Nick was getting in his car in the driveway in the dusk. I wanted to think that he wouldn’t have driven away without me, but in his mood I couldn’t be sure. Maybe I’d end up walking home alone, like he had from my house. Two equally messed-up family meetings. What a pair we were.

Why had I ever thought this would work? Had I thought this would work? Everything in my life since Nick walked in was so confusing, so overwhelming, that I didn’t know anymore.

I got in the passenger side. One thing I knew for sure was that he wasn’t going to get away with being broody and silent. “Are you going to tell me what that was back there?” I said as he started the car and pulled out. “Because I sure as hell couldn’t figure it out.”

“There’s nothing to say,” Nick said. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on the road. I couldn’t see all of his expression beneath the brim of his baseball cap. But I could see his knuckles white on the wheel, the tendons in his arm flexed hard as stone. I wanted to punch him and kiss him and drag everything out of him all at once.

But the one thing I didn’t want to do was run. He didn’t scare me, not even a little.

“There’s plenty to say,” I said. “That wasn’t just an argument back there. That was something deep.” I waited, but he was still silent. “Talk to me, Nick.”

He wasn’t taking me back to the gym, where my car was. He was taking me further out of town. Soon we passed through farmland, where handmade signs advertised apples and pumpkins and firewood. He took a right turn and I realized where we were going. “You’re driving to Newcastle Point.”

“You been there?” Nick asked.

I snorted. “Everyone who went to high school around here has been there at one time or another.” Newcastle Point was secluded, it was nice, and it wasn’t far out of town. In other words, the perfect spot for drinking, making out, and fucking if you got lucky. Old Evie had been to Newcastle Point a lot, but not since prom night.

“Let me guess,” I said as he wound further down the road that led down the point. I could see glimpses of the lake through the trees, turning dark as ink as the last of the sun disappeared. “You never bothered with Newcastle Point in high school. You just screwed girls in your car, or up against a locker somewhere.”

“You have a weird idea of my sex life,” Nick said. “I was all right in high school. Andrew was the wild one. I was supposed to go to college.”

That was surprising. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it was. “And what happened?”

“Andrew had his accident during my first semester, and I walked out and never went back. That was the end of college for me.”

I stared at him. “You never told me any of this,” I said. “I’ve done things with you that I’ve never done with anyone else. Never imagined doing with anyone else. And there’s this whole life of yours that you never told me.”

“Yeah, well, you never told me you went wild in high school after your dad died. That you stayed wild and flunked out of college. That it still affects things between you and your mom. I had to figure it out the hard way.”

That was true. “This is bigger than that, though,” I said. “Way bigger.”

“You mad?” Nick asked.

It was a weird question, but I thought it over. “I want to punch some information out of you, but I don’t think that means I’m mad. I’m hurt, though.”

“Don’t be,” Nick said. “I don’t tell anyone anything about Andrew. Not ever.”

“So I’m not special,” I said. “Thanks for the reminder.”

He looked away from the road long enough to give me a glare, brief and molten hot. “You just met Andrew,” he said. “No one meets Andrew. Don’t start.”

He talks about you, Andrew had said. That made my heart flip in a weird way.

“I bullied you into it,” I said to him.

“No one bullies me into anything,” Nick shot back.

That was sort of offensive, but it also meant that he’d taken me to meet Andrew because deep down he’d wanted to. Then I remembered. “I promised to fuck you if you did it,” I said.

“And I plan to collect,” Nick said, and despite everything a shiver went straight down my body, ending between my legs. There was really only one reason to go to Newcastle Point, after all. “But that isn’t the only reason I did it. I think I did it because I’m sick of you not knowing. Like it matters. I don’t know. With you, I don’t know why I do anything anymore.”

“He engineered that whole scene, didn’t he?” I said. When I looked back on it, I could see it. “Andrew, I mean. He knew before we walked in that he was going to tell me about his accident, and Lightning Man. He planned it.”

“Andrew was always the smart one,” Nick said. “He’s scary smart. He could have left Millwood, done anything he wanted. But after the accident, he went sideways for a long time. Now it’s like he’s climbing the walls.”

He turned at a sign that said Lookout Point, and parked. It was the off season, and there was no one else here. No teenagers in the middle of the day, no local tourists. Just us, and a view of the lake beyond us, the trees dark shadows overhead.

He turned off the car and the quiet descended. It was dark and beautiful and serene. Neither of us made a move to get out.

“Tell me,” I said to Nick.

He stared ahead, seeing nothing. “It gets worse,” he said.

“Well, we’re here, and I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “So go.”

He took off his baseball cap and dropped it on the seat next to him. He ran a hand through his hair, and again I saw the two bracelets on his wrist. I was now pretty certain they had something to do with Andrew, though I didn’t know what.

“He tried suicide,” Nick said. “After the accident. Twice.”

The silence was deafening. I felt my stomach fall, twisting as it dropped.

“Our parents checked out,” Nick said, still rubbing his hand through his hair, as if that would coax the words out. “They couldn’t take it after the accident. They said it was too hard. They threw money at both of us, lots of money, and never visited, never called. So there was just Andrew and me.”

“Holy shit,” I said softly.

He sighed. “Andrew had to go to his friend’s funeral in a wheelchair. He had to adjust to being paralyzed. His whole life was fucked, his whole future. Our parents dumped us. It hit him too hard, for too long. It’s like this black hole that sucks you in, and all I could do was watch. I tried to get him into therapy, on meds or something, but he’s so fucking stubborn. And I couldn’t be there all the time.”

I was quiet. It was starting to make sense now, the deep undercurrents I’d seen between the two brothers. The history that no one else could touch. The love mixed with so many other things, like a chemical mix so unstable it can explode.

“When I was little,” Nick said, “people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. A baseball player, a fireman. I always said I wanted to be Andrew.” He sat back in the driver’s seat, leaning his head against the headrest. “I got my tattoo after his accident. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a pattern. But I felt like I should mark something that big on my skin. Make it something permanent that happened to me.”

“And the bracelets?” I asked him.

He raised his hand. “This one,” he said, touching the old, worn bracelet, “Andrew made for me when I was fifteen. And this one,” he touched the leather one, “I put on after he tried to kill himself the first time. It’s just… a reminder. That I have to be vigilant. That I can’t take it off.”

“Oh, Nick,” I said.

He lowered his hand again. “Andrew got better, or at least better than he was. He pulled through. But I don’t know if he could go back to that place. I don’t know what would send him there. I’m just a guy who doesn’t know a fucking thing. And I know I have to protect him against it, and I’m all he has. I almost lost him, Evie. You get it? I almost fucking lost him. Twice.”

I looked at his profile. I thought of the badass guy I’d met that first night, the guy who didn’t give a fuck. A guy who let everyone think he was a rich, useless waste of space. Because he couldn’t let anyone see what was going on beneath the surface. Maybe that was easier for him; maybe it was the only way he could cope. “And the comics?” I said. “How do they fit in?”

“I started those when Andrew was in the hospital,” Nick said. “I couldn’t leave him alone, but there’s only so much talking you can do, you know? So I started spinning this story about a hero called Lightning Man. He took to it right away. I’d come up with something, and he’d sketch it. He’d wake right up and almost be his old self again. So I kept it going and going. After he got home, he started redoing the artwork on his computer. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just what we do.”

I turned sideways in the passenger seat, drawing my knees up as I listened to him. “And if you publish it,” I said, “if you publish Lightning Man, the whole process changes.”

The look he shot me was so raw I nearly reached out and touched him. “If we publish it, then it isn’t ours anymore,” he said. “Right now it’s his and mine. If it isn’t his and mine anymore, then how the hell do I keep us both going?”

I did touch him then. I put my hand on his shoulder, slid it down his arm. Then I leaned in and kissed his jaw.

“Evie,” he said softly.

I didn’t relent. I leaned in even closer and kissed my way along the soft roughness of his short beard, to the warm place behind his ear. I kissed my way down his neck, letting my tongue taste his skin. I put my hand on his shoulder, then curled it around his neck.

He didn’t push me away. He sat still, his breath coming short, and he didn’t touch me. I nipped his earlobe and ran my hand down his chest to his stomach, aiming for his belt.

“Fuck,” he said softly, flinching under my touch. “Fuck, fuck.” He leaned over, tilted my chin, and kissed my mouth.

Immediately, I was on fire. It was the taste of him, the way he kissed me like there was no other purpose for him on earth. He pressed me back and opened my mouth and pressed into me while I ran my hands through his hair, over his back. Then down between us, tugging at his belt again.

He broke the kiss as I undid his buckle. “You want this?” he said roughly.

“Yes,” I said.

He ran a thumb over my lip. “Get in the back seat,” he said.

I did. I couldn’t explain how exciting this was, why my whole body was on fire. It was the fact that I’d seen him, the real him, everything he’d never showed me before. It was the fact that I liked who I’d just seen, a man who took care of his brother and hated to talk about it because he cared so much. It was the fact that he was still Nick, still the guy who drove me crazy, and apparently I really wanted Nick Mason to fuck me in the back seat of his car at Newcastle Point. Something about that made me feel dirty and hot and weirdly happy.

He got in the back seat next to me and slammed the door. “Get your clothes off and get on my lap,” he said.

I shivered. I was already undoing my jeans before he had all the words out of his mouth. I pushed off my shoes, my jeans, my panties, and climbed onto him, straddling him bare, I was so urgent for him. He slid his hands up under my shirt, over my nipples through my bra, then down to my ass, cupping it. In return, I tugged at his T-shirt and pulled it off.

He moved his hands up to my jaw and kissed me, our tongues tangling, my hair falling forward. It was sex and it was pure connection, as if I understood him and he understood me.

I’d kissed guys before. Made out with them. Slept with them. I’d never felt as owned as I did with Nick Mason, like I belonged to someone. Like we mattered to each other. He’d seen me fight and he’d seen me eat and he’d seen me freak out. He’d seen me drunk and he’d seen me asleep and he’d seen my ass. He’d seen me be dirty. He’d seen me come. And still here he was, cupping my face and kissing me, devouring me while his hand moved down and his fingers slid into my slick pussy, knowing every inch of the terrain.

I moved against him and we started a slow rhythm, him finger-fucking me while I moaned into his mouth. Anyone could drive by, see us, even in the dark, but I didn’t care. He kissed down my neck, his beard scratching me and giving me beard burn, his fingers still moving in and out of me. I gripped his bare, muscled shoulders as my nipples went painfully hard beneath my bra.

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough until he was inside me. “Please tell me you have a condom,” I said.

He laughed against my skin. It was low and sexy, that laugh, and it meant he had let everything else go, even if it was just for the moment. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” he said. He squirmed beneath me, pulling out his wallet, and the next thing I heard was the condom wrapper ripping.

I unzipped his jeans and pulled them down, along with his boxers, to free his cock. “I’ve decided I like having a slutty boyfriend,” I panted.

“You should talk, slutty girlfriend,” he said, rolling the condom on. It took a moment for me to realize that we’d just admitted to being in some kind of relationship, and then he guided his cock into me and pushed my hips down.

I moaned. “Fuck, oh fuck,” I panted, taking him all in. I was on top like this, in control. I lowered myself as far as I could go, feeling him go deeper and deeper inside me until we were notched together. Then I moved my hips in a slow circle.

“Fuck, like that,” Nick said hoarsely, moving his hands from my hips and letting me take over. He slid them up under my shirt again instead. “Ride me nice and fucking hard.”

I rocked on him, and we both groaned. He was so deep in me, making the pleasure pulse slow and hard, in my pussy and all the way inside me. I gripped his knees and he flexed his hips, moving up in rhythm with me. Slow and hard. We moved like we always did, perfectly in sync, both of us climbing to pleasure.

We were in his back seat, in public, which made it risky and dirty. Different than if we were in a bed. I used my knees to pump up and down on him and he made a different sound in his throat, moving his hand to the small of my back and splaying his fingers there. Controlling and possessive, but still letting me ride him. Which I was doing like it was the last thing I would ever do.

We hit our hard stride, chasing pleasure, unashamed, not caring about the slapping sound of our fucking, the way we were panting and saying dirty words. I just rode him as hard as I wanted, and he took it, fucking up into me and making me cry out. Sweat was starting to slicken the skin of my back under his hand, and he moved his other hand between us and rubbed his devilish, brilliant fingers over my clit just so, brushing it lightly and then more hard in an upward stroke. And I came, squeezing his hips and burying my face in his shoulder and feeling my body squeeze him over and over. And he gripped my ass and pumped up into me a few more times, hard, and I felt him come, felt every muscle of him flex against mine as his fingers dug into me.

We collapsed, me against his chest, my face still buried in his neck. I felt so good—my body on an orgasm high, my hands gripping his hot skin, his scent in my nose, his shoulder against my cheek, my cunt still pressed full of him. I was helpless against this, and I always would be. “Why is it always so good with us?” I asked against his skin.

“I don’t know,” he rasped, as I felt his chest rise and fall. “I’m losing my mind.”

So was I. But I didn’t think I minded anymore. There was no more Old Evie or New Evie, just Evie. It felt good. “What do we do now?” I asked him. Because none of this was easy.

His reply took a minute, but it was a good one. “We figure it out,” he said at last. “You want to?”

My heart squeezed silently in my chest. “Yeah,” I told him. “I do.”