“Your mom said he was moved there for long-term care last month.”

Scott Carter was Nash’s best friend and fellow frost addict. But because he was human, the drug had affected him much faster and stronger than it affected Nash. Scott suffered a psychotic breakdown and irreparable brain damage from his addiction, and he now had a permanent, hardwired mental connection to Avari, the hellion of avarice, whose breath they’d both been huffing.

Nash had visited him several times in the hospital, always hoping for improvement that never came, but he couldn’t get in to see Scott at Lakeside, where visitors had to be approved individually by the attending physician.

“You wanna ride with me, or meet me in the parking lot?” I asked, plucking my key ring from his finger. Obviously, it’d be faster for him to just blink himself there, but he didn’t yet have the strength—or maybe the skill—to materialize that far away with a passenger, so I’d have to drive myself.

Tod crossed his arms over his uniform shirt, a blue polo with a stylized pizza embroidered on the left side of his chest. “I haven’t said I’ll do it yet.”

I frowned, one hand on the doorknob, trying to decide whether or not he was joking. “What if I said this is my dying wish? You know, one last request?”

“Your last request is to break into a psychiatric hospital?”

I shrugged. “I’m kind of operating under the assumption that I get one last request from everyone who gives a damn that I’m dying.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared straight at his eyes, demanding the truth from them in a sudden surge of reckless courage. “Do you fall into that category?”

“Don’t play that game, Kaylee. You already know the answer to that.” There was just the slightest twist of emotion in his blue eyes, and my pulse spiked when his voice went deep, like his response meant more than the sum of the individual words.

“Then will you help me?”

“You know the answer to that, too,” he said, and I smiled in relief, then almost laughed out loud over the absurdity of that. You’d have to be crazy to break into a psychiatric hospital.

I held the front door for him, then locked it behind us, and when I looked up, Tod was already sitting in my passenger seat waiting for me, with all four doors locked. “You know, you’d make a great thief,” I said, sliding into the driver’s seat next to him.

“I’m a man of many talents.”

“Thanks for doing this,” I said as I backed down the driveway.

“I was bored at work anyway.” He shrugged as I shifted into Drive and took off toward the highway.

After several miles of me watching the road and him watching me, I finally huffed in exasperation. “What?”

“What’d you want from Nash,Kaylee?”

“Huh?” I glanced at Tod and found his irises holding steady in spite of clear tension in the line of his jaw.

“Your last request from my little brother. What did you ask him to do for you?”

My grip tightened around the steering wheel, and I could feel my face flush. “That’s none of your business, Tod.”

In my peripheral vision, he nodded stiffly. “That’s what I thought.”

“What, no lecture about how I’m too young, or I’m not ready?” Or I shouldn’t be with Nash in the first place?

“I’ve already said what I have to say about you and my brother.” Tod stared out his window, and it irritated me that I couldn’t see his face. “If that’s really what you want, go for it. I just thought…”

“What? You thought what?” I demanded, further irritated by his tone—which I couldn’t quite interpret.

Finally he turned to face me again, and my focus shifted back and forth between him and the barely past-rush-hour traffic. “I just thought… I thought you’d have something better to do with these last few days than spend them in bed with your boyfriend.”

I couldn’t think beyond the sting of his words, each like a needle puncturing my heart. Or maybe my pride. But then my surprise—and yeah, a tiny hint of shame—morphed into anger, sharp and clear. “Did you die a virgin, Tod?” I demanded.

He rolled his eyes. “No.”

“Then where the hell do you get off telling me I should?”

He sighed and leaned his chair back a little as I passed a slow-moving station wagon. “That’s not what I’m saying. If you wanna sleep with Nash, then sleep with Nash. You wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake.”

Anger made my heart beat harder. “Why are you so sure it’d be a mistake?”

“Because I know you! You’ve waited this long because it’s important to you and you want it to mean something. And if it’s with Nash, I think you’ll regret it later, when you realize the two of you don’t belong together.”

His insight scared me, and for a second, I couldn’t think beyond the shock of hearing some of my own thoughts coming from his mouth, albeit colored with his usual anti-Nash perspective. Then the reality of what he’d said kicked in and fear-fueled anger flared in me like living flames.

“There isn’t going to be a later, Tod! These next three days? That’s my life. That’s all I get. I’m not going to live to regret anything.”

“So—just to be clear—you’re doing it for the novelty of the act? Not because you love him or because it means something—just so you can say you’ve done it?”