“He keeps doing that.” “What?” She laughs. “Kissing your forehead.” “Yeah . . . he does.” I can’t stop my grin. “Does it bother you? I can hear your smile, you know.” “Not really. It doesn’t, like, mean anything. It’s just . . . it’s Ryker.”

“He nodded, his forehead fused with mine. "My head fogs when you kiss me like that. I can't think," he murmured."It does?" I grinned. "I like making your head fog." I kissed him again.”

“Sorry doesn’t mean anything! Not when you’re still with him. It’s not just that you cheated—it’s that he’s still here, and you’re still with him. It just goes on and on, and it hurts every single time I see you with him. I hate it that he makes you smile, and that there’s nothing I can do to stop this. I can’t think straight, and everything hurts, and nothing makes sense anymore. You’re shredding my heart with one hand and stroking his ego with the other. And it’s killing me, Faythe. You’re killing me. And it’s only going to get worse, now that everyone knows.”

“But really, it’s probably just easiest to keep doing what I’m doing. You know how it goes. At first it’s just for the time being, until you can get your own story together, be the hero in something of your own. You tell people it’s your day job, you tell yourself it’s your day job, and then, at some point, without you noticing, it stops being your day job and just becomes your job.”

“Charlie, don’t you get it? I can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things.”

“Does it bother you when you see Daddy kissing Josh?” he asked.Ty shook his head and made a funny face. “No, not really. I guess you really like him a lot.”“I do,” Rex agreed. “I love Josh.”“I love Josh too, and so I don’t care if you kiss him. But I thought boys only kissed girls.”Rex nodded. “Yeah, well, that’s how it is most of the time, but you know some boys kiss other boys and some girls kiss other girls.”“Well, I don’t wanna kiss no girls!” Ty said emphatically.Rex and Josh both laughed. “Maybe someday you will, though. If you do, that’s fine, and if you don’t, that’s fine too. For right now, you can just kiss Daddy.” He leaned in and kissed Ty on the forehead.”