“I’m sorry, Pearl—I was so—” Distracted by lust. Out of my mind. Crazy for you. My head thumped back against the door. I was so fucked.

“I was too.” She turned and sat on the floor in front of me, her eyes heavy-lidded, watching me, probing desolate corners of my heart that never saw the light of day. I dipped my head to kiss her sweet lips, dumbstruck—always dumbstruck by her, top to bottom and back again. We sank toward each other, kissing until we were both breathless. “I’m tired.” She sighed, eyes blinking open. “Will you lie down with me? We need to talk.”

We got up and moved to the bed, stripped the covers back, and lay down facing each other.

“I went to see my mother this afternoon, before work. She’s retracted all her med-school demands.” She laid her palm over mine, and I closed my fingers over the back of her hand, but I could barely feel her touch because I knew what she was about to say. “I want to thank you for giving me a place to live and the ability to stand on my own—or as close to it as I’ve ever come. I’m keeping my job. No more allowance or credit card, though they offered the return of both. But I’m going to move home. Especially with your mother here—it’s the right thing for both of us.”

Every cell in my body argued that letting her leave was the farthest thing from right—for me. But this decision wasn’t about me. It never had been. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

I reached to trace the soft skin at her hairline. “Your birthday,” I said, sliding a strand of hair behind her ear and following the curve behind her earlobe. I settled my hand on her neck, fingers massaging the back of it, palm absorbing her fluttering pulse.

“Yes.” Her voice shook and her dark eyes each reflected the square of moonlit window. A tear streamed from the corner of her eye into her hair. “I’ll miss living with you, Boyce.”

My name in her mouth just then pierced right through me. Thompson once told me that he’d gotten stabbed by a guy in prison. “You’d reckon it’d be a sharp pain,” he’d said. “But it’s not. It’s like getting punched really fucking hard. So hard that it bruises down deep inside. At first your innards are all surprised—like How did something hit me there? I didn’t even know I’d been shanked till I saw that dickhole standing there all crazypants, holding a fucking shiv with my blood on it. Creepiest damned thing ever happened to me—looking at him and thinking, That motherfucker just killed me.”

Thompson was lucky—the homemade blade missed everything vital. He recovered.

The knowledge that Pearl was moving out—that I’d pulled her so close just to lose her forever—was a deep punch to the gut. A punch that in reality was a stab wound I might never recover from.

“Jesus, Pearl,” I whispered, more worship than curse.

When I angled above her, she drew me down for a long, deep kiss, her body growing restless as my hand slid from her neck to her chest, palming those perfect tits and tugging her nipples gently through the barely there tank I’d not had time to remove the first time. “Won’t be needing this tonight,” I said, lifting it over her head and tossing it to the floor. “These neither.” I drew the shorts down silky-smooth legs that would shortly be spread wide and then locked around me.

I paused to stare at the tempting little road to hell lying there in my bed for the two beats it took to ditch my own shorts and no longer. If loving her was gonna be the death of me, I saw no reason to dawdle.

Pearl

When I woke this morning, everything was the same—at first. I leaned to turn off my phone alarm, bleary-eyed. The bedroom door was shut and I was alone. I was also butt-naked.

As I pulled on the tank and shorts I’d worn for about ten minutes before Boyce stripped them off, the night came flooding back, not that it had far to go since it hadn’t ended until early morning. A shiver went through me at the thought, and my body temperature must have spiked several degrees because holy cow, that room was suddenly an oven.

I padded into the kitchen and poured a mug of coffee, then went back to Boyce’s bedroom and dragged my suitcases from the back of his closet. As I packed up everything I’d brought with me weeks ago, I replayed yesterday afternoon’s conversation with Mama in my head. I’d been too shocked to be angry at her confession, though I worried that bottled-up emotion could rise up and slap me silly any minute. She’d kept so much from me—evidence of how childlike I had still been in her eyes, college degree and all.

I’d perched on the edge of one of the chairs facing the water, anticipating a critical diagnosis and trusting it would be something highly treatable, caught early. Not fatal. Please God, not fatal. Her expression terrified me—eyes like dinner plates, chin quivering, hands knotted in her lap like they’d been superglued to each other.

“What did he mean by time to tell her?” I prompted. “Tell me what, Mama?”

She swallowed, flinching when Thomas pushed the sliding glass door aside to join us. I waited, tensely silent, as he handed glasses to each of us and took a seat next to her, across from me.

“Your father,” she began and then stopped, swallowing again. Thomas placed a hand over hers and she took a shaky breath. “The story I’ve led you to believe about your father is not… wholly true.”

I was so relieved that no one was dying that it took me a moment to absorb what she’d said. “What do you mean, not wholly true?”