to laugh at that. “You sound like Damien. He’s always trying to get me to read my old stuff to ‘keep my ideas fresh’ or something.”

“So is that a no?”

“Of course it’s a no! Why would I want to read something I wrote? If anything, that just sounds painful. Once I’m done with something, I’m done. I move straight on to whatever’s next. Just the idea of going back and seeing how bad it actually is makes me want to jump out of a window.”

“Come on,” he said, swatting me on the shoulder. “It’s not bad at all! And you should get to experience it at least once as a reader. Do you even remember book one?”

“Sure. I mean, I remember the plot points from it.”

“But what about the words?” he pressed. “What about the way all the little pieces fit together, all the details, all the asides and inconsequential bullshit that makes stories so much fun?”

I laid back on my pillows, turning to face him. “Well, no. I can’t say I remember any of that. Why?”

He shrugged. He put forth a valiant effort not to seem too sheepish, but there was a hint of nervousness in his voice when he suggested, “Why don’t I read it to you?”

“You want to read me my own book?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah. It’s a great story.” He shrugged self-consciously. “I just think you should get to experience it the way all your fans do for once. Maybe you’ll be able to see what it means to everyone if you can just hear it, you know?”

My first thought was that this sounded like pure torture. I didn’t even like listening to myself talking while I was doing it. I had no love for my own words. There was something painfully embarrassing about being subjected to my own work, and the absolute last thing I wanted was to relive every mistake I’d put on the page.

My second thought, though, was the one I decided to go with. And that thought said, Ah, fuck it. Why not?

“Sure,” I acquiesced.

His eyes brightened, and there was no doubt in my mind I’d made the right choice. “Yeah? Are you sure?”

“I don’t see why not.” I curled up under the covers. “Just don’t hold it against me if I complain. Or if I fall asleep.”

He winked, and my heart melted. “Will do.” He opened the book and cleared his throat, then began to read. “’Though there was nothing truly abnormal about the twins, no one would ever describe them as quite normal, either. There was always something off about them, something that seemed to keep everyone else at arm’s length. Auntie Hilda usually described it as nosiness, and maybe that’s what it was. After all, not every child would be delighted to be hit on the head with a book while they were doing their chores. Eli Thornton, however, was not most children, and luckily for him, neither was his sister, Elinor. So when a very large book with a fine leather binding fell onto his head while he was pulling weeds in Auntie’s garden, Eli felt like he had won the universe’s greatest jackpot.’”

The words I heard were, to my surprise, not ones that made me cringe. On the contrary, if I hadn’t been the one to write them, I would have been pretty impressed. The story was light and fun, and it was like I was falling in love with the twins and the world of Verstecken all over again. I had almost forgotten how much of my heart belonged to them until I heard their story told in that soft, soothing baritone.

That night, I dreamt of falling books, surprising meetings, hardworking heroes, and malicious villains coming together to create a beautiful adventure. And when I woke up, Sam was right beside me, his book open on his chest, rising and falling with each beautiful breath.