Page 23 of Never Landing

He reached for me, and I jerked back, and I didn’t know why because that was thelastthing I ever wanted to do. If he touched me right then, though, I was going to crumble.

And he was only doing it because—because he felt sorry for me.

Because something terrible had happened to me, and I’d never even realized it.

“It’s not aboutkissingyou,” I said, my voice catching on a sob I couldn’t let out. “I mean, I like that. Kissing you feels like flying. It—It made me feel warm and safe and—and...”Wanted, was what I couldn’t say out loud, because if he didn’t want me around, I didn’t know what I’d do. I didn’t have anything, anyone, else.

But that wasn’t Everett’s job to fix, I just...wanted him to be there. Only now, that niggling feeling in the back of my head grew three times its size, rushing out until I knew?—

I was too much.

My breath shook when I inhaled, and I looked up at Everett. “It’s not about kissing. It’s that I missedeverything. I wanted to try everything with you, but you got to go out there and you did it all without me. And that’s how it’s supposed to happen, I think, but I’m not—I’m not what I was supposed to be. Everett, I wanted to grow up with you and try new things and learn stuff. I want to be like you—someone incredible that the whole world gets to see, not somebody everyone forgot. And now I’m so behind and I’ll never catch up and everything I want to try with you is stuff you’ve already done or that—that you don’t feel rightdoing with me, and you shouldn’t have to do it all over again, but I don’t know how to do it alone. I don’twantto do any of it without you, but I’mlost.”

Everett was staring at me, his eyes wide and shining.

I closed my own so tight the dark started to look red around the edges.

“You’re not lost anymore, Peter, and you’re not alone.”

All I could do was shake my head. It wasn’t the same and he knew it. He’d grown up like he was supposed to. He had alife.

“Can I hug you?” he whispered.

I shook my head harder. “It’ll make me cry. I don’t want to cry.”

“Okay.”

We stood there, and I couldn’t tell if I was tense and frozen or about to shake out of my skin, but after a minute or two, I forced myself to take a few deep breaths and open my eyes. The world was only a little swimmy.

“I—I think I want to take a walk.” That’s what I did when the forest got too much and I was sad. I walked until I felt better.

Maybe it’d work this time too.

“Can I come with you?”

I shook my head again. “I want to be alone for a little bit. Just—save some tacos for me for later? They smell really good.”

“I will,” he promised.

“Thanks,” I whispered back, then I slipped out the back door into the dark.

15

Everett

Ileft the tacos, uneaten, on the kitchen counter. It smelled delicious, and carne asada was one of the best things I made, but I didn’t want it anymore.

I wanted Peter.

Part of me wanted to go back in time and let him kiss me and not bring up my concerns, but that wasn’t it and I damn well knew it. There had been a hundred, a thousand emotions behind his eyes, and none of them had been plain old childish “I want the thing you’re not giving me.”

It had been longing, and loss, and this deep, deep sadness that I couldn’t begin to fathom. Because how the hell could I?

Sure, my parents kind of sucked. They were cold and selfish and I had no relationship with them as an adult because they didn’t much care to try. I’d lost Peter as a teenager, but he’d lost me too. And my career had been...sometimes emotionally rewarding, but not monetarily rewarding, and sometimes it made me feel hopeless and worthless.

But someone had taken everything from Peter. Not just their own love or money or job prospects, buteverything. His family, his life, his home, his future—even his past, as the more wespoke, the more it was clear that he was remembering things that he’d long since forgotten.

I’d been worried about Peter still being a little young in some ways, and I’d been worried about integrating him into the modern era or real life, when really, what I should have been thinking about was how to get him some freaking therapy.

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