But taking him home was as far ahead as I’d planned.

When I dropped the keys in my lap, Nash twisted in his seat to face me. “What now?” His skin was pale and damp with sweat, in spite of the temperature, but his eyes were clear. He was coherent, and withdrawal hadn’t set in yet. If we were going to talk, this was the time.

“I don’t know.” I fiddled with the key bauble, trying to bring my scattered thoughts into focus. But they didn’t want to focus. They wanted to remain mercifully blurry, so I wouldn’t have to come to terms with what I’d almost lost. What I might still have to give up.

“Kaylee…”

“Inside.” I shoved open my car door without looking at him. “I don’t want to do this here.” In the driveway. Within sight of any neighbors who happened to peek out the window.

I locked the car while he unlocked the house. He held his front door open, then closed it behind me after I brushed past him into the living room. I followed him down the hall and into his room—we both knew the way, even in the dark—then closed the door at my back. I didn’t think Harmony would mind this time, even if she’d been home. My plans for the evening included neither Nash’s hands, nor his bed.

Nash kicked his shoes into the corner, then pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. He collapsed onto the bed, leaning against his headboard, but for once I wasn’t tempted by the display. Nash looked like hell.

Avari had nearly drained him.

I pulled out his desk chair and sat, swiveling to face him. Without taking off my coat. “Nash, I don’t know where to st—”

“I’m sorry. Kaylee, I’m so sorry.” He looked like he wanted to touch me, but knew better than to try. “I don’t even know how to tell you how sorry I am.” He watched me, studying my reaction, but I could only stare at my hands in my lap, blinking away unshed tears. “But that’s not enough, is it?”

Two months earlier, it would have been. Nash had been the sun lighting up the horizon of my life, outshining everything else in my world. I’d thought once that he was too good to be true.

Turns out I was right.

“Kaylee?” he asked, and his voice was like thin, brittle glass. One heavy word from me, and he would shatter.

“I don’t know.” I made myself look at him, though the pain and regret swirling in his eyes bruised me, deep inside. I didn’t want to be the cause of so much suffering. But I didn’t want to feel it, either, and he wasn’t the only one hurting.

“You lied to me.”

“I know. I lied to everyone.” His voice echoed with shame, but it wasn’t enough. Regret couldn’t fix what he’d broken. Apologies couldn’t bring back what he’d lost. What we’d lost.

“But you lied to me, Nash.” I swallowed more tears andcleared my throat. “You said you loved me. Then you lied to me, you Influenced me, you tried to make me sound crazy in front of my dad, and you let Avari possess me and do—I can’t even imagine what—with my body.”

“Kaylee, I’m…”

I sat straighter, anger overwhelming everything else for the moment. “Don’t say you’re sorry. That won’t fix this.” I wasn’t sure anything could fix this—now.

But if I’d been paying more attention… If I’d thought more about Nash and less about being grounded, I’d have seen what was happening before it got so bad. If I’d watched him as closely as I’d watched his loser friends, who’d started using of their own free will… If I’d told my dad earlier… If I’d never taken those stupid balloons to the Netherworld in the first place…

There were a million what-ifs that could have stopped the whole thing. A million things I wished I’d done differently. But in the end, I was left with what actually happened. With my mistakes and his.

And with the question of which mistakes I could live with.

“How many times?” I demanded, so soft I barely heard my own words. I picked at my cuticles because I couldn’t stand to watch him struggle for an answer. “How many times did you let him…use me?”

Nash sighed, and the bed creaked as he moved closer, but I didn’t look up. “I don’t know. I wasn’t counting. I was trying to forget.”

You should have been trying to stop him. “Make a guess.” I rolled away from the bed until the chair back hit the desktop.

“I didn’t see you very often when you were grounded. So…maybe once a week. Until the last week of school.”

“Twice that week?” I asked, and Nash nodded miserably.

“So, six times?”

He shrugged. “I guess so.”

“What did I do?” I demanded, far from sure I really wanted the answer.

“Kaylee, you don’t want to—”

“No, you don’t want to,” I snapped. Because the guilt was killing him. I could see that. But I needed to know. “Tell me.”

“Most of the time, he just talked through you. Told me where and when to meet Everett. Made me remember things, so he could take his payment.” A concept which horrified me to no end.

“But it was more than that once, right?” Unless Avari was lying. Please, please let him be lying…

Nash closed his eyes and let his skull thump into the headboard. “The first time.” He opened his eyes and met my gaze so I could see the earnest colors swirling in his irises. The brutal honesty. “I didn’t know what was going on, Kaylee. I swear, I had no idea. I didn’t even know it was possible.”