I don’t say anything and he continues to slide my panties down my legs and works to get them off my ankles underneath the water. Somehow he manages to do it without losing them in the current swirling around us and then he’s throwing that piece of fabric up there too. Within seconds he takes off his boxers and I have no time to react because everything is happening so quickly. I’m suddenly naked for the first time in front of a guy.

“Nova,” he breathes against my mouth as he cups my cheek with his forehead resting against mine. His eyes are squeezed shut and then he opens them up, and for a fleeting moment he looks like he doesn’t want to this, like he’s torn on what’s right and wrong, real and fake, and I understand completely.

I don’t say anything as he presses his mouth to mine again, slips his tongue out and parts my lips with it. He groans, shuddering, and I shiver in response. My legs open up to him, and he positions himself between them as he strokes one of my nipples with his finger. When our bodies connect in every place, I can feel the tip of him pressed up between my legs. Part of me wants him to slip inside me, so I can feel what it’s like before I miss my chance again. But the other part of me thinks it’s wrong because we’re in the middle of a pond, with no protection, and I have no idea what I want or who I want. I should know what I want, shouldn’t I? I need to figure stuff out.

But I can’t seem to get the words to come out because the regret and what-ifs own me, so I let him slip his tip inside me. I immediately wince from the pain, sucking in a sharp breath as every one of my muscles seizes into knots. I feel wrong, along with a million other things, because I’m not sure I want this. In fact, I don’t think I do. Not like this. The truth in my thoughts suddenly opens my eyes and I figure out what to do next. What do I do next?

Quinton freezes, goes dead still with the tip of him barely inside me. My chest is heaving from the pain and fear and my thoughts are a blurry stream or numbers, emotions, and distorted thoughts as I try to figure out what to do. Keep going. Stop.

“Nova,” he says in strained, almost pained voice. “Is this… is this…” He opens his eyes, which are filled with more guilt then I’ve ever seen. He sucks in a deep breath. “Have you never done this before?”

My body is shaking and my teeth are chattering and I can’t seem to get control of my nerves or voice, so I shake my head instead. His whole body goes rigid, and I can feel the beat of his pulse pounding between my legs. He starts breathing so loudly it covers the sound of the water falling from the rocks , but I can’t hear myself breathing at all.

“I can’t do this,” he whispers, and it looks like he’s going to cry as he pulls out of me. He starts to swim away, but I grab him, panicking, fearing I’m going to lose him. Or maybe it’s Landon. I’m so confused. Lost. Always lost.

“Please don’t go,” I say, but it sounds unreal, just words disconnected from my emotions.

He shakes his head, looking horrified. “You don’t want this Nova… want me. You’re better than that.”

“No, I’m not!” I scream. Actually scream. My eyes go wide, shocked at the anger in my voice, so real and raw. “I’m not better than you. Him. Anyone!” My voice echoes for miles and the water ripples around me as I try to stay afloat. “I don’t even know who I am…”

He shakes his head again, moving his arms in the water, backing away from me. “No, you are better. You’re just confused right now for whatever reason. But soon you’re going to open your eyes and see who you really are and that you don’t belong with a bunch of fucking loser drug addicts.” Pain laces his eyes and I can see something inside him, something heavy that I can’t even begin to understand. “You don’t belong in a pond about ready to screw some guy while you’re fucking high, headed down a road of self-destruction. Because that’s where you’re going to go if you keep going down this road. Trust me. I know.”

My lips tremble as tears threaten to spill down my cheeks. My head falls down and I stare at my distorted reflection. “I belong here.” But my voice is just a whisper as memories of my past overwhelm me, ones of who I used to be—with Landon. “I belong somewhere…”

He reaches up over the rock above us and grabs his boxers before swimming to the shore and I don’t try to stop him. I can’t. I’m losing focus on the present as the memories that I try to block take over my mind.

He gets dressed and then hurries for the trees, leaving me alone in the water, alone. Alone. Alone. Alone. I try to backtrack how I got here, to this lonely place, but I can barely remember the journey and all I want to do is go back to a time in my life when everything felt right and made sense. I want stuff to make sense again. I don’t want to feel so wrong inside.

I cover my chest with my arms and start to count the beats of my heart, but it doesn’t do anything for me. I try to count the tree branches, the clouds, the stars as they peek out of the sky. But nothing is helping, and as my emotions start to emerge and chip down the wall I built around that night—around myself—I can no longer shut it down. It rams me in the chest, like a wrecking ball, and nearly drags me under the water. But somehow I manage to heave myself up onto the rocks. Staring at the stars, I grab onto my wrist, pressing my finger to the scar that’s over my erratic pulse, feeling myself falling to that place again. The one where nothing makes sense and the past overtakes me.

Then I break to pieces, losing control over my thoughts and actions. I can barely understand what’s going on as I try to grasp reality. But panic, sorrow, anger, and remorse take me over and pull me down. I try to count something—the stars, the trees, my heartbeats—but nothing is helping. And in the end, the past catches up with me.

And I remember. Everything.

Are you sure you don’t just want to stay over?” Landon asks, as I put my shirt on and sit up on the bed. “We could just cuddle or something?”

“Cuddle?” I question, glancing over my shoulder at him, pretending everything’s okay, when really I’m a mess inside. “Really?”

He shrugs innocently. “What? I could be a cuddler.”

I roll my eyes, stand up, and slip my sandals on. “Yeah, yeah.” I start to head to the door. “Besides, what if your parents walk in and catch us?” That’s actually not the real reason I won’t have sex with him. I’m secretly afraid that it’ll hurt too badly or that he won’t like how I look completely naked. Or that I’ll be so bad he’ll never want to touch me again. But I know that soon my excuses are going to run out, and either I’m going to just go through with it or he’ll leave me. And then what? What will be left of me?

He stands up, slipping his shirt on with a faint smile on his lips. “They never come in my room after I go to bed, so we can cuddle all we want.”

Sighing, I quietly open the door and lower my voice. “I should probably get home.”

Nodding, he walks up to me and kisses me on the head. “I love you, no matter what,” he whispers.

“I love you, too,” I say, on the verge of crying because I really don’t know if he means it. Sometimes it seems like he does and sometimes it doesn’t. “And I’m sorry.”

He pulls back a little, looking confused. “For what?”

“For not…” I trail off, glancing at his bed. “For disappointing you again.”

Shaking his head, he takes my face in his hands and bends down to look me in the eyes. “Nova, you have never once disappointed me. I’ll love you no matter what, even if we never have sex.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at him, because even though I know he may mean it now, there will be a point where he’ll get tired. “I love you,” I whisper and brush my lips across his softly, clutching the bottom of his shirt, afraid to let him go, afraid to admit my fears. Always afraid.

When I draw back, he gives me a small smile and laces his fingers through mine. “Come on,” he says and heads out of the room, tugging me along with him.

“Where are we going?” I ask, rushing to keep up with him as he trots up the steps.

“It’s a surprise,” he says and we take lighter, nearly soundless steps as we reach the main floor so his parents won’t hear us.

We tiptoe across the kitchen, laughing under our breaths when he runs into the kitchen table. Finally we make it to the door, and when we’re both outside and off the porch we start laughing again. But our laughter quiets down as he leads me down the hill in his backyard. When we near the bottom, he stops and glances around at the damp grass below us and the starry sky above our heads. Then he sinks down to the ground, still holding on to my hand, and I sink down next to him.

“What are we doing?” I ask, as he lays down on his back.

“This way we can sleep together without worrying about getting caught,” he says, letting go of my hand so he can tuck his below his head.

“You’re seriously going to sleep out in the backyard with me?” I ask, lying down beside him.

“For a little while,” he says. “But eventually I’ll have to go back inside.”

Chapter 17

Quinton

I leave her in the pond, naked and chattering, and run back through the trees toward the tent. I’m stunned. Horrified. Hitting a full-on panic attack. She was about to hand me her fucking virginity. Me. A fucking loser, who she’ll probably regret knowing when she moves on from this lost period in her life. And to me, it’ll probably mean something to me—she means something. She means something. The truth stabs at my chest like a chunk of shrapnel lodged in my heart, right where the scar is. Things aren’t supposed to mean anything. I’m dead. I gave up. I’m not supposed to be here. With Nova. With anyone

The closer I get to the tent, the worse I feel. I know I shouldn’t have left her like that, and it’s one of the hardest fucking things I’ve had to do. Nova is beautiful, interesting, a good person, and she makes me feel things I thought I’d never feel again. On some level I think she understands me, even though I haven’t told her anything about me. She gets pain and loss, and that’s pretty much what exists inside me. I think in a different life I probably could have loved her, been with her, made her happy. But this is this life, and I can’t love anyone or be loved. And that’s the way it will always be—should be.

Right after the accident happened, some people tried to tell me that it would get easier and that I wouldn’t always feel this way. That time would heal the pain, the guilt, everything that I’m feeling. They’d say it’s not my fault. That I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and just happened to be behind the wheel. Some people said otherwise, like Ryder’s parents, who insisted that it was my fault and that I should have been driving more safely. They said that I ruined their family, killed their daughter. Lexi’s parents wouldn’t even talk to me or look at me anymore. Some people pretended I didn’t exist, like my father.