Ryder's motorbike stunt left him curled up in a fetal position sick as hell for the next week. Ryan tried every hour of each day to try and get him up and to go to the hospital, but he still refused.

Instead, I came home from the store with my sister to find a beaten and bloody Max on my front steps and Ryan on his own. It couldn't have been a coincidence they both looked as if they'd just been in a fight.

"What happened?" I asked, watching my sister slip around Max and walk into the house with the groceries. Max stood angrily, nearly shoving passed me for round two with my neighbor.

"What happened is Blake doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut." Max snapped, my palm against his chest the only thing stopping him from stomping across the yard.

I threw a glance over my shoulder at Ryan, currently in the midst of wiping the blood trickling steadily from his nose with his shirt sleeve.

"I think you need to go home, Max." I whispered. For a moment, all anger drained from my best friend and he looked down at me like I'd just slapped him across the face. "Please. I'm exhausted. I can't deal with this right now."

He threw his hands up in exasperation and headed for his car without a word, leaving me to stare after the car speeding out of the neighborhood without even the slightest clue as to why he'd been here in the first place. Setting the couple grocery bags that had been in my hands on the front step so Mom or Kat could grab them before I made my way to Ryan.

"Come on." I grabbed my surprisingly heavy arm, making an ushering gesture toward his front door. He glanced up at me, one eye brow quirked and his top lip a mess of blood as it curled upward. "Seriously. Get up and into the house."

Luckily I didn't have to pry further and he stood and allowed me to nudge him through the front door. I grabbed paper towels and dampened them as well as an ice pack in the empty freezer and headed over to him in front of the door.

"What happened?" I asked once he'd sat down on the couch and started to clean himself up. "Why was he here?"

"I don't know." Ryan shrugged a shoulder, eyes fluttering shut so his long lashes fanned his blood speckled, fair skin. "But I wasn't going to deal with his pompous ass attitude. The second he saw me he got in my face. Threatening me and shit like I would ever be scared of him."

I crossed my arms. "Threatening you about what?"

"You."

"Obviously, Ryan. What about me though?"

"He said to back off." He shrugged again, this time wincing in pain a little as he pressed the ice pack against the bridge of his nose.

I lowered myself on to the recliner. "Back off? What? Why would he threaten you and not Ryder. I'm hardly ever around you."

That was a lie, I suppose. Especially for the last week or so. I'd actually spent more time with Ryan and Mr. Blake then Ryder. He had holed himself in his room all week, and though I'd cooked for the men, Ryder refused to come out and eat at the table. Or maybe he was in too much pain too and didn't want Ryan or me to call him out and get him loaded into the back of an ambulance.

"I dunno." Ryan sighed. "He obviously sees me as a threat to his perfect little life. To the fantasy he created with you inside his pea sized brain."

"Ryan—"

"No. Nobody else is going to tell you the truth, Zoey. Not even yourself. You know what he's doing, why he's acting the way he is, but you choose to be in denial over it."

I shook my head and looked away from him and down the hall, hoping to divert the subject. "How's Ryder?"

"He says he's fine." Ryan breathed. "He wants to go watch the meteor shower tomorrow night. I was supposed to tell you that this morning but I forgot."

I nodded. "That doesn't sound like it'll be too much for him."

"I thought the same thing. It's probably the most sane, healthy thing on that list."

I stood, wiping my palms against my jeans and headed for the room at the end of the hall. Knocking gently, I turned the knob and walked in to find Ryder sitting up, his back pressed against his headboard, halfway through the old copy of Lord of The Rings I'd lent him a few days ago. He shot a quick look at the door to check who was there before looking back at the book, but the tension in his shoulders was a sure sign he wasn't really reading.

"Hey."

"Hey." He mumbled,

Leaning into the doorframe, I tried my best at a smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm dying." His answer lacked any and all emotion.

"Ryder—"

\ "Nope. Just get out if you came in here to try and talk me into the hospital again."

I bowed my head. "Ryder, you need to consider it. If you have a chance—"

"Get out!"

Shocked by the outburst and too afraid to step into the room, I quickly shut the door and pressed my back into the wall to keep my composure. Once I was sure I'd recollected myself, I headed back into the living room. That content composure was gone within seconds when I looked to my left and found Ryan on the sofa, the ice pack on the table and one of his hands trembling.

"Ryan." I said softly, edging closer to him. He didn't bother to look in my direction, but kept his eyes trained straight ahead, jaw clenched so tight a muscle was starting to twitch.

"Just go home, Zoey." he managed to get out, gently pushing my outstretched hand back toward my side.

I could hear it in his voice if it wasn't already obvious in his mannerisms. He was breaking; fighting with everything in him against it, but he was sure to finally cave under it all any second now. He wanted me gone so I wasn't witness to it, to his vulnerability. To him. I'd gradually entered his life over the last month, but hadn't been able to get much out of him outside of the fact that he was pessimistic, angry, and shared the same thoughts on love and relationships. Seeing that there was a terrified, shaking boy under all the hardened armor he'd build around himself was as close to an opening as I was going to get.

"You don't have to keep fighting it." I whispered, sitting down on the torn cushion beside him. "Take it from someone who does it on the daily. Eventually you'll break, and when you do, it won't be pretty."

"He's dying!" his voice rose slightly as he turned to me, his blue eyes misty with tears as I'd assumed. "He's in that fucking room dwindling away into nothing while I just sit here. While I leave for work and come home like nothing has changed. Like one day I won't come home to his dead body on that bed."

I flinched. Not only was his voice laced agony and anger, but the reality of his words made them hit twice as hard. He was right. We were standing here living life as if Ryder were still the rebel without a cause terrorizing us in high school. Like he was going to weasel his way to the top at a Frat house in a couple months at UCLA.

"I watched Mom become nothing." His voice caught in his voice at the mention of his mother. "The chemo wiped her out. Took her from the most beautiful, kind, amazing woman to this. . . this fragile, bitter, girl who wanted nothing more than for me to find a way to kill her before the cancer could."

"Ryan—"

"She begged me, Zoey. She took my face in her hands a few weeks before she actually passed and she cried, pleading with me to get ahold of drugs from a friend at school, or a gun, something, anything that would aid in ending her life." he shook his head. "I walked out of that hospital and I got wasted. So drunk that I couldn't feel a God Damn thing. Fourteen years old and barely able to walk. When I got home you were on that swing set, staring at the front door to your house. I don't know what was happening or why you were out there alone so late at night, but I walked over and joined you. And we just sat there, crying in silence."

The memory was faint and fuzzy around the edges, but I could recall the night. It'd been an argument between someone on my father's side of the family an Mom and I hadn't stuck around to listen to my mother become a mess over that piece of shit. I hadn't known Ryan much then, he'd always just been a grade ahead at school and would occasionally torment me with Ryder, but that night he hadn't even bothered greeting me. He'd plopped himself on the swingset beside me and just stared straight ahead into the dark night as tears fell silently. That boy, that Ryan, was starting to claw to the surface of the man beside me.

"I can't lose him." Ryan said suddenly, startling me a little. I extended my hand and touched the top of his, but it did nothing. He didn't even seem to notice. "I can't. He can't just fucking die. I need him. I. . . If he dies I'll have nothing to live for, do you understand that? I do all this shit, I've been doing all this shit, for him. I promised Mom I would take care of him. I'm not only letting Ryder down, but Mom too."

I decided to come at him from a different angle-literally. I slipped off the couch and on to the floor between his legs and took his face between him own hands. "Ryan, look at me."

After a moment of staring at the dirty rug under my knees, he lifted his head and met my eyes.

"You're not letting your mom down. You can't control this, you've done everything you can, everything in your power to help Ryder. I. . . he doesn't want to help himself, and you can't help someone who doesn't what to help themselves, Ryan." I blinked quickly to keep the tears from escaping my own eyes. "If. . . if Ryder does. . . if he leaves us, you aren't alone Ryan. You have. . ."

I trailed off slowly, because in all honesty, could I reassure him that he had someone in his corner outside of myself? There was no certainty that Mr. Blake would remain at his son's side after losing not only his wife, but his son too, especially with his track record. Ryan hadn't been a friendly person in high school, and I could only guess that he lacked a strong connection to someone like Ryder had with Cade.

"You finally starting to understand?" this time Ryan's hand found my cheek and my eyes flickered back to his. "I destroy everything I touch. Everyone I love just. . . becomes nothing. I have nobody. I have nothing, Zoey."

"You have me." I croaked, my own voice finally wavering as the knot in my throat grew. "I made promises too, Ryan. And if. . . if it comes to a point where he passes, you will have me."

"No."

Something between a gasp and a snort escaped me. "No?"

"No, Zoey. You're not going to be victim to whatever the hell this curse shit is."

I didn't respond. I couldn't. Not with that look in his eyes and sure as hell not when I was about to become an inconsolable mess myself. Instead, I stood and hugged him against me until I was forced to sink back onto the couch beside him.

And just like that we were back on that swing set, both crying silently and hoping that whatever the future held was worth living for.