Sometimes, being friends with your crush is like being in hell.

Like on Halloween. Madi initially declared that she was skipping the affair completely, with her never-ending pile of lab reports to blame. But neither Dex nor Noah took that lying down. She eventually gave in to their incessant pleas, but then faced the problem of coming up with a costume at the last minute.

She went with Catwoman. At least, I think she was Catwoman. It was hard to focus on anything besides that catsuit hugging her body like glimmering black paint.

Needless to say, spending Halloween with a leather-clad Madi was a genuinely painful experience. But that October night didn't even come close to the pain I was made to endure this December morning.

Unsurprisingly, some poor sucker at the tree farm—Hop or Jump or something equally as stupid—had fallen head-over-heels for her within two seconds of them meeting. Surprisingly, he'd agreed to give us and our small, wilting tree a ride up to the resort. 'It's on my way,' he'd told us.

Bull.

Rather, I knew first-hand how hard it was to turn Madison Watson down. Especially with the way she kept batting her lashes at him throughout the first hour of our trip.

I scowled to myself in the back of Hop's truck. Since when did Madi bat her lashes? And, while we're on the subject, since when was the space between her collarbone and her torso so damn pronounced? In my bloody jacket, might I add.

I'm just saying. I think I would have noticed.

"What did you get our dads?" Noah asked.

Dex grabbed a paper bag from his backpack and handed it to him. "What did you get our mothers?"

Noah swapped the bag of alcohol for one filled with colorful bottles of moisturizers and serums, then waved an identical one at me. I leaned forward to retrieve it from him, but that only brought Madi and her new little friend back into view.

Leap drove a Chevy, and while Dex, Noah, and I were relegated to the cargo bed with his dog and his deliveries, Madi had somehow snagged premium seating up the front.

No—not somehow. Actually, it was beyond obvious that Jump was into her, and that he was using our half-day ride to the mountain top to try and win her affections.

If her giggling and occasional hand placement on his arm were any indication, it was working.

It was also a form of torture that I was considering recommending to the CIA.

"Did you really pick this out?" Noah asked Dex, motioning to the bottle of scotch that I'd bought for his dad.

The three of us were using the limited space available in Schmitt's trailer as a makeshift gift-wrapping station. At least, I was wrapping. Noah was mostly decorating, and Dex got off lightly writing the cards for our parents.

He nodded eagerly. "Yep."

"No," I corrected with a scoff.

"Hey! I helped!"

"You whined," I said, struggling to fold my wrapping paper into a straight line as Speed sped over yet another speed bump.

For a delivery driver, he sure couldn't drive.

For some reason, I found that knowledge comforting.

"Well, I was stressed," Dex reasoned sourly. I could practically hear him threading his eyebrows together. "I'm sure I got the hardest Secret Santa out of all of us. Really, I deserve a reward."

Noah laughed as he curled some golden ribbon. "Speaking of, should we all avert our eyes and wrap our Kris Kringle's now, too?"

Instinctually, I groaned. "Come on. She's not even here."

"So?"

"So, there's no point keeping up the charade."

"Charade?" Noah repeated.

I widened my eyes pointedly. "Your little Christmas bucket list charade."

"My bucket list?" he repeated again, a wry grin spreading over his mouth.

I wasted no time picking up a shiny plastic bow and hurling it in his direction.

But Noah's reflexes were sharp, and his years playing ball made him a much better shot than me. Before I could blink, that bright scarlet bow whacked me dead in the nose, then drifted down to land at my feet.

"Jerk," I chuckled, reaching down to grab it to initiate round two. But Spud's golden lab, Buddy, jumped down from Dex's lap and got to it before I did.

I wanted to hate that dog. I wanted to hate everything about Skid, like his state-of-the-art truck that ran like a dream and—oh, I don't know—didn't break down. But I couldn't resist reaching out and running a hand through Buddy's smooth coat. And when he glanced up at me with those wide chocolate-brown eyes, flashing his megawatt doggy grin with that bow between his teeth—adorable.

I gave in, letting him rest the bow and then his head on my lap.

I guess it wasn't his fault that his dad was my sworn archenemy.

I frowned, giving into the moronic urge to peer back into the truck. Since when was Madi into brunettes, anyway?

Since the day she started batting her lashes, apparently.

"Wow," Dex mused. He was watching me intently over the card he was writing.

I questioned him with a look.

"You're beaming fire over there," he clarified.

"Am not," I retorted quickly.

Too quickly.

He raised an eyebrow, breaking my stern gaze to focus on his handiwork. "Well, whatever you're doing, I'd hate to be on the receiving end of it."

"You were," Noah scoffed.

I threw him a sharp look, too, but he'd hunched too far over his wrapping paper to see it.

Dex's face softened, his tongue-in-cheek demeanor long gone. I rolled my eyes at the theatrics of it all, but I couldn't deny the guilt it stirred.

"I was being stupid," I explained.

"So you agree?" Noah asked. "That it was stupid?"

For the second time in ten seconds—and the hundredth time in twenty-four hours—I silenced him with a glance.

But, yeah.

It was stupid.

And, now, Dex was glaring at me.

"Last night at Holly's, I thought that you and Madi ..." I trailed off, raking a hand through my hair helplessly. "I don't know—"

"Me and Madi what?"

"Maybe ..." I floundered again, my eyes finding the horizon. Finding anything that wasn't his sad, pitiful face. "That maybe you had a ... thing."

His mouth fell open into the smallest of 'o's, the faintest crinkle lining his brow. "What, like a thing-thing?"

I shrugged. In the light of day, out from everything I'd been feeling the night before, even I could admit that my fears were outrageous.

Apparently, Dex agreed.

"Oh, yuck!" he spat, his whole face scrunching with nothing short of disgust. "Gross!"

"Gross?"

"Yeah. Gross. First of all, I'd never do that to you." He leaned forward slightly, his expression turning deadly serious. "Never ever. You know that."

I bowed my head, meeting Buddy's puppy-dog eyes instead of Dex's. Because I did. Truly, there wasn't a person alive who could best Dex at bro code.

"Second," he continued, "and I repeat—gross. She's like my sister, Jay." A strange gurgle caught in his throat; something akin to a choked-back laugh. His lips, too, twitched as though he was holding back a devious smile. "Which is kind of ironic, actually."

It was my turn to look dubious. "Ironic?"

"Yeah. You know," he shrugged, "since I told her that she was like your sister."

My stomach sunk.

"What?" Noah and I exclaimed in unison.

"Actually, I think 'twin' was the word I used." Dex's eyes drifted past my head as he pondered it. "Yeah, that's it. Twin."

I lurched forward in my seat, careful not to disturb Buddy. "You what?"

"Oh, god, Dex," Noah groaned into his palm.

Dex's smile constricted into a grimace, the feigned mirth lifting from his face. "Yeah, okay, even I know I screwed up there. But what did you expect? You practically begged me not to mention the fact that you're goo-goo for her. And then your name came up in conversation, and she was being all nosey and interrogative and, well, Madi. I got nervous. I word vomited." He waved his calligraphy pen in the air. "It's my specialty."

I could only shake my head as I stared at him, his words hitting my ears like tiny particles designed to make me sick. The last thing that I saw Madi as was my sister, for Christ's sake. And the thought that she saw me as her twin?

Yeah. I was pretty sure that I was going to be sick.

But something else nagged me in the corner of my mind, stirring intrigue amongst the nausea.

"What did she ask you?"

Dex's mouth flailed mid-ramble. "Huh?"

"You said she was being nosey. Interrogative. About ... what?" I looked down at the present I was supposed to be wrapping, fiddling with the candy cane paper instead. "About me?"

"No, just about me and Holly and ..." Dex trailed off, his words lost to the sound of a passing motorcycle. When he was sure he could be heard, he simply uttered, "Why?"

I looked up again. His expression was dripping with amusement, and he looked oddly calculative.

"Why?" he repeated slowly. He folded his arms triumphantly. Smugly. "Why do you want to know?"

Heat shot up to my cheeks, my nerves manifesting into a laugh that sounded utterly pathetic. "Shut up," I muttered, looking down to hide my insistent smile.

Dex might have been the undefeated champion when it came to bro code, but he was right. He absolutely could not be trusted with anything even resembling confidential information. I'd learned that the hard way in third grade when I'd confided in him about being the one who put that whoopee cushion on Ms. Coldwell's chair.

I had a term's worth of detentions to drum the message home—Dex and secrets paired as well as peppermint and garlic.

"What I want to know," Noah grumbled, "is why you haven't already told us."

"Told you what?"

Noah peered up at him, perplexed. "That Madi was asking about James."

Dex shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't think it was important."

Our friend blinked at him dumbly for a second or two. He motioned to the gifts dotted around the trailer. "What do you think we're doing here?"

"Uh ... wrapping presents?"

"Wrapping presents," Noah repeated under his breath. His eyes swung to me before he let loose a low whistle. "Befriend the smartest guys in school, they said. They're clever, they said." He sprinkled the last of his glitter on his present, then flung it aside into a pile with the others. "Pair of morons, more like it."

I laughed. "I don't know why you're bringing me into it."

But Noah wasn't laughing. He held up a hand. "We're not getting into this again."

I, too, thought that was for the best.

We wrapped the last of our gifts to the tune of Noah's Christmas playlist, and as the air became brisk with the promise of snow, Madi finally dozed off. I could only imagine how exhausted she was.

Exhausted by all of the sexual tension brewing between her and her rugged, burly farmhand.

With their courtship down to embers, I thought I'd be able to relax. I thought I'd be able to concentrate on whatever car game Dex and Noah were playing that time, or get a head start on my readings for the upcoming semester. But every time that Slit stole another sly glance at our friend's sleeping face, every time that his hand twitched as though he was considering sweeping the hair from over her closed eyelids, a new kind of emotion bubbled in my stomach.

And then it was my hand that was twitching. But not with the urge to do anything remotely tender.

Maybe I wouldn't have minded Scrap's clear adoration of Madi so much if he wasn't, as Noah put it, a 'regulation hottie fit for the cover of a steamy romance novel'. But, apparently, he was. Noah wouldn't shut up about his supposed dreamy eyes, about his understated country charm, about the jawline so strong that it could probably chop wood. Even Dex audibly wondered how the breeze gushing through the car window didn't disturb a single strand of his chocolate brown hair.

Needless to say, I was grateful when my friends succumbed to sleep, too. I considered taking a nap myself. It seemed to be the only way out of the fresh hell I'd stumbled into. But with all four of us asleep, who was to say where that country bumpkin would end up taking us?

I've seen Wolf Creek. I considered myself a true crime connoisseur. I wasn't taking my chances.

No, I took one for the team. I stayed awake and alert even though sleep was calling my name. And if Chip so much as took one wrong turn, I'd leap through the pane of glass separating us from him and beat that stupid, sleazy smirk off of his stupid, sleazy face.

And maintaining my friend's safety would have been my sole reason for doing so.

I sighed, reaching into my backpack for my worn copy of In Cold Blood. It probably wasn't a great idea to read about mass murderers given my suspicions about Kit.

I, however, justified it as research.

But my eyes scanned the same line four times before I realized that I wasn't registering it. I must've read that book at least a dozen times in my life, but I couldn't even recall what the last sentence said before moving on to the next. My mind—cloudy, buzzing, so damn loud—was too far from those tiny black letters to properly catalog them.

"Are you okay?"

Buddy's head jerked up from my lap as both of us peered across to the other side of the cargo bed. Dex was leaning back against the support, but his eyes were wide and fixed on me.

I guess he wasn't sleeping so soundly after all.

I nodded. "Yeah."

"No, James. I mean..." He licked moisture onto his lips, breaking my gaze to search the misty horizon. When his eyes pierced mine again, there was a new emotion pooling inside. Gone was the humor, the mirth, the naivety. He looked utterly concerned.

Utterly perceptive.

"How are you?" he asked.

I looked down, fidgeting with a handful of Buddy's yellow fur. I could read Dex well. And, after spending pretty much all of our lives with one another, even he could read me. He was the only person aside from Madi who's prying eyes could peer beneath my veneer, who could unmask whatever it was that I was trying to hide.

"I'm fine, Dex."

He considered my answer. Considered the stony look on my face. Considered dropping the matter completely.

But Dex wasn't wired that way.

"You know..." He leaned further into the space between us, sparing a glance over my shoulder to avoid meeting my hard gaze.

I knew he was only trying to mask the earnestness that had latched itself onto his tone.

"You don't have to have it together all the time."

I swallowed a dry gulp. My mouth felt so course. I didn't have a lot of experience with anxiety, but I wondered if that was what I felt snaking its way from my stomach up into my throat. It was the same feeling I'd felt the night before. The same feeling I'd felt when my car was seconds away from crashing into the roadside barricade.

"It's okay that you were scared," Dex added. "We all were—"

"I wasn't scared." I was.

"You couldn't drive, Jay. You couldn't even talk."

My hands balled into fists. Because I hated that he was right.

After my car screeched to a stop the night before, when the lights and sounds of the other two vehicles faded into the dead of night, I couldn't hear a thing. My eyes glazed over, and all I could feel was a slight tremor pulsing through my hands. All I could think was 'what if'? What if I hadn't moved into the emergency lane in time?

And the thought of what that could have meant was paralyzing.

"It wasn't your fault, you know." Dex scuffed his trainer on the ground. "And you did the best you could. Hell, you did better than any of us could have. Far better than I could have. If it wasn't for you—"

"It's not that."

His eyes darted back to meet mine. They swam with intrigue. I could see that he was trying to figure me out.

The truth was, as horrible and dangerous as our almost-collision was, it was cathartic in a completely unforeseeable way. It was jarring, yes, but it was definitely a jolt. It was one of those moments that caused everything floating around in my head to slot into place.

As we sat roadside trying to catch our breaths, everything that I'd said to Noah at the Tapia's washed over me like a tidal wave. Because, essentially, I'd admitted defeat. In more words or less, I'd said that I was okay with losing Madi, with losing the possibility of a life with her. But I wasn't.

I wasn't.

It only took a brush with the unspeakable for me to realize it. And the unspeakable, I realized, wasn't simply dying. That was easy—like closing your eyes. No, the unspeakable was losing her.

Without Madi, life was dull. It was as dark as the night that swallowed us as we sat in silence waiting for the bus, as cold as the breeze that rippled through the trees like stones skipping on the surface of a lake. After coming so close to the potential of living that kind of life—dark, cold, devoid of the color that only she could bring—I knew I hadn't meant anything that I'd said to Noah. I knew that I wasn't ready to let go of hope.

Not without a definitive answer.

So I'd surrendered driving duty to Dex without thinking twice. I'd taken his position in the back while he tried to start the car. I'd let Madi rest her head on my shoulder, let myself melt into the feeling of her being there. Because I needed to feel her beside me, to see her peering up at me like she'd peered up at Dex during their game. It was dangerous to succumb to her like that, and I knew that I was only contributing to my own suffering. Only making things harder for myself in the long run.

But I didn't allow myself to dwell on the long run. I let myself be selfish, let myself submit to temporary desire. The desire to hold her. To feel her—alive, breathing, and there.

But then my car hadn't started, and any hope I'd had of holding her melted like snow in the sun.

And, now, watching her sleeping in the passenger seat of Stooge's car, I wondered—did Madi sense my weakness the night before? My need for comfort, my need for it to come from her? Did it change the way that she saw me? She'd always said that she admired my strength, that she wished she could steal a sliver of my calm. Then, all of a sudden, she'd been the one bolstering me.

Was that why we were in this situation now, riding in the back of some rugged farmhand's truck? A rugged farmhand who could probably jump-start a car with a match and some twigs alone? A rugged farmhand whose fingertips were edging further from the stick and closer to Madi's upper thigh?

I cursed him out under my breath. But then I realized that I was cursing myself out, too. I never should have said those things to Noah. I never should have put that kind of energy into the universe.

I didn't regret not making a move on Madi the night before, back when she was on my lap or when she'd turned to face me. Consent was important, and I never wanted to assume that it was given. Especially not when I knew she wasn't completely sober. But I shouldn't have declined her offer to go on that walk. I shouldn't have been the first to close any door she opened.

Maybe Noah was right. Maybe I was a martyr. Maybe I thought that I didn't deserve her, and maybe I was sabotaging my chance of a life with her because I always thought that she could do better. But I had to trust her to make her own decisions. To protect her own heart.

After all, she'd always said she wanted me to see as her as my equal.

"It was just ..." I let myself relax into the railing, drawing a slow, steady breath. "A lot."

Dex nodded. He didn't push it—push me.

But my mind didn't truly rest until I saw her begin to stir. The world outside had blanketed over in snow, the sky above rolling over with fluffy clouds that promised fresh flurries by the hour. I watched her posture straighten as her eyelids fluttered open, my eyes finding hers in the side-view mirror. They widened more and more as she took in the wintry landscape, a childlike look of wonder lighting up her face like lights on a tree.

I was used to seeing snow at Christmas, used to making this same trip every year. I was so used to holiday songs and films that, over time, they lost their charm. December was just another month, the twenty-fifth just another day. Our Christmas getaway was just another over-done tradition, one brimming with my parents' snooty friends whose names and faces blended into one.

But, to Madi, Christmas was everything. To her, this trip was new.

I trailed her gaze out the window before bringing it back to her reflection. Snow with anyone else was just that. Snow. With Madi, it was magical. It was novel. It meant something. It took seeing her take it all in for the very first time for me to appreciate it again. For me to feel the same kind of excitement that I'd felt on that exact road when I was a kid, just like I knew it would back when I first invited her on that trip.

Or maybe it wasn't the snow or the sights and sounds that caused that fluttering in my stomach. In all fairness, I barely gave them a second glance. My attention was fixed firmly on her.

My phone buzzed against my back pocket. I lifted Buddy's head from my lap to retrieve it, even though I knew from the ringtone alone exactly who was trying to reach me.

A shadow of a smile crept over my lips as a photo from Blair popped up on the screen. My heart was racing so fast that it surely could have powered our ride.

Schitt might have had a reliable car, a sweet pup, and a cutting jawline that could chop firewood with ease. But I knew Madi in a way that he didn't, and I had my secret weapon right there in my back pocket.

I'd shuffled the deck, and I was ready to play.

What little trick do you think that James has up his sleeve?

Also, I really think someone needs to get this poor man a dog.

ALSO also, I've updated the character mood boards in the 'Preliminaries' chapter. Definitely check them out if you're into that sort of thing!