Holy shit. It’s her. It’s Star.

I turn down the hallway to my left, limping as I try to keep as much weight off my right side as possible, booking it toward the source of the sound.

“Star!”

“Ash!”

I skid to a stop and turn to my right. There she is. Holy shit. I feel hot and cold all at once, and my throat feels like someone’s got their hands around it, and they’re wringing the life out of me. But fuck, it doesn’t matter. It’s her.

“Jesus,” I say, the word barely making it out past the stranglehold on my throat. I don’t know how I did it, but suddenly I’m right in front of her. She’s got tears streaming down her face, and I reach out with my busted hand and touch them, wipe them away, just to be sure that she’s real. She lets out a sob and reaches for me. One of her hands is bandaged up like a mummy, and she’s all black and blue, but she’s here. She’s here and we’re okay.

“Oh god,” I fall forward and gather her up in my arms. The IV pole catches on something and goes tumbling to the floor. I feel it jerk the line attached to my arm, and it hurts like a bitch, but I don’t care. I’ve got her in my arms. I can’t stop shaking.

She’s crying, but I realize that I am, too. Big, nasty sobs that I press into her hair as I try to breathe through the ache in my chest. I feel like I’m dying. I press my lips against her ear, and try to take in enough air to force words out, but I’m shaking so bad. We both are.

“Ash . . . ” she says, and her voice is a fucking whimper and I can’t . . . I just . . .

“Jesus Christ,” I say against her hair, pulling her closer even though I don’t have to. She’s pressed as close as physically possible. Any closer and we’d be inside each other’s skin. My face is wet, and I can’t get the tears to stop, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter. She’s alive. I pull back just enough to press our foreheads together. “I love you,” I say, and I press my mouth to hers. “You hear me, Star?” I ask as soon as I break the kiss, because she needs to hear it. I need her to hear me, to understand. “I love you so fucking much. Don’t leave me, okay? Whatever you want. Just don’t leave.”

My eyes are squeezed shut, but I can feel her nod against the side of my face, the wetness of her tears against my skin. Her body is wracked with sobs, and I pull her closer, wrapping both of my arms around her back, even though every inch of me hurts. I want to wrap myself around her and her around me, and just get lost in her existence. I hear my mother come up behind me. I recognize the sound of her voice, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. All I can hear is Star as she cries, as her breathing slowly calms down enough for her to speak.

All I hear is Star.

“I love you, too, Ash,” she whispers, and I squeeze her close and just breathe her in. “I love you, too.”

Chapter 20

Star

“Now are you sure that you both don’t want to stay with us,” Ash’s mother asks for the hundredth time since she first suggested it. “We have plenty of room.”

“That’s okay, Mrs. Winthrope,” I say, and try to suppress a grin as Ash rolls his eyes and leans against my shoulder. “We’ll be fine at the house.”

“It’s just that you’re both still healing, dear,” she says. “And I don’t like the thought— Roger! Roger, turn here! I don’t like the thought of the two of you being on your own at a time like this.” She’s turned around in her seat now, looking over her shoulder at us, her eyes soft as she catches a glimpse of Ash’s arm around my shoulders, her son cuddled close to me. I wonder if she’d look so happy if she knew the things Ash has been muttering to me the entire ride over, low enough so she can’t hear them.

He doesn’t mean them, though. I can see how happy he is to have his parents around again. So I’m not going to blow his cover. “Really, Mrs. Winthrope,” I say. “We’ll be just fine.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” she says. “And really, dear, call me Nadine.”

“Okay,” I say, and smile at her, even though I have absolutely no intention of doing any such thing. Just because Ash and I are together doesn’t mean I’m ready to get all chummy with his mother. Not when I wasn’t even that close to my own.

Maybe Brick was right. Maybe I do built up walls around me. But sometimes people manage to get inside them with me. Like Ash did. I smile and lean over and press my lips against his cheek. “Your mom is going to make me crazy,” I whisper in his ear as Mrs. Winthrope argues with her husband over which is the best route to get to my mother’s house. Well, she argues. He just kind of nods and phases her out.

“Join the fucking club,” Ash murmurs back, a little too loudly, and I poke at him with my good hand, trying to shut him up before his mother catches us. Or before she catches onto the fact that he’s faking sleep. One or the other.

“You keep quiet,” I say. “We’ll be alone soon enough.”

I can feel his smile against my skin.

“I like the sound of that.”

All told, we were in the hospital for just over two weeks, but it had only taken hours after we’d been reunited for us to find out what had happened.

It was Preston. Lacey’s boyfriend. It was his car that hit us. An accident, they said. Both cars were totaled, my mother’s old station wagon completely destroyed. And even though his buddy who’d been in the car with him had messed his back up real bad, my injuries and Ash’s had been far worse. The doctor had come in while Ash’s mother was explaining what happened, and he’d confirmed what I’d known to be true. The pinkie finger on my left hand was gone. Amputated. Too destroyed to even try saving. On top of that I had some bruised ribs and a black eye to end all black eyes. Ash had made out only slightly better. Broken wrist, deep puncture in his thigh and another in his lung that they’d managed to get to before it got too bad. That wasn’t even counting the innumerable bumps and bruises between the two of us.

All things considered, though, I figure we made out okay.

And Preston? That bastard had walked away without a scratch.

“Gonna beat that guy’s ass into the ground if I ever see him again,” Ash had muttered into my skin, snuggling closer to me on the hospital bed. Despite what the doctors and his parents had said, he’d refused to be budged, and for the past two weeks, we’ve barely been out of each other’s sight.

To be honest, I’m kind of starting to get used to it.

It’s . . . nice.

“Now,” his mother says, turning around in her seat to look at me as the car pulls into the driveway. “Are you sure that you and Ashley will be all right here? It’s perfectly all right if you want to stay with us.” She turns around in her seat again, and orders her husband to move the car up farther in the driveway. “No, farther! There. Was that so difficult?”

“She says that now,” Ash mutters against my shoulder. “But the second she catches us doing more than holding hands, her brain will explode.”

“Shut up,” I murmur in his ear, but I’m smiling as I do it. “Ashley.” I get a poke in my side in response, but it’s in one of my—very few—uninjured spots, so it doesn’t bother me all that much. I turn back to face his mother. “Honestly, Mrs. Winthrope—Nadine,” I correct myself before she can do it for me. “We’ll be fine here. We’ll just clear a couple extra paths and—” and take it easy, I’m about to say, but as I turn and look out the car window, the words catch in my throat. There, on the front porch, is Autumn. And Roth. And as I watch, Maisie and York and about half a dozen other people I’ve seen around town but have never actually met begin filing out the front door to stand with them. What on earth?