“Keep up,” Six barked from behind me, his foot landing in a puddle and splashing my sweats.

Just for that, I wanted to push him down into the muddy water. But I was much, much shorter than Six—maybe a whole foot—which gave my legs a disadvantage. Still, I powered on, despite the burning in my lungs and the aching in my feet. Six’s many words of wisdom echoed in my head, beating against the voices.

If you think about the pain, you won’t win.

What the fuck was I winning? It sure wasn’t a marathon, not with Six several meters ahead of me, barely breaking a sweat while I lagged behind, lungs aching and hair soaked to my face.

When we hit a crosswalk, we both paused. Six stood by easily, hands in his pockets like he’d been taking a leisurely stroll and not trying to set the world record for running through the streets of San Francisco.

But now that I’d said it, I was sure there wasn’t a world record for that. Which meant Six was just a show-off.

With a hand braced to the street light, I leaned over and coughed, hard.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, giving me a quick one over.

“Peachy.” I hacked up what I expected to be a lung, but only foggy air came out. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes.

Just as I was bringing my trusty gold lighter up to it, Six plucked the cigarette from between my lips and tossed it on the ground with little fanfare.

“What the fuck?”

“You’re bent over, struggling to breathe, and you’re about to smoke a cigarette?”

“So?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

That set my blood to boiling. “Stupid is tossing an unused cigarette to the ground. These things aren’t free.” I held up my pack. “If you didn’t want me to smoke, you could’ve just used your words, like a big boy, and I’d have put it away.”

“You shouldn’t be smoking at all, not before you go for a run and not after, either. Smoking is what’s making you breathe so shallowly. You’re lowering your oxygen absorption—and your muscles need oxygen to produce energy. Your endurance is going to suffer, the longer you smoke.”

I knew full well it was childish, but I wanted to light a cigarette then just to smite him. “I’m not training for the Olympics, Six.”

“No, but you’re slowing me down.”

What. An. Ass. I shoved the cigarettes in my pocket, and before the crosswalk told us it was safe, I bolted across it to the other side. I hadn’t narrowly escaped death—this side of the city wasn’t exactly bustling at three in the afternoon—but I’d still done something risky. And judging by the hard lines around Six’s face, he was less than impressed.

“Come on, old man,” I called with my hands cupped on the outside of my mouth.

But he waited dutifully across the street. Traffic was slow enough that he could’ve played a toddler-level game of Frogger, but he waited nonetheless, his expression hard.

When the walk sign flashed, he started walking toward me. He was looming, his shadow briefly preceding his body as he came closer and closer. And boy, was he angry.

“Why is it, when I tell you not to be stupid, you decide to be stupider? What is it that drives you to be so reckless, Mira?”

The steam that had built up inside me after he told me not to be stupid before had fizzled away, along with my adrenaline from running across the road. So when I answered, I didn’t have an ounce of anger in me. The running thing was, admittedly, doing a great job of tiring me out of expending useless emotion.

“Because it’s fun, Six. I know you’re allergic to fun things, but since you’ve taken away a few of my fun hobbies, I have to find it somehow.”

“I haven’t taken anything from you. Jesus, Mira, I’ve only given. And given again.”

The conversation rapidly turned serious, wiping away whatever small bit of satisfaction I had. He wasn’t lying. He did give, and give, and give—when I didn’t deserve any of it. But I hadn’t asked him to give. He’d practically forced himself into my life. I wasn’t the one showing up at his apartment, begging for him.

“If you’re giving more than you’re getting, feel free to leave.”

He tilted his head down, his angry lines softening into annoyance. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying don’t be stupid. Or, at least, try not to be. For me.”

At my look—the look that told him not to talk about relationship shit, since it was still so new for me—he placed his hands on my shoulders.

“I’m saying that I care about you, and that I don’t want to see you mowed down by some guy showing off his muscle car’s juice, okay? I’m asking you to think about more than yourself.”

“I’m selfish.”

“I know.” He leaned down, kissed the top of my head. He kept doing that, dropping small bites of affection on me like I actually deserved them. “But you and I aren’t going to work if you’re not going to think about how I feel from time to time.”

But that was the problem. I thought about how he felt all the time. It kept me awake at night, long after his soft, deep breathing first reached my ears in bed. I wondered what he saw in me, what made him keep coming back. I was the most selfish person alive, and still he wanted what little I could spare him. It was hard, sometimes, for me not to see him as a wolf coming back for scraps. And in anyone else, that would’ve given me a reason to take advantage of him. But I couldn’t do that with Six. Not just because he wouldn’t let me, but because I didn’t want to.

Before he could pull away, my fingers wrapped around his wrists. They were so large that I couldn’t reach all the way around, so I squeezed him. “I’m sorry.” I meant it, even if my apology was lacking.

“Okay. That’s a start.” He gave me one of his rare smiles and cupped my neck with his hands. “But I do think you should try to cut the cigarettes down to a minimum, at least.”

“You smoke.” It wasn’t a question, but it was accusatory.

“I do. But it’s not a good habit. I’ve let myself go a little soft since meeting you.” He patted his stomach. “I need to get better. Our runs are as much for me as they are for you.”

I touched his stomach, feeling every damn line of his abs. “If this is soft, then my stomach is mashed potatoes.” I wasn’t fishing for compliments. Six never really talked about how I looked—which was what I preferred. Compliments were awkward, like wearing an itchy sweater. I didn’t need him to tell me I was pretty to feel validated in my looks. It was what was inside that was the problem.

He laughed anyway at my joke. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I can think of a number of things, but at least ninety percent of them would get us both arrested if we did them here.” I gripped his sweater. “Your place or mine?”

“I can’t,” he said, and sighed remorsefully. “I’ve got a flight this evening, actually.”

“Oh? A job?” Six often traveled for work, never bringing me along, and hardly ever told me about the job until after he’d returned. The fact that he was telling me now seemed poignant.

“Remember Lydia? My friend?”

The woman with the little girl from the photograph. “Yes.” I tried not to sound eager, which was hard to do with a word that consisted of only three letters. But I still did, because Six hardly gave me any information about the things in his life.

“Lydia passed away two years ago. Her daughter was orphaned. I try to visit a few times a year.” So that was why he didn’t seem to want to talk about her, about them, in his apartment that one day.

His eyes drew together, and in them I swore I saw something pass. Memories, feelings, something bigger than any other emotions Six usually let me see.

So, that was what sad looked like on him. Six being sad made me want to draw away from him. Anyone else would be drawn in, consoling. Not me. I was selfish, and I could barely take hold of my own feelings. Being burdened by someone else’s was … too heavy for me to carry.

“Cora needs me. She’s alone, you know?”

Cora. The name filled my mouth when I tried to say it. “Okay,” I said, suddenly wishing he hadn’t told me anything.

“It’ll be for a few days. Can you manage not to get yourself into trouble while I’m gone?” The fog lifted, and he was back to his regular self again. But I was unsettled. The glimpse behind the veil, and the way Six had looked—it’d been a lot. A new side of him.

“I guess I can try.” If Six sensed any apathy in my tone, he didn’t let on to it.

“Will you run while I’m gone? Keep yourself busy?”

“I guess if I feel like it.” But I was drained, answering him on automatic.

“You’re really such a pain in my ass,” he said with a sigh. “This is why you should get a dog. Have something to keep you accountable when I’m away.”

“Oh, please.” I blew out an exasperated breath. “That’s such a scam.”

“Having a pet is a scam?”

“Yeah. It’s fucking bullshit. You adopt these creatures and get, maybe, ten years with them and then they die, and you start the process all over again with a new one, because you’re so depressed. What kind of shit is that?”

“Everyone dies, Mira.”

“Yeah, but animals die faster.” Like my goldfish.

“It wouldn’t be fair to them to outlive us now, would it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want one. Never have. Never will.”

“You didn’t have any pets growing up?”

“Um, no.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Hello, how many Henrys have we gone through this year? That was a big adult step for me, you know, getting a goldfish.”

“Dogs are harder to forget than goldfish are.”

“Still don’t want one.” Before Six, I was barely keeping myself alive. To be responsible for something needier than my voiceless goldfish sounded like a cruel joke.

“Well, anyway, I’ll only be gone a few days. Maybe a week. But you can do this route, as if I’m with you in spirit. I’ll be back right before Christmas.”

“Oh, good. Will you bring me another garbage bag filled with gifts again?”

“Only if you’re really good.” He let loose another sigh and tucked a sweaty strand of hair behind my ear. “Are you going to miss me?”

“Ew.” I pushed against him. “It’s only a week, Six. Calm down.”

He tugged me back toward him, not letting me go that easily. My heart hiccupped into my throat and his mouth came down, not quite touching my lips but nearly there. “I’ll miss you.” He said it so softly, as if he thought I needed to hear those soft words. Or maybe the softness was for him. He was so hard, everywhere, all the time, that soft was such a contradiction to the man I visualized in my head when I wasn’t looking right at him.

“Okay,” I managed, breathing the word into his mouth.

His lips curved briefly, just a hint, before they settled back. His eyes searched mine, and his hands holding my arms squeezed gently. He wasn’t letting me go, and I realized that it extended beyond this moment. It’d been a year, and still he was proving himself to be steadfast; to be consistent when I was not. To be present when I was not. To love me when I could not.

Love. My heart tumbled out of my throat and landed with a smack on the ground in front of him. But he couldn’t see it; only I could. He loved me. He hadn’t said the words, but I knew it in the marrow of my bones. And, I couldn’t love him.

He was still hovering so close that each spoken word breathed into me. “You might not be able to admit it, but you’ll miss me too.”

But I didn’t want to miss him. How had I let myself get so wrapped up in him? He’d given me a job, paid my stupid bills, kept me company, helped put me on the right path. And I was stupidly afraid of all that. Because everything had an end—and I couldn’t clearly see where the us that we were, broke off into his path and mine.

“You’re going to miss your flight.”

Keep touching me.

Stop holding me.

My heart rate had accelerated once again, and the voices were at war with one another.

“You don’t even know when my flight is.”

He had me there. “When is it?”

“This evening.”

“That’s specific.”

He chuckled softly, pulling away, breaking our chance to kiss. “A week at most, okay?”

I could tell he was more worried than I was about what would happen in our time apart. We hadn’t gone a week apart since the year before. Part of me suspected this was some kind of test; a way for Six to see how I’d do without him constantly hovering. “Don’t be so dramatic, Six. It’s a week.”

“I know.”

But it wasn’t just a week. It was just enough time for me to fuck everything up.