“Avery.”

Aiden grabbed my hand and pulled me to a stop. “It’s the truth, Aves. I miss you like crazy.”

When he didn’t let go of my fingers right away, I jerked back and folded my arms. “Why’d you stop talking to me?” I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice, but my eyes welled up, giving me away. “I don’t understand what I did to make you hate me.”

Aiden started to reach out to me but stopped himself and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I never hated you. I was never even mad at you.”

“Then what happened?”

Aiden sighed. He glanced around us. “Dinosaur bones?”

I nodded, and he tentatively held his hand out as if he wanted me to take it.

Nervous energy spiked through me.

“Come on, Aves.” He curled his fingers up in a “give me” gesture.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I placed my hand in his. Aiden wrapped his fingers around mine gently and then smiled at me. I felt my face get hot, so I looked at the ground.

Aiden began to walk with me across the museum. I concentrated on our hands, swinging loosely in the space between us, and tried not to freak out. I had more questions now than I did before. I knew this was something boys do—Grayson took my hand pretty much every time we walked anywhere together, and sometimes he held it when we were driving—but Aiden had never acted like this before.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Aves. I was really confused. The way we were raised was…”

His voice trailed off when he couldn’t find the right word for it. I would have supplied something, but I didn’t know how to describe it either.

“Do you remember when your dad split and you and your mom lived with us for a couple months? I remember crying every night for weeks after you guys got your own place. I didn’t understand why you had to leave.”

I smiled at the story, but it made me sad too. I had my own set of memories from then. First I lost my dad, but Aiden was there and made it okay, but then we left him too. It took me a long time to understand why.

“Growing up the way we did,” Aiden said. “It was like I had a twin sister who lived a mile away. You’re my best friend. You always have been, but it’s like we never had a choice about that.”

My lungs tightened in my chest. He felt forced into being my best friend?

“I’m sorry.”

“I never minded, Avery. I couldn’t have asked for a better best friend. When I started talking to Mindy, all the sudden nothing made sense anymore. I liked her. I’d never really liked anyone before because I always had you. But I didn’t like you the same way I liked her.”

I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach. “You liked me like a sister.”

Aiden shook his head. “I always knew you weren’t really my twin sister, but I didn’t know exactly what you were to me, either. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, I guess. But why didn’t you ever tell me? You were in that class with Mindy all semester, and you never mentioned her even once.”

Aiden sighed, and his pace slowed to almost a stop. People in the museum weaved around us. “I think that was my first mistake. When I got partnered with Mindy at the beginning of the semester, she helped me a lot with my speeches for class.” He shrugged. “I liked giving the speeches. It was fun and I was good at it, and I liked Mindy because she was different. I didn’t tell you because it was the first thing I’d ever done on my own. You and I did everything together. This was something that I could do by myself. I’d never needed that, but once I had it, I really liked it.”

Aiden stopped in front of a large dinosaur display and raked his free hand through his hair. “We did so much together that it was like I wasn’t my own person. I didn’t know how to separate us. I didn’t know who I was without you. I needed something that was mine, you know? Mindy and debate did that for me. I was afraid that if I told you about them, I would lose that feeling.”

I glanced up at Aiden. He was staring at the dinosaur but not really paying attention to it. As I looked closely, I could see how strung out he was. I hadn’t noticed it before because of the bruises covering his face, but he looked tired and stressed. His eyes and cheeks seemed a little sunken in as if he’d lost some weight recently. He was pale and his hair needed a cut. He hadn’t been his normal self for a while.

In that moment I realized that Aiden needed my acceptance as much as I did. We weren’t meant to be apart. Maybe we weren’t meant to be together the way I’d always imagined, but we couldn’t spend the rest of our lives avoiding each other, either.

I gave his hand a small squeeze. “I would have understood. I would have given you all the space you needed.”

Aiden squeezed my hand back and tugged me closer to him. “I should have realized that,” he said with a sigh. “I’m really sorry, Aves.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay. I was never really upset about that anyway. I just didn’t understand why you wouldn’t even talk to me anymore.” My eyes started burning again. “It was like you hated me. You were my best friend. You were the person I loved most and trusted most in the whole world, and all of a sudden you weren’t a part of my life anymore.”

I pulled my hand from Aiden’s in order to wipe the tears that gathered in my eyes. I walked down a little ways to a drinking fountain and gulped down some water. I even splashed a little on my face. It helped ease a bit of the panic. I sat down on a bench and attempted to get my emotions under control again.

Aiden sat down, leaving a foot of space between us like he wasn’t sure I wanted him near me.

“It was the same for me, you know,” I said, sniffling. “I didn’t know who I was without you, either. I don’t think there was a part of me that didn’t include you. When you abandoned me, it was like half of myself was just gone. First my dad left me, and then you. I didn’t even know how to breathe anymore. If Grayson hadn’t been there to hold me together, I don’t know what would have happened.”

So much for gaining control of my emotions. I started to cry, and Aiden’s arms came around me. I turned into his shoulder and clung go him. Then I lost all control and started to sob. “How could you do that to me?” I cried.

I’d never felt so raw in all my life as when I pulled the bandage off my damaged heart for Aiden right then. I’d been trying to suppress my feelings for so long, trying to be strong, but as I sat there with him, I opened myself up and shared all of my hurt with him.

Aiden tightened his grip on me, but the hug wasn’t exactly right. He’s so much closer to my size. His arms didn’t engulf me the way I was used to.

I breathed in deeply. My nose was filled with the smell of the soap Aiden uses and a hint of his peppermint gum, but I wasn’t settled the way I was expecting. He was missing a certain hint of sweet and spice. It took me a moment to realize I was missing the smell of Grayson’s cologne.

“Why don’t we go outside and get some fresh air?” Aiden suggested and then led me out of the building.

We didn’t say another word until we were outside and walking around the grounds of the museum. There was a layer of old snow on the ground, but the sun was shining and the fresh air was nice.

“I’m so sorry, Avery,” Aiden eventually whispered. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for hurting you the way I did. I messed up so bad.”

“What happened? If you weren’t mad at me, why’d things change so much? You said we would still be friends, but we weren’t.”

“It was because of Mindy. She was so threatened by you. When we got together, she asked me about you.” Aiden shot me a grim smile. “Probably didn’t handle that conversation very well, either. I told her I loved you more than anyone else on the planet. She didn’t take that very well, so I tried to explain how it was for us. Hearing about how we grew up only made it worse.”