"What do you want?"

Without turning around, I knew it was Riley standing in the doorway to my bedroom, and I knew he had his hands braced against the door jam, tensing to leave but then deciding to stay – no, leave. Stay. He'd been there a few minutes going back and forth with his decision, and I was sure he'd turn and run like I knew he had earlier today when he first tried this.

Sighing, I kept my gaze fixated out my window, watching the wind sway the branches of the willow tree—Noah's and my tree. But not anymore, was it? It had been our tree, our hideaway, our sanctuary. So many nights we had spent under it, on that bench, and in each other's arms. And now he was gone, disappeared. Would he ever think about the tree? Think about me?

I hope he thought about me. I wanted him to remember what he'd lost. What he'd never get back.

God, I'm such a liar.

All he would have to do was show up here and give me one look. Just one look with those beautiful hazel eyes, and I'd be his again.

"You know me so well that you could tell I was here without turning around?"

I didn't answer. Just kept watching the branches.

"Zig," he started.

"I can see your reflection in the window." Which wasn't a lie. Except that, yes, I knew he had been there before my watering eyes had registered his image in the glass. I despised the fact that I was still so in tune with him even while buried under all this anger and resentment, and sorrow.

Riley dared let out a small laugh and then walked in. He stopped a few feet away from me, staying on the other side of the bed to let it separate us. "We need to talk."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Yeah, well, I have something to say to you." His irritation was obvious. I couldn't have cared less.

"Go away, Riley."

"I'm sorry." He blurted it out like he had been holding in the apology for days. Hell, he probably had been. But I still didn't care.

Dad should really trim some of those branches.

"Would you just turn around?"

I turned, expression blank and tears still pouring. He paused as he took in my appearance. Was he surprised to see the tears? It had been pretty normal for me recently.  I wasn't sure what was so startling about it. Of course, he had been avoiding me like the plague for the better part of a month so maybe that was it.

"What for?"

He shot me a puzzled expression. "What do you mean, what for?"

"What are you sorry for?"

"You know."

I turned back to the window. "Get out."

"Zig, come on." He started around the end of the bed to come closer, and my instant revulsion of having him anywhere near me had me whirling to push him away. My hands slammed into his chest so hard he lost his balance and landed on his ass.

"Stay away from me!"

He was stunned stupid. Riley just sat there, looking up at me like he couldn't figure out how he had ended up on the floor so quickly. For a second, I thought he was going to jump back up and come at me, but then he settled back against the bed, resting his arms on his knees. "I deserved that," he admitted quietly, nodding slightly.

"You deserve much worse." I was still seething. "I should beat you bloody just like you did to Noah."

He was still nodding. "Would it make things right between us?"

"Nothing will ever be right with us after what you did."

"Ah, no, don't say that!" He really sounded worried about it and part of me liked that he was that concerned about us. That same part of me also knew that someday, Riley and I would be back to normal, or at least whatever our new normal was going to be. "How can I fix this? I've already tried calling Noah. He won't answer, and Josh said-"

"You called Noah?" Suspicions arose. "Why?"

He picked at the carpet and sighed. "To let him know I overreacted and that he shouldn't stay away just because of me."

I held up my hands to cut him off again. "So you're okay if he and I are together?"

His head shot up, eyes narrowed at me. "I'll never be okay with him fucking my twin sister." Some of that anger I had seen the night he walked in on us had returned, and the hope I had momentarily felt vanished completely. "Christ, Zig, of all the people to take your – to be your –"

Both of our cheeks heated as he struggled to get that sentence out. My virginity was not something either one of us was comfortable talking about.

"Goddammit, you are such an asshole!" I kicked at one of his feet, and he frowned. "First of all, I don't need your permission to be with him! Secondly, it was a lot more than just sex for us. He didn't just come to my room for that one night to sleep with me. We'd been together for months by the time you found out about us! I was the one who asked him to stay with me that night. Me, Riley. Not him."

"I didn't know," he muttered, using his rare good sense to look away from me. "I thought –"

"You didn't think! You just came in here with fists flying! And I tried telling you. Hell, Noah was trying to explain to you-"

Now he cut me off. "He said he loved you. Is that true?"

My fury came crashing down around me as I remembered Noah desperately trying to get Riley to hear him.

I love her, Riley! I love her!

My knees started to shake and fold, gravity taking over, and I ended up sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with my twin. He kept his mouth shut while he waited for me to recover enough to answer him and actually scooted a little closer when my head fell back against the mattress, tears dripping from my closed eyes.

"Yes," I choked out. "Or at least it was." My breath was rough and shuddering as I tried to keep it together and failed. My head fell to rest on Riley's shoulder as the sobs took over. "He didn't come back for me, Riley."

His arms immediately wrapped around my shoulders. "Ah, God, I fucked this up. I'm so sorry, Zig. Shit. I need to fix this. I'm sorry, so sorry."

He started rocking with me while I cried, repeating the apology over and over again. Eventually, I calmed down yet didn't move away from him, and based on how tightly he was holding me, I didn't think he'd let me. He seemed to need this just as much as I did, and his manic apologies turned into babbling.

"I was trying to look out for you, protect you. And after what Jared did and with Noah's rep, I mean he's kind of a whore, not that I'm not, but I didn't want him to use you, and I lost my mind when I saw - when I saw him with you, I needed to protect you from him. That's all. I didn't want him to hurt you."

"Too late."

My mumble broke him from rambling on. "What?"

"He did hurt me. He left me. He's gone."

I felt him nod. "Josh let me know that Noah made it to Yale last week."

"So he really is gone." I knew he was, but I kept thinking that maybe, just maybe, he had deferred his enrollment like he said and that any day, he was going to show up at my front door with a reasonable explanation for where he'd been the last three weeks.

"You don't start school until next week. Let's go see him."

I stiffened and pushed away from Riley, eyeing him suspiciously. "Are you saying that because you want Noah and me to be together or because you're still trying to make up for the clusterfuck you caused?"

"Fine. You caught me. There is no way in hell I'll ever want the two of you to be together – no, now, wait a second." He held a finger up as I began to angrily interrupt him. "Noah isn't good enough for you. But, if I'm being honest, I probably won't think any guy you like is good enough."

I reached up and tightened my ponytail a little too aggressively before swiping away the last of my tears. "None of that matters. When I said he was gone, I meant gone from my life. He won't answer my calls or return them, he's ignoring my texts, and apparently, he's doing the same thing to you. So you were right. I'm not any different than his other girls."

Riley studied me for a second. For the first time in our lives, I couldn't tell what he was thinking. Right as I began to ask him, the front door was slammed open, and Beth's furious yells sounded from the downstairs hallway.

"Riley Eli Masterson, get your ass out here! We're going to settle this like men!"

He shot an alarmed look at me, eyes wide with surprise and also a little fear. Rightfully so. Beth could be a scary bitch, and she sounded like she was on a rampage.

"Unless you want me to destroy something else with this bat, you'll get down here by the time I count to three!"

"Bat?" Riley shot to his feet and raced from my room with me right on his heels. Beth turned to us as we thudded down the steps, halting immediately when we saw that, yes, she did have a bat. And she was getting ready to swing it at my brother.

"Beth!" I jumped ahead of him to block her. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Pushing your asshole of a twin off his high horse." She glared at him over my head as I tried to shove her back toward the front door. "And it's a long fall down!"

I wrenched the bat from her grip and wound an arm around her waist. Riley stayed where he was on the stairs until I thrust the bat back in his direction so I could use both hands to subdue a clearly insane Beth. When he got closer, she redoubled her efforts to get at him, arms swinging wildly. I'd never seen her so crazed. Her anger made her stronger than usual and I was about to lose my grip on her.

"You have no right to treat her like this!" she yelled at him. "They were in love, you dickhead! And you've ruined it! Ruined it!"

It was hard to tell if she was more upset at how Riley had been treating me or that what she now referred to as "the love of legends meant to spawn the world's most beautiful offspring" had been broken up. Either way, I knew she meant well. I loved her for having my back. She had warned me a week ago that if Riley hadn't apologized and stopped giving me the silent treatment soon, she was going to make him pay for it. Obviously, I should have paid more attention to her threat.

"We're good now," Riley started to explain, except Beth went even crazier.

"What gives you the right to choose what's best for her? I'll hurt you as much as you've hurt her!"

"Beth!" I shouted right into her face. "He's right. We're good now. He apologized."

She squinted at me and then glared back at him, then relaxed and stepped back. All fight in her instantaneously vanished. A blush crept up her cheeks as she smoothed her hair from her face. "Oh, well, you should have said something sooner."

Riley and I looked at the bat in his hands at the same time and then back to Beth, who was now studying the ceiling very closely.

"What did you do?" We asked her at the same time.

"It's not my fault," she pressed a palm to her chest, shaking her head. "I thought he still had the stick shoved up his ass."

"Beth," I sighed.

Riley took off at a run past us and out the front door.

"Beth!" he roared, and she winced.

"Oops."

Rolling my eyes at her, I jogged after my brother, practically running into him as soon as I was out the door. He hadn't made it further than the front porch, the bat clenched tightly in a fist at his side. Even from behind him, I could see the muscles in his neck straining from how hard he was clenching his jaw. I dared a peek around him and gasped, covering my mouth with my hands as I started to laugh.

The windshield of his car had been shattered.

He shot me a look that should have scared me into shutting up, except it was just so funny! I mean, it wasn't. Really. I could completely understand why he was pissed at Beth but the giggles wouldn't stop. The harder I tried, the harder I laughed until I was guffawing and snorting, my tears now due to the laughter instead of sadness.

Riley watched me totally lose my mind next to him and after a little while, his lips started to quirk at the edges until he was smiling and then laughing right along with me.

Beth casually sauntered by, taking her bat back from him and resting it across her shoulders. "My work here is done," she said happily, skipping down the front steps and over to her car. By the time she was pulling away, Riley and I had sunk to sit on the porch, completely overtaken by our laughter.