"You're okay, Seb. You're okay."

Finally, his eyes opened all the way, and he stared out into the dark sky.

"Thank you," I whispered. To him and to G.o.d. Still frantic, I checked him over for injuries. His lip was split, but beyond that I couldn't see any other damage.

"Where does it hurt? What should I do-should I go get ice? Should we go to a hospital?"

He didn't respond. He just kept staring up at the sky. He blinked normally and breathed normally, but behind his eyes, there was nothing.

"Seb? What should I do?"

No answer.

"Seb?"

Panic like I'd never felt before tore at me. It ripped into my heart and stripped all sanity from my mind. My breathing became panting, each inhale more of a struggle than the last. I knew I was hyperventilating, but I had no way of stopping it.

Was it the kick to the mouth, or something else? He looked like he had when I'd first met him...empty. Vacant. Where was my my Seb? Seb?

"Seb? Seb! What should I do?"

He turned his head away. And in that unfocused stare, I saw the truth.

Oh, G.o.d. He was gone. I'd lost him. Because I'd...I'd broken my f.u.c.king promise. The most important promise I'd ever made.

You're safe now, remember? You're safe. I won't let anyone hurt you ever again.

I'd failed him. I'd failed a lot of people in my life, but this...this was the worst of all.

"Seb." I clenched his shirt until my knuckles were white. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please, tell me what to do. Please."

Still nothing.

I gasped for air as the world started to go black around the edges, and the sudden rush of oxygen pushed me into hysteria.

"Tell me what to do! Please tell me what to do! I can't...I don't know what...I...I need you...and I... I can't f.u.c.king do this on my own!"

My last words were a high-pitched scream, and they echoed in the dark alley.

Can't f.u.c.king do this on my own.

I grew quiet. Tears continued to fall, but they were silent now. And a strange calm settled over me, blanketing my fear and letting all my other wild emotions rest beneath that one final realization.

I really couldn't do this on my own.

When the tears dried up, I looked down at Seb through the daze and gently stroked his cheek. "It's okay, amor. amor. It's okay. Don't worry. I...I know what we have to do." It's okay. Don't worry. I...I know what we have to do."

Chapter 26: Sixteen.

The bus dropped us off a few blocks away. I held Seb's hand as we walked, but it just hung there limply, like he couldn't even feel my fingers desperately clutching his.

My chest ached. Nasty bruises had to be budding on the skin, in those pinks and reds that would gradually blossom into purples and blues. Nothing I hadn't seen before...and it wasn't that pain that made it so hard to breathe. It wasn't those wounds that left my skin so raw even the gentle night wind was too much to bear. The daze was wearing off now, and each layer that drifted away left me more exposed to the truth.

We'd reached the end.

Out by the potted ferns, the finality of my decision delivered a sudden blow. My legs turned to rubber and I stumbled toward the apartments, then sank down against the fake-adobe wall.

Seb remained standing, his still face alternately shadowed and lit by a blinking streetlamp. I clasped a piece of his pant leg and rubbed the fabric between my fingers until I felt strong enough to speak.

"I screwed up. I screwed up so f.u.c.king badly."

I wasn't expecting a response, and I didn't get one. We were right back at the beginning, to all those evenings I'd used his presence as an excuse to talk out loud to myself. And just like then, I found myself needing needing to continue. to continue.

"You got hurt, and it was all my fault. You have every right not to trust me now. I'm so sorry. I'd do anything to change it."

Seb folded his legs and sat beside me, but he didn't look over. His eyes were fixed on a blade of gra.s.s.

"But that's not even why we're here."

I would've thought the tears had all dried up by now, but I could feel them burning behind my eyes, making my face hot and my world blurred.

"It's because...I lied to you."

He twisted the piece of gra.s.s and tore it off, not a muscle moving in his face.

I beat back the tears by ripping some gra.s.s of my own. It left a bald patch in the ground, and that last bit of control over my environment led me to keep going-to wrench fistfuls of green until I'd cleared an entire circle around me.

I wanted to strip my mind that way, but I could only forget for a second.

"Seb, the money from the cans was never going to be enough. We needed more and I...I was going to do something else. Something I'd regret. Something I swore I wouldn't."

I watched him carefully, hoping for a spark of anger. I never thought I'd want want to see that, but at the moment I'd have given anything for him to lash out at me in a rage-smack me, beat my chest, kick me in the groin... to see that, but at the moment I'd have given anything for him to lash out at me in a rage-smack me, beat my chest, kick me in the groin...anything.

He didn't move.

"You must be so sick of hearing me say I'm sorry."

I took his hand again, holding the dead weight in my lap and running my thumb over his fingers. He'd missed some sc.r.a.ps of dirt under his nails when we'd washed up earlier, and I carefully picked them out.

"But I want you to know...this doesn't mean I'm giving up on us. I...I can go back to school, or get my GED or whatever, and then I can get a real job, and I can rent us an apartment and we can live together..."

Crazy dreams. I wondered how I still had the power to dream after all this.

"I mean, if you want. Because I do. Even if you never talk to me again. And not 'cause I'm expecting...anything. I...I just-"

A twenty-something-year-old striding up the walkway in stiletto heels caused me to snap my mouth shut, and I was grateful. There was no point in dragging out my misery. It was all over now, and the sooner I accepted that, the sooner I could...

Could what? Move on? Heal?

Somehow I doubted that would ever happen.

I rose to follow the girl toward the building's entrance, and she absentmindedly held the door open. By the time I was done scanning the apartment list, Seb was right behind me.

I glanced back one more time, searching his face for a shred of hope. I found nothing.

"Let's go, Seb. It's time.

Suzie answered the door dressed in head-to-toe pink. Pink sweatpants and a pink hoodie. The outfit even said said the word pink on it, right down her thick thigh. I was so surprised to see her wrapped in a bright color that I just stood there for several seconds with my mouth hanging open. the word pink on it, right down her thick thigh. I was so surprised to see her wrapped in a bright color that I just stood there for several seconds with my mouth hanging open.

She was as stunned as I was, and only managed to reach out to me halfway. "Alex? Sebastian? Oh my G.o.d, Alex."

And then I launched myself straight at her, a few more tears unleashing themselves into her unsuspecting arms.

"I'm sorry, Suzie. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Recuperating quickly, she brought a hand up to press my face into her soft chest. It made me feel like a little boy again, but I had no intention of pulling away. She was all I had to cling to.

My backpack slid from my shoulders as she led us into the foyer and shut the door. She gently took it from me.

"Oh, Alex. I know you never meant to hurt anyone. I know you were just trying to be close to your friend. It's okay. It's okay."

"Seb...he...he...and I..." My words dissolved into whimpers.

"Just take deep breaths." Suzie urged. "Just take deep breaths and try to calm down."

Seb wandered past us into the small apartment. He sat up on a stool at the kitchen bar for a while, but when I kept crying he eventually moved to the beige couch, where he curled into a tight ball.

"Suzie...I'm so sorry. I tried. I really tried."

"Did something happen?" Her always-calm voice was right beside my ear, but for once, I didn't mind it. "Are you both okay?"

"I'm...he's...I don't know."

I wanted to tell her everything. From the very beginning. But the words just weren't lining up in the right order. When the sniffling finally stopped, I pried myself loose from her pink-clad arms. "Check Seb."

Suzie's eyes widened. "Sebastian?" She hurried to his side. "What am I checking for?"

Seb lay staring at her coffee table, which was littered with papers and books. Her whole living room seemed to consist of those piles-some scholarly, and some less so, like the one topped by a novel cover with a man baring his chest to the wind.

"Alex? He looks like he has a split lip. Did he get hit by something?"

"We got mugged back in Santa Monica. This f.u.c.ker...he took all our money."

"And he hit Sebastian?" She dashed to the kitchen and opened a freezer stocked full of diet meals to grab an icepack. She returned to Seb and put the ice in his hand, but when he didn't move, she forced his arm up to his mouth. "Hold it here, Sebastian, okay? Hold it right here. You understand? Just like this."

Satisfied he'd gotten the picture, she turned her attention to me. "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"No."

Lies, my old friends. But I'd already cried my eyes out on her shoulder, and the need to be held and soothed like some helpless little kid seemed to be fulfilled for now. Hopefully forever. Seb was going to be taken care of, and that's all that really mattered.

"Don't you need to call the police or something? Report me?" From somewhere in the depths of my weary heart, another more familiar emotion started to gain strength. "Haul me away for kidnapping and endangering a minor...some s.h.i.t like that."

Suzie walked back over to me. I thought she might try to hug me again, but she was smarter than that.

"Yes, if you were attacked and mugged then I need to call the police. But Alex...I'm not upset with you. You made the right decision coming back. You couldn't have lived out there on your own."

"Yes, I could have!" I snapped. And not purely out of anger.

Suzie took a cautionary step back.

"I could have," I repeated more calmly. I didn't really want to fight, as comfortable as the anger was in the middle of all the chaos. "I know how to get by. I know how to live one way...it's just...that's not the life I want for Seb."

Suzie nodded solemnly.

"It's not the life I want for me, either."

That surprised me. That I'd said it...and that I meant it.

I looked over at Seb. Curled up like that, he seemed so small and helpless. He was all I had left in the world, but even if he could never be a part of my life the way he'd once been...I knew there were some things I'd never go back to.

I owed him that much.

He shifted, closing his eyes and dropping the ice to the ground as he settled in to sleep. I walked around to the back of the couch and rested my arms there so I could keep watching over him.

"I wanted to be the one," I whispered. Mostly to myself, but Suzie heard. "I wanted to be the one to take care of him...but I just couldn't. I couldn't give him what he deserved." My throat closed again and I used bitterness to fight through the tears. "Because I'm just a stupid f.u.c.king kid."

Suzie shook her head. Her forehead was all wrinkled and her lips were twitching, and it took me a second to realize she was holding back tears of her own. "No, you're not, Alex. You're not stupid. That's actually a very mature thing for a fifteen-year-old to admit. There are adults who still struggle to understand it."

I cut off my instinct to argue back. Suzie probably knew what she was talking about, with her line of work.

My eyes drifted past her and landed on a large calendar tacked to the wall. A little old-fashioned, but it matched what I expected of her more than the romance novels and the pink clothing. Dates were circled in red, and some notes were scrawled inside the boxes in sloppy cursive.

It seemed like ages since I'd last thought about what day it was.

"Sixteen," I mumbled.

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm sixteen. My birthday was a few days ago. I forgot."

One tear escaped the edge of Suzie's lashes, but she quickly rubbed it away. "Well, happy birthday, Alex."