The cold should bother me, but it doesn’t. Dry leaves crunch under my boots. My breath expels in puffs of pale mist. Above, branches rub and squeak, their bare limbs directing soft shafts of moonlight to the forest floor.

I feel separate from myself, insulated by an almost supernatural calm. While my teeth chatter and my fingers tingle with the need for gloves, my mind is soothingly disconnected. I wonder if this feeling, right here, is why people go to confession. Not that I unloaded my sins—well, except for my initial avoidance of calls from my doctor—but I do feel unburdened.

Poor, unlucky Charles, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t deserve him. Any of them, really—the small, incomparable army of Hughes men. The first thing Charles did after I told him was drag me to my father’s office. I could barely meet my dad’s worried eyes or Deacon’s searching ones as Charles in turn unloaded his new burden onto them.

Where does a confession stop? What happens when there’s no one left to hold the secrets?

After my mother’s diagnosis, my parents decided not to tell us right away. They wanted to protect us, to give us a little more time to be innocent, untouched by true suffering. But fear itself is a cancer that spreads—must spread—according to its very nature.

Perhaps some part of us hopes that like ink dropped in a pool of water, fear dilutes as it gains surface area. But it doesn’t. It retains potency, only multiplying. A virus.

A cancer.

I understand a little better, now, the weight of what my father carried for my mother. How it must have torn him apart to keep the truth from us for six months. Then how, throughout her long treatment, his drive to protect his children had outweighed his need for unburdening. And how eventually he broke, sharing his pain with someone else.

Can I blame him that the person wasn’t my mother? God, I want to. I want to hate him. The teenaged-me would have hated him for it. The confused, rock-bottom me of just months ago did hate him. Or at least I thought I did.

Now? I can blame my father all I want for betraying my mother, but the fact remains that I don’t know the whole story. My mother’s thoughts. My father’s guilt. Abigail’s culpability.

Life’s answers are often simple but rarely easy.

* * *

The footsteps have been shadowing me for a while. At first I pegged them as belonging to Deacon. Fierce, protective Deacon, whose response to my news was instant fury on my behalf. Though my eldest brother and I have never been as close as Alex, Charles, and me, I don’t doubt if cancer was a person, Deacon would pummel it to death without blinking.

But the person following me isn’t Deacon. He wouldn’t bother with subterfuge, but yell and chastise and drag me back into the warm house. Likewise, Charles or my father wouldn’t hesitate to make themselves known, albeit in a more subdued way.

I know who it is. Who it has to be. No one else would follow me into the woods at night. The knowledge elicits equal excitement and apprehension. I want to see him, hear him, touch him… and I’m terrified that my heart can’t withstand another brush-off. Not when it’s already hanging by a thread.

When I stop, it’s not because I feel brave or strong, but because the narrow path has opened into a natural clearing. I lift my face to the sky, where the moon sits full and radiant, so bright it mutes the stars.

The footsteps crunch closer and finally halt.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sebastian asks softly.

Even though I knew it was him, my heart leapfrogs in my chest as I turn to face him. “Why are you following me?”

“Who says I’m following you? Can’t I take a midnight walk if I want?”

My shell of calm cracks a little. “I’m not in the mood for banter. What do you want?”

“Among other things, to apologize.” He walks forward, right into my personal space, and before I can protest, a thick, soft blanket comes around my shoulders. “You’re not wearing enough layers.” The words ring oddly in my ears. He doesn’t sound reproachful—he sounds forlorn.

“Who told you?” I whisper, searching his face, the eyes that are too dark to discern clearly.

“I stayed up to greet Alex and Thea when they arrived and was in the room when Deacon told them.”

My cocoon shivers with seismic activity, then shatters. “I’m not dying,” I snap. “There’s no evidence yet that I have cancer. It’s just a biopsy.”

He nods calmly. “Yes, I know.”

“Then what are you doing?” My voice raises several octaves. “What do you want?”

“Like I said, I’m here to apologize.”

“For what?” I snarl, off-kilter from the tenderness in his voice.

I stiffen as his hands carefully cup my face. The heat of his skin is almost scalding on my cold cheeks, the touch itself shockingly intimate.

“For avoiding you,” he says softly, the words forming mist between our mouths. “For turning you away, shutting you out. But most of all, for not telling you that I’ve loved you since I was sixteen, and I’ve never fallen out of love with you. I’m hopelessly, sickeningly in love with you.”

My body and mind go utterly still. All I can think to say is, “What?”

The beginnings of a smile curve his mouth. “This is me doing everything backward—the usual direction when it comes to us. No first date, no flowers or chaste kisses for us. I want you. I want to make love and argue and laugh with you until you eventually murder me in my sleep. Hopefully when we’re old and senile.”

A hoarse laugh croaks from my lips even as tears leak from my eyes. “Is this real?” I blurt. “Because I’m suddenly scared I might be dreaming.”

His thumbs brush my tears away, then he pulls me against his warm chest, wrapping the lapels of his leather jacket around me, trapping me in heat and musk and… Sebastian.

“Does this feel real?” he murmurs.

I nod, tucking my arms around him, fingers digging into his hips, the steady thump of his heart under my ear.

“I might have cancer,” I whisper.

His arms tighten, promising to hold me together. Promising to stay. So I fall apart for the second time since that first phone call, giving release to a potent cocktail of old grief mixed with anxiety and dread. For these brief moments, I let him carry the burden. And he does, his grip and murmured love not wavering as I sob into his chest.

My tears are finally exhausted, leaving me feeling hollowed out and bone tired. I offer only a token protest as Sebastian tosses the blanket to the ground and swings me into his arms. My face pressed to the scarf around his neck, I don’t watch our progress, but I do recognize the distinct creak of the guesthouse’s stoop.

Opening the door, he says, “Nona’s in the big house tonight.”

I lift my face, smiling tiredly. “Cooking till the wee hours. She’s a saint.”

Sebastian carries me across the threshold, his foot nudging the door closed behind us. Pausing under the soft entryway light, he tucks a strand of loose hair behind my ear as his dark eyes trace my features.

“I’m going to seduce you now, Candace.”

Everywhere that was cold is suddenly hot. And I’m not even a little bit tired. Swallowing, I nod. “Okay.” Then I freeze. “Wait—don’t you have a girlfriend?”

He chews his lower lip, then admits. “No. Haven’t so much as been on a date since I saw you last.”

“Then who’s the model in all the photos?”

His brows lift. “Stalking me, were you?”

“Answer the question!”

My obvious jealousy turns his smile smug. “A favor to my agent. Nice girl, but she isn’t you.”

“But Alex told me…” I trail off, frowning at the sudden guilt on Sebastian’s face. “He lied to me? Put me down!”

I thrash futilely in his arms, which only makes him laugh. “It was my fault.” His tone turns serious. “I’m sorry. Alex only lied because I asked him to. I wanted to know if there was a chance you still cared about me but was too chickenshit to just ask. Not gonna lie, I was glad to hear you hung up on him.”

“You lied to make me jealous? Unbelievable!” I thump his shoulder with my fist, but there’s no strength behind it. I should be angry—I really should. I’d cried myself to sleep that night.

But the truth is I’m struggling not to smile.

“Candace,” he says soberly, “I would tear down a mountain with my bare hands if I thought it would impress you. I’d lie to the whole goddamn world. You’re the only person on earth who makes me feel like I’m not wandering anymore. Please tell me you forgive me for being an absolute coward all those years ago.”

Emotion punches me in the chest, hot and heavy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear. All I needed to know.

Summoning a smirk, I prompt, “And for being an asshole when I laid my heart at your feet?”

His lips twitch. “That too. No more games. No more avoidance. Can you love me again?”

Tears blur my vision. “I never stopped.”

His lips find mine, urgent and hard and perfect. He tastes like coming home, like happiness and freedom. And I know that this, right here, is why I could never fall in love or commit to a relationship.

Since Sebastian elbowed his way into my heart so long ago, there’s never been room for anyone else.

“Upstairs,” I mumble. “Now.”

* * *

Later, I make him put on his letterman jacket.