Page 187 of The Next Lie

His jaw tightens. I hate that I said it. I hate more that I needed to.

“You will,” he says.

“That easy?”

“No. That certain.”

I laugh once, without any humor. “You’re all very confident.”

“No, sweetheart.” He looks up at me, and whatever joke he had ready dies before he says it. “We’re all terrified. Some of us are just fully dressed.”

My eyes burn. Damn him.

I look toward the garden so I do not have to look at his face. “I keep forgetting why I’m here.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do. For minutes at a time, I forget. Breakfast, Homer walks, Sonny talking about eyeliner. You. Ever. Nash. Deacon. Cal making pancakes like the world didn’t split open under us.” I swallow. “Then I remember, and it feels like I’m betraying the dead by breathing too easily.”

Shiloh is quiet long enough that I look back down. His expression is more tender than I can handle. He opens his mouth, then closes it and glances away.

“Don’t do that,” I say.

His brows lift. “Do what?”

“Go quiet because you’re afraid one wrong joke will make me fall apart.”

The corner of his mouth shifts, but he doesn’t let the smile have him. “Sometimes one wrong joke does make people fall apart.”

“Yeah. Sometimes.” I tighten my grip on the railing. “But sometimes it’s the only reason I remember I still have lungs.”

His face changes.

I hate that I see it. I hate that it matters. I hate that Shiloh Lafitte can stand in a garden holding pebbles like a twelve-year-old menace and still somehow make me feel less alone than I did five seconds ago.

“So,” I say, before it gets too soft, “say something inappropriate before we both die of emotional honesty.”

The smile comes back slowly. Not the shiny plastic one. The real one.

“I didn’t actually have a joke.”

I laugh once, small and unwilling. Shiloh stares up at me, softer now but steadier too.

“I just wanted to tell you the dead don’t need you to be miserable to prove you loved them,” he says.

I groan.

“There she—” He catches himself and points up at me. “See? PSA. I forgot my own PSA.”

Despite myself, I laugh. He smiles then, pleased and relieved, and I want to throw a pebble at his beautiful face.

“You did that on purpose.”

“Of course I did.” He draws an imaginary circle around his face. “Pretty but not dumb.”

I shake my head. “So manipulative.”

“I prefer skillful.”