“Actually, it was Hannah’s guess.”

“Hmm.”

Michael centered on him. “It wouldn’t have been a bad thing.

I just—I didn’t want you to think you couldn’t tell me.”

Nick didn’t say anything to that.

Then the waitress was back and Michael was signing his name, and this little moment was ending.

Nick didn’t move. He couldn’t. He felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down at water far below. A short flight through air, with an impact that might kill him.

Michael hesitated at the edge of his booth. “You ready?”

“No.”

Say it. Tell him.

Two words. He couldn’t even get two words out of his mouth.

You care more about what other people think than you care about me.

Adam had faced a lot worse than this.

Nick looked at his older brother, then shoved the empty beer glass toward him. He felt dizzy, like the air was too thin to breathe.

His voice came out wispy. “You might want another one.”

“Why?”

“Because you guessed wrong.” He laughed shortly. “Way wrong.”

Michael studied him but didn’t say anything.

Nick took a breath and forced himself to look up. “Michael.

I’m g*y.”

CHAPTER 23

Three feet of wooden table stretched between them, but it might as well have been three miles. This moment between words and reaction seemed to stretch into infinity.

Nick had leapt off that cliff, and now he was waiting to see what he’d hit at the bottom.

Michael eased back into the booth and leaned his forearms on the table. He edged Nick’s half-empty soda glass toward him. “Here. You look like you’re going to pass out.”

Nick couldn’t move. He worried he would pass out if Michael didn’t say something more substantial than that.

The waitress came to the table again, obviously noting that they hadn’t left. She fidgeted, clearly unsettled by the tension.

Or maybe she was cold. Nick tried to get a handle on the temperature in the room.

She picked up the folder with the signed receipt. “Did you boys need anything else?”

“Coffee,” said Michael. “Please.”

She disappeared, leaving them in silence.

Michael cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to say this, Nick . . .”

It was like his older brother had picked up a spear and begun to shove it through Nick’s back. He felt the pain that acutely.

But then Michael winced and looked at him. “Would it be weird if I said that’s not surprising?”

What?

What?

Nick came out of his seat to reach across the table and punch Michael in the shoulder as hard as he could. “You dick. I thought you were about to throw me out of the house.”

Now Michael looked like Nick had checked his brain at the door. “Why on earth would I throw you out of the house?”

“I don’t know! I had no idea how you’d react!”

“You want me to punch you? Cause a scene? We could totally put on a show.”

However Nick had imagined this conversation going, this . . .

this wasn’t it.

Some of the tension slipped from his shoulders. Nick took a long breath and blew it out through his teeth.

“How long have you been carrying that around?” said Michael.

“I don’t know.” Now Nick felt dizzy for an entirely different reason. He gave a choked laugh. “I don’t—a long time.” Then he stopped reeling and looked at his brother. “Why not surprising?”

The waitress chose that exact moment to bring their coffee.

Nick was glad for the distraction, though. It gave him something else to look at, something new to do with his hands.

When she was gone, Michael said, “It’s difficult to explain.

Nothing I would have put my finger on, you know?” He paused, then stirred his coffee. Pointless, since he drank it black—but maybe he needed a minor distraction, too.

“Little things,” he said. “Meaningless things. You’d go out with girls, but you never really talked about them. You’re not aggressive. You’re not . . . Jesus, Nick, I don’t know. I’ve never thought, gee, Nick might be g*y, but when you said it, it was like the last piece of a puzzle, if that makes any sense.”

“It makes sense,” Nick said. He couldn’t quite believe that Michael was sitting here dropping a phrase like Nick might be g*y without batting an eye.

“Am I the last to know, as usual?” Michael said.

“No. The first. Sort of.”

“The first! I should be celebrating.” Then he raised an eyebrow. “Sort of?”

“Hunter knows.”

“How’d he take it?”

Nick shrugged and wondered if there was a safe answer to that question. Well, you know. Last night, he caught me in bed . . .

“Hunter was okay.”

“Yeah, I can’t see him having a problem.” Michael paused.

“Not Gabriel?”

Nick stared into his mug and shook his head.

“So that’s why you two are fighting.”

“We’re not fighting.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Nick gritted his teeth and looked away. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Are you afraid of how he’ll take it?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

Michael didn’t say anything for the longest time. After a while, he drained his mug of coffee, then set it back in the saucer.

“I remember,” Michael said, “when you were babies, Gabriel used to scream his fool head off. All the time. He wouldn’t fall asleep at night unless Mom put you in his crib.” He smiled. “It got so that any time he’d fuss, I’d just pick you up and put you next to him.” His smile turned a little sad. “I still remember the one time Mom caught me doing it. She was fit to be tied.

Michael! Do not pick up the babies! ”

Nick held still. It was rare that Michael would talk about Mom and Dad.

He kept talking. “But even when you grew older and got your own beds, we’d always find you in there with him in the morning. Curled up on top of his covers, just sleeping next to him. Mom used to say that you always knew when your brother needed you.” He paused. “I used to find you like that after they died.”

Emotion balled up a fist and struck Nick square in the chest.

He tried to breathe around it. He remembered that. He remembered it.

“She was wrong,” he said, his voice husky. “That was when I needed him.”

“I don’t think so, Nick,” Michael said quietly. “If that were true, he’d know your secret.”

Nick rolled that around in his head for a moment.

Michael kept going. “And look, I can’t pretend to understand this twin thing you two have. But I know Gabriel knows you.

And right now, he knows you’re keeping something from him.

It’s probably tearing him up.”

Nick wanted to scoff, but he couldn’t. He felt it every time he was in the house.

Too bad he was such a creepy freak, or he’d do something about it.

“Do you think maybe you resent him for not figuring it out on his own?” Michael said. “Or for not pushing you to tell him?”

Nick snapped his eyes up. “No.”

But he’d answered without thinking about it. Now the thought was lodged in his brain and he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He could picture Gabriel right now. Sitting with Layne, working through math problems, trying to get his grades up so he could take the firefighter course in the spring.

But he was thinking about Nick. Nick could feel it.

His cell phone chimed.

A message from Gabriel.

How long do I have to leave you alone?

Nick turned the phone around to show Michael, who rolled his eyes and said, “See?”

Nick slid his fingers across the screen to respond.

But then he changed his mind, deleted what he’d typed, and shoved the phone back in his pocket.

He took a gulp of his rapidly cooling coffee. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

“All right. Another question then.” Now Michael looked the slightest bit flustered. “Is there . . . you know . . . a guy in the picture?”

Nick couldn’t keep the blush from his cheeks. “Ah . . . yeah.”

“Aha. I was wondering why you told me now. Does he go to your school?”

“No.”

Michael stopped with the mug halfway to his mouth. “Please tell me he’s not thirty-five and you met him on craigslist.”

Nick glared at him. “No. Jesus, Michael. He’s nineteen. He dances with Quinn.”

“So all this time you’ve been spending with Quinn . . .”

“I’ve been spending with Adam.” His jaw tightened. “And Quinn has been spending with Tyler.”

“Whoa!” Michael’s eyebrows went way up. “Now we’re building a new puzzle.”

“Yeah, it’s fantastic.”

“Can I revel in this first-to-know status and get the whole story?

Or do I have to drag that out of you during another dinner?”

“No,” said Nick, feeling something like relief for the first time in a week. “I’ll tell you everything.”

Michael had always made for a good audience, and he kept his mouth shut while Nick talked.

Until he started laying it out, Nick hadn’t realized how much he’d been carrying around. He felt like sandbags had been strapped to his back for weeks, and now someone had stabbed a hole in one of them: it all poured out. He told Michael about the first night he’d met Adam, the way Quinn had gotten in trouble with some bikers on the beach. He talked about Adam’s audition, and Quinn’s role, and—hesitantly at first—about the first night at Adam’s apartment.

When Michael’s expression didn’t change to disgust, Nick gained momentum, revealing Adam’s past experience and Quinn’s home situation. He talked about the way Tyler had burned her arm, how she’d called Nick to pick her up in the woods, and how he’d snuck her into the house because she didn’t want to go home.

Michael was pissed about that. “Nick, if your friends need help, you need to tell me. Don’t sneak them inside.”

“No girls spending the night, remember?”

“That’s not the same and you know it. Are you aware that when people dump their problems on you, you don’t actually have to solve them by yourself?”

Nick didn’t have an answer for that.

Michael kept going. “I’m actually more concerned with how you describe her home situation than I am about her spending time with Tyler.”

Nick flinched. “She won’t tell me all the details. I don’t know what’s going on at home half the time.”

“If she’s hiding in the woods, it can’t be good.”

Right now, after what she’d done, Nick didn’t really give a shit if Quinn was sleeping in the woods.

No. That wasn’t true. He did care. A lot.

She sure didn’t make it easy. “She says she’s waiting for her brother to go back to school. Her family is under a lot of stress since the fire.”

Michael sighed and ran a hand down his face. “Will she talk to anyone? What about Becca?”

“She won’t speak to her because Becca never told her about the Elemental stuff. Then she got all pissed at me because I told her Tyler was a dickhead who’d just hurt her. Now she’s avoiding everyone except Tyler.” Nick’s voice turned thick with disgust. “I think he was at school to pick her up. She said she has a new ride to school.”