It’s not difficult to avoid each other completely. When his habits are ingrained into every part of your being, knowing what time to steer clear of the armory on Mondays and only lingering around the places he hates the most becomes as easy as breathing. The two of you also manage to synchronize your eating schedules, so his usual spot at the Hermes table is starkly empty every time you find your way to the pavilion. It’s a twisted dance of avoidance.

The feeling of him remains though, his memory lingering around every single corner of Camp Half-Blood. The lack of him ends up becoming just as much of a reminder as the actual sight of him. You can’t count the amount of times you’ve turned to your side, expecting him to be there the same way he always has.

Luke Castellan has always been the only steady presence in your life. Your friends had jokingly called him your human shadow. There was never you without him, and never him without you.

The emptiness at your side is almost as stark as the empty ache in your heart.

It feels like a part of you has disappeared. It’s hard, because you see Luke in just about everything. You hear his laugh in the creaking patio of Cabin Eleven and feel the ghost of his touch over your spine whenever someone brushes too close to you. The twin sized mattress always feels two sizes too big when you find your way back to your own cabin to sleep.

You had gone to Luke’s after leaving the lake that night, your hand shaking on the door knob and a sick feeling in your chest. The empty bag slung over your back felt as heavy as the sky itself.

A cabin that you knew just as well as your own began to distort in front of your eyes. The squeaking of the sticky door hinges felt like they were mocking you. The familiar chatter of Luke’s siblings that flowed into the night air filled your stomach with dread.

Usually, the shame of cowardice was enough to get you to push forward when it was hard. But as you stood in front of the door, you hadn’t felt any of that familiar humiliation. You would have turned around and fled if a heavy hand hadn’t landed on your shoulder.

You’d tensed, the edges of your vision darkening. But whatever apology or insult that was waiting to fall from your lips slipped your mind when you’d been spun around.

It was only Chris.

“Hey,” he had said, entirely unaware of the way you were about to be sick on the front step. Chris had been giving you an easy smile. “What’ve you been—”

“Is Luke here?”

Your interruption had been as rude as it sounded, but it was difficult for you to think over the sound of your heart racing in your chest. You were afraid of the answer Chris had to offer.

How would you be able to look at Luke when just the thought of seeing him made your hands shake with fear?

Chris’ brows had furrowed, confused. “No. I just saw him over by the Big House. He should be heading this way soon, though, if you need to talk to him—”

The door creaked loudly as you pulled on it, though the sound went unnoticed by the kids talking inside. Sheer muscle memory was what let you step over askew sleeping bags and stray soccer balls without much thought. The ease of it all had been too much to think about at the moment.

Your vision narrowed as you crossed the room, nausea rearing its ugly head once again as you hurried over the floorboards.

For what would be the last time, you found yourself face to face with Luke’s things.

Luke’s stuff laid cluttered all over his dresser. There was a stick of deodorant tossed haphazardly between his sunglasses and an empty cardboard box, and one of Annabeth’s drawings sitting on top of a few loose pieces of paper. He had also kept a makeshift flag football trophy a Hephaestus kid made for him. You let your eyes rake over every inch of it greedily, your hand unsteady where it curled into the fabric of one of his jackets.

“—t’s the matter? Did something happen?”

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realized that Chris was standing a few steps behind you. He had no doubt followed you from the front door, concern dripping heavy from his words.

It almost stung to hear. You had met Chris as Luke’s brother first, but he had become your friend over the years too. You knew him well enough to know that he would want nothing to do with you when he found out what had happened.

As selfish as it was, you let yourself enjoy the last moment of kindness you probably would ever receive from Chris Rodriguez.

The details of Luke’s things grated on your heart. The closer you had looked, the more you saw yourself, too. One of your shirts was draped over his headboard. The water bottle you’d left this morning was sitting in front of the mirror, right next to—

Your heart had felt like it stopped in your chest. The memories flashed back through your head against your will.

You and Luke’s trip to the city for your sixteenth birthday. The diner. The sightseeing boat. The photobooth.

It’d only been a few years ago, but it felt like you didn’t recognize the people in the pictures. Your faces were pressed together in one of them, and you were laying a kiss on his cheek in another. The last one showed you laughing, your arm over his shoulder. You couldn’t see it, but you could still feel Luke’s embarrassed smile pressed into your neck, the redness of his cheeks lost to the black and white photo.

A sick sense of jealousy surged through you. This version of you was ignorant. Ignorant but happy. She had no idea that the person who held her heart in his hands would be the same person to shatter it.

Distantly, you realized you didn’t feel upset anymore.

You felt nothing but angry.

How could Luke do this to the two of you? Where had it all gone wrong?

Chris’ sharp intake of air was what snapped you out of your stupor.

You blinked, looking down in confusion, and you froze. The photo was in your hands, the strip ripped quickly in half.

Your immortalized laughter taunted you from where the lower half of the photo remained taped on Luke’s mirror. You looked away before any tears could form, your fist closing hard over the broken piece in your palm.

It all unraveled after that.

It didn’t take you long to clear out the bottom drawer of Luke’s dresser, the one he’d dedicated to your things. There were a few things under his bed that you went back and forth on, like that paint splattered hoodie that was yours just as much as it was his and a shirt he’d given to you a few years ago. You weren’t sure if you would be able to take the sight of any of it after this.

You’d lost your camp necklace somewhere here too, and had been meaning to find it. You wondered if you would have time before Luke came back.

It felt like your breath grew shorter and shorter the longer you stayed in the cabin. Images flashed through your head no matter where you looked. He’d kissed you for the first time against this bed. He’d helped you sneak in through the back window of the cabin years before that, and you didn’t realize that you were hyperventilating until something warm settled at your side.

It was Chris, his eyes wide where he was kneeling next to you.

His hand slipped into yours, unclenching your fist the same way Luke would. You were still holding onto half of the photo. His face fell with sympathy and something that looked like understanding.

You wiped your face, beyond glad when you realized it was completely dry. It had been an hour or so, but you still hadn’t cried about losing your best friend.

In that moment, you promised yourself that you never would.

“Are you okay?” Chris had asked, voice low to not draw too much attention. He tossed a furtive glance over his shoulder in the direction of where a group of younger campers were giggling over a magazine.

“Yeah,” you said, a complete and utter lie. “Sorry about all of this. I’m all done now.”

The familiar weight of eyes on you made you rush to your feet.

It seemed now that Luke would be able to keep your camp necklace. He was standing in the doorway of his cabin, his eyes trained on where you were sitting in front of his things.

You had no intention of staying in Cabin Eleven for another second. You never wanted to step foot in this room ever again.

The two of you tracked each other as you moved.

Even though you were—or, had been—his best friend, anyone would’ve been able to tell Luke had been crying. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, though they were not still wet with tears. You did not take as much comfort in the thought as you thought you would have.

His mouth had been parted in surprise, clearly not expecting to see you so soon. The heel of his palm was frozen against his sternum, like he had stopped moving the second he had realized it was really you inside of his cabin.

When Luke was younger and had nightmares every other night, he would rub circles into his chest to get his heart to stop aching. You wondered if that was what he had been doing just now. You also wondered who would hold him through the rest of his nightmares now.

He didn’t let his gaze stray as you stepped closer and closer and closer until you were near enough to touch.

If it had been any other day, you would’ve brushed your thumbs over the tear tracks on his cheeks. He would’ve kissed your palm. He would’ve kissed you.

As you stepped close enough to touch him, your eyes traced over the tightness of his shoulders. It was like he was scared you would brush against him. The skin of his neck was tinged red with tension.

You couldn’t tell if you would ever stand this close to him again.

The smell of his cologne followed you as you stepped past him, and you were slammed with the realization that one day, you would forget the little details of Luke Castellan. Eventually, you wouldn’t remember that he liked to press his forehead to your shoulder, or that he only needed two alarms to wake up in the morning.

He was leaving you, and the memories of him would eventually fade too.

You hadn’t been able to hold his gaze for another second, fixing your eyes on some far off point ahead of you. Emotion clouded your vision. Chris had mumbled some sort of greeting to his friend, probably pulling him inside before he shut the door behind them.

You made it fifteen feet before a resounding slam echoed from somewhere inside the building.

You didn’t recognize it as the sound of your now empty drawer until sometime later.

TWO

The next time you see Luke, you almost don’t recognize him.

Some of the kids had decided to put together an informal fighting tournament, with the winner getting a whopping prize of thirty-three drachmas. Half of camp came to the arena to watch, the summer campers eager to spend some of their last days here doing something seriously fun.

The Ares cabin was taking the bracket a little more seriously than you’d expected them to. Your siblings had passed around eye black before the big event, and a few of the boys painted letters on their chest spelling out your sister Lana’s name.

(Most of the time though, they rearranged themselves to spell out something that was clearly not Lana.)

You were excited for your siblings who were participating, of course, smiling whenever someone looked your way and even letting Clarisse smear a line of red face paint under your eyes. But to say your heart wasn’t in it would be an understatement.

It had officially been a week since you’d last spoken to Luke.

It meant that you’d officially broken your record of not speaking to each other. Seven whole days had passed, though it felt a lot closer to a year.

Embarrassment burns hot in your chest when you acknowledge it, but it feels like you’re missing a part of yourself. He was a part of you. The biggest part.

It’s shameful how you’re only halfway functioning without him. You finally understand what it means when people say they are ‘going through the motions’. Every day, you wake up to a nightmare where your best friend hates you and you hate him. You eat, walk the grounds of camp more as a ghost than as a person, let sleep evade you, then get up to the same nightmare.

You haven’t been able to sleep through the night since your fight. When the sun sets on camp, you stare up at the ceiling and try to pretend like you aren’t thinking about the empty spot next to you. You’ve started burning food as an offering to Hypnos, but find not even that’s enough to let you sleep for more than an hour at a time.

In the days after your fight, you almost found yourself flinching at every reminder of Luke. You’ve gone out of your way to avoid anything that would even make you think of him, which meant you lost interest in most things you used to love doing. You haven’t sparred since. You sat out of yesterday’s Capture the Flag game to sit by the beach instead. It felt like he had taken every aspect of your life from you.

His memory taints everything you even think about doing. But after a week of silence, you find that you’re almost hungry for any glimpse of him you can manage. In every crowd, around every corner, and in every shadow, you look for the outline of his back, or the cut of his jaw. You still search for him despite the fact the thought of seeing him fills you with dread.

Annabeth had explained something to you a couple of years ago — the concept of negativity bias. Even when positive or neutral things of equal intensity occur, a person’s psychological state is more likely to be affected by something negative.

You think that’s what’s happening to you now. You’re trying your best, but every time you think of every hug you shared, every hour you spent together, every moment Luke had been the only thing that felt safe, you only seem able to think of that night.

Is it really that hard to believe someone doesn’t love you?

You can’t get the way he looked at you out of your head. It felt like he hadn’t known you at all. The person you were convinced you were going to spend the rest of your life with looked you in the eyes and swore his love had been a lie.

And you can’t even think about him long enough to remember if any of it had even been real.

It ends up being here, at the camp’s makeshift fighting tournament, that you see Luke Castellan for the first time in a week.

Even when faced with only the sight of his back, you know immediately that he looks almost nothing like your Luke.

He’s sitting next to Chris on the edge of the mat the campers are fighting on, his shoulders slumped, like he’s curling in on himself. He seems completely unresponsive to the shouts and heckles of the rest of the kids from his cabin, who are currently cheering on Travis in the ring.

You’re torn between two opposite gut reactions.

The new unease that rises at the thought of him sits uncomfortably in your chest. You move to duck behind a taller Aphrodite camper to your left when you feel your hands reach to pick at a loose thread on your jeans.

But somewhere else, deep down, your lifelong instinct takes over, and you’re taking a step in his direction before you can stop yourself.

After all, something was wrong with Luke. You were supposed to comfort him, weren’t you?

Their entire section stands up abruptly when Travis manages to knock his opponent’s weapon onto the floor, and you watch with morbid curiosity as Luke remains seated, his jaw resting in the palm of his hand.

You get hit in the back so hard you almost stumble forward.

From right next to you, you catch a glimpse of a sharp glare aimed at your direction, and you realize belatedly that your entire cabin is now standing too, cheering loudly as your brother Cole gets ready to step into the ring. You get to your feet abruptly, clapping mindlessly.

Even if she wasn’t glaring, Clarisse’s disappointment would still feel almost palpable. “Stop giving ass-face your time of day.”

It didn’t take long for your siblings to put together what happened between you and Luke, though none of them knew the full story. They saw that he stopped coming by to ask for you and that your sleepovers came to an abrupt stop, and the pieces settled into place for them. You realized the Hermes cabin came to a similar understanding when whispers of Luke’s apparent mood swings made their way to you.

The general consensus among them at first was that you two were having a little fight. To everyone else, it had seemed like the silent treatment you had given him earlier in the summer. Your brother insisted that Luke had been wandering around camp like a kicked puppy dog, though you sincerely doubt that.

You could feel the looks people gave you whenever the Hermes cabin was nearby, waiting to see if you were going to go running over like you used to. People were shocked to see your twenty-four hours of silence creep into forty-eight and then roll over into seventy-two.

It was clear that everyone expected for it to blow over eventually. After all, no one has ever known who you are without Luke. You arrived at camp together and haven’t spent a day apart since.

Your stomach twists when you realize you aren’t sure who you are without Luke either.

Five days after your argument, you snapped at someone who asked when your boyfriend was coming over, and their suspicions were confirmed. Whatever was happening between the two of you was serious.

You and Luke are the only two people alive who knew whatever this was was permanent.

Permanent.

You’re having a tough time coming to terms with the fact that the feelings of resentment you held toward him were going to remain a permanent thing. Luke had been more than just your best friend. He’d been your… boyfriend? Partner? Soulmate? You aren’t even sure there was a single word that could perfectly describe what he had been to you. None of the words in the English language seemed to encompass it.

You still half believed that Luke was going to come back to you and apologize. After all, he’d drawn first blood. But as the days passed, and the end of your time at camp drew nearer, you felt yourself losing hope.

He’d asked you to stay away from him. It was over. He swore it.

“I’m not giving him my time of day,” you insist to your sister, though it’s clearly a lie. Your eyes are still trained on the outline of his back. “I was just looking.”

A group of people next to you knock you closer to Clarisse when one of your brothers in the ring lands a good hit on his opponent.

“Then stop looking,” she grits out, not bothering to keep her voice low with how loud the arena is. “He doesn’t deserve you thinking about him.”

“I’m thinking about how much he looks like shit,” you say flatly, your voice lacking any of the vitriol you planned to say it with. Even after everything that happened, you still can’t bring yourself to hate him completely. You aren’t sure you’re even capable of it. Not even playing your last conversation in your head seems to work. You’re hurt by what he said, but hatred isn’t something you think you can feel for him.

Your sister snorts from next to you. “You can’t even see his stupid face.”

You don’t respond. She leans closer to you to try and catch a glimpse of him too, craning her neck around to get a good look.

You’re just about to hiss at her to stop being nosy when she grabs your bicep, an amused sound coming from her throat in surprise. Your heart jumps to your throat.

Somewhere in the commotion, Annabeth wandered over to the Hermes cabin. She’s just tapped on Luke’s shoulder, and he’s spun around to face her, giving you your first good look of him in a week.

Clarisse laughs. “Holy shit.”

Dark circles mar Luke’s under eyes like twin bruises. He’s listening to Annabeth, nodding along as he does so, but his eyes look vacant and unfocused. He looks just as exhausted as you feel.

Even when you’re apart, you can’t help but be connected in the worst ways.

“He’s sure taking your little breakup hard,” she muses. “Couldn’t handle being dumped, I guess.”

You whip your head in her direction. “Clarisse—”

“What?” She rolls her eyes. “It’s not like Castellan would’ve dumped you. He’d probably cut off his own arm if you said it would make you happy.”

Her words make your insides twist. There was a time when you believed that too. “I didn’t dump him. We weren’t even… it wasn’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, you ‘weren’t dating.’” You don’t appreciate the quotes she makes around her last few words. “I know, you’ve only said it fifty times.”

“And I’ll say it fifty more times if that’s what it takes for you to get it,” you snap, finally tearing your eyes away from him. “Drop it, okay?”

Clarisse puts her hands up in surrender, though the amusement hasn’t faded from her eyes. “Heard.”

You try to put your focus back on the tournament, where your sister Lana is finally taking her turn after your brother’s win. Your brothers in the front row have their arms around each other’s shoulders, and they’re cheering in sync.

“Sheesh,” Clarisse says again, though her attention is clearly not on the fight in front of you. She’s still looking over at Luke.

“Clarisse,” you warn, voice firm, but as stubborn as ever, she ignores you.

“He looks like he got trampled. And then hit by a bus that pushed him off a cliff.”

You can’t tell if the lump in your chest is concern or intrigue. Whatever it is, though, is strong enough to get you to look back up at him again.

He and Annabeth are… arguing.

It’s subtle enough that Clarisse can’t tell, too busy making a snide comment about how it looks like he’s climbed his way out from the Underworld.

And while the slight sheen to his eyes is enough to give you pause, you’re much more stunned by the way his fists clench at his sides, jaw twitching with irritation. Luke’s never gotten upset with Annabeth before. You almost don’t believe your own eyes.

Luke has been soft on Annabeth your entire lives. While the three of you were always close, you knew their similar home lives meant that the two of them understood each other in a way you would never be fully able to. He doted on her a lot, and had probably stolen hundreds of dollars worth of trinkets for her over the course of your time on the road. He was more likely to jump into a pit of vipers than say no to her.

It’s why you can’t quite make sense of the scene in front of you. Even Clarisse has started to realize the conversation is shifting more into a fight, because she gives you an amused smile before putting her attention back onto Lana’s match in front of you.

Annabeth’s shaking her head vigorously, and you watch as Luke cuts her off abruptly, which she doesn’t take lightly. His brows knit as he crosses his arms in front of his chest. They go back and forth some more before he scoffs, his dark eyes rolling briefly. She pokes a finger into his chest with so much force his eyes widen, and then she’s whirling around so quickly you almost don’t realize she’s making a beeline in your direction.

You don’t bother pretending you weren’t watching. Annabeth’s face is scrunched with frustration, and she looks about a second away from pulling her own hair out. She weaves between people swiftly until she finds herself in front of you, her features pulled into a scowl.

“There is seriously something wrong with him,” she grumbles, not bothering to use his name. Her eyes are steely, but you can see they’re hurt, too. “What happened to you two? He’s been weird this whole week. What are you even fighting about?”

“Annabeth,” you say, your voice catching on the last syllable. You don’t know what to tell her.

“Did he do something?” she pushes on, brow furrowing. “It’s his fault, isn’t it? He wouldn’t be so mad if—”

You cut her off before she can continue. “It’s nothing, okay?”

As sharp as ever, Annabeth hears the break in your voice and drops it. She can probably tell she clearly isn’t going to get anything else out of you despite how much she wants to press it. She sighs and doesn’t say anything even when some of your siblings jostle the two of you around.

Before she disappears into the crowd again, she gives you a look you can’t quite understand. “Just talk to him.”

You direct your gaze somewhere in the direction of the tournament in front of you, but your vision is swimming. You and Luke Castellan have already spoken for what you know is the last time.

Your cabin surges forward again when Lana finally bests her opponent, and you feel your heart plummet to the ground.

THREE

It’s been another week since you last saw Luke.

You leave Camp Half-Blood tomorrow morning.

You’ve already gorged yourself on strawberries from the field and run your hands over the Ares cabin’s flag for the last time. You said goodbye to the naiad who saved your life a few years ago and had one last climbing wall race against Clarisse, which you won, obviously. A little after, your little sister pushed you on the tire swing outside the Big House until you got dizzy. Your hands are stained from painting your very last camp bead, which sits safely in your packed bag next to your bed.

You’ve revisited almost every hidden corner and every inch of camp that exists, and there’s only one place left on your goodbye tour.

The lake.

You haven’t gone back since your fight. The spot had belonged to both of you, and it didn’t feel right going back without him.

Truthfully, you haven’t wanted to go back there, either. Your last conversation had tainted your memory of the place, but you know that you won’t be able to leave without seeing it one last time.

After promising your siblings that you’ll be back before the fireworks start, you start the short walk through the woods.

Nothing has changed, of course. The grass to your right rustles as a rabbit darts across your path. When you reach for the thick branch to pull yourself over a fallen log, your hands fit perfectly in the grooves you’ve worn into the wood over the years. The air is sticky with humidity, and the laughter that rings out from behind you grows quieter as you move further away from camp.

The only thing missing is the steady presence at your side. Luke probably would’ve made ten bad jokes by this point of the walk, and would’ve bounced a few times between trying to trip you and trying to hold your hand.

You shift your focus intently to where you’re stepping instead. You estimate how many yards away the lake is. You think about what being on a plane will be like. You wonder how you’re going to say goodbye to Annabeth. You wonder if you’re going to say goodbye to Luke.

No matter how hard you try, it all comes back to him anyway.

Before you can even stop and realize it, you’re stepping past the treeline, gravel crunching quietly under your shoes.

The lake is eerily silent.

A canoe that someone was too lazy to put away rests overturned by the water. In the distance, you can see a duck dipping into the lake looking for something to eat. Its small movements send ripples throughout the rest of the water.

It’s so quiet that you can only hear the sound of your own breathing.

Being here by yourself is unsettling. You almost get the urge to turn around and leave, but something tells you to plant your feet. You know you’re going to regret not saying goodbye to a place that has watched you grow up. It witnessed the entirety of your love for Luke — the oblivious years, your first real kiss, and the crash and burn of all of it.

There’s movement in your peripheral vision. You swear for a moment that you can hear the familiar crackling of fire by the trees, but when you turn there’s nothing there.

You start to regret coming here. For the first time, being at this lake isn’t making you feel better. It’s nothing but a painful reminder of what you’ve lost.

The last few weeks have been the hardest of your entire life. It’s even worse than the weeks after you nearly died in Pennsylvania, and even harder than your first weeks on the run.

You had Luke through all of it. Nothing had been too hard to bear because he had been there to shoulder it with you. He’d held you through nights where your stomach would cramp from hunger, and he would always let you sleep an extra hour or two even when it was your turn to be on watch.

Nothing about those years were easy. It’d been hard, but you were always together. When you couldn’t rely on yourself, you knew you could rely on Luke.

Your eyes sting as you take in the emptiness of your surroundings. The slow breeze that whips at your face bites a little harder. It’s so quiet that your ears start to ring. You try to pop your ears to stop the incessant noise, but find that the silence gets worse. There’s nothing out here but you.

The weight of it hits you a second later.

For the first time in your life, you are completely and utterly alone.

You’d promised yourself that you wouldn’t cry over Luke. You blink quickly to try and stop the onslaught of tears and find that your eyes begin to burn despite it. Pain stirs in your chest as you finally feel yourself fall apart.

You’ve been alone for a long time.

Did you ever truly have Luke? You wonder how long he’d been harboring that anger against you. When did he start pulling away? Had you been too love-blind to see it? Was any of it real?

Everything about your relationship had been a secret. Was it because he was ashamed of you? Has this been his plan all along?

The outline of the dock comes into focus despite how unsteady your gaze is.

You can still see the version of yourself that sat here and believed in a future you were never going to have. It had only been a month since that morning.

A breeze kisses the apples of your cheeks, and more memories come back to you.

Phantom laughter rings in your ear, taunting you. If you focus hard enough, you can almost feel the soreness of your arms from a day full of playful fighting and racing Luke through the water. A few summers ago, he had held you by the fire here and told you he wanted to stay with you forever. He saw a future with you in it.

You had so many plans, and none of them would come true.

Tomorrow morning, you are going to get on a plane that will take you miles away from this place and the person you’ve called home for almost as long as you can remember.

You stumble away from the water.

It’s too late, but you finally realize that you’re heaving.

It feels like your chest is trying to collapse in on itself. You can barely breathe around the physical weight that’s compressing your ribcage, pressing hard against the rampant beating of your heart. You can’t take a breath in without your entire body shaking, the tightness in your chest stopping you from getting any air in.

You clutch at your shirt like it might help, trying to pull it off the space above your lungs, but the fabric is as loose as it's always been. You can barely feel your fingertips.

The sobs that wrack your body ache.

You’re so sick of feeling sad. Only one person has ever made you feel better when you get like this, and you have no idea what to do when he’s the reason you feel this way.

You want him to come back to you. You want to never see him again. You want him to apologize. You want to beg him to forgive you. You want to leave camp and never look back. You want to shackle yourself to him so you’re never separated again.

There’s shuffling behind you. Deja vu creeps around your shoulders and curls around your insides like a familiar friend. It feels like the sand at Compo Beach and tastes like your mom’s lemonade. It feels like coming home.

Warmth envelops you from every side. You find yourself sinking into it despite the way it feels like you’ve been turned inside out.

How could you stop yourself, anyway?

It’s Luke.

His cologne fills your senses as you shove your face into the crook of his neck, slotting yourself so close to him he stumbles back a step.

The familiar feeling of his skin against yours causes a sob to wrack your chest. You start grabbing for any part of him your hands can reach, one of your hands fisting in his hair while the other grabs blindly for one of his arms that he has around you. You never thought you would feel this whole again.

“I’m sorry,” you plead. You aren’t sure what you’re apologizing for. For your fight? For reaching for him like he’s the only thing that’s holding you together? You can’t tell. “Luke. I love you.”

His grip loosens and you panic. You grab onto him harder, your nails digging into the skin of his bicep painfully, your vision swimming. He’s a blur of orange fabric and curly hair as you shake your head, refusing to let him leave. He can’t.

You don’t recognize that he’s saying something to you until the familiar feel of his palms settles on both sides of your face. Your eyes trace the shape of his lips as he speaks, though none of it processes. Your ears are ringing again.

He pulls you against his chest again, letting you feel the rise and fall of it. His breathing is barely more even than yours. The setting sun paints the two of you in pink and gold.

“How could you do this?” You feel bile rise to your throat. You think you’re going to be physically sick. “Why are you doing this to us? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you know I’m so sorry, please—”

“I know. I know.”

“You’re my best friend. I’m sorry. I love you. I love you, Luke. Please don’t do this to me.”

“You need to breathe, okay?” His hand passes over your back. It’s shaking so badly that he has to clutch at your shirt. His words are fraught with tension, like he’s forcing them out through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry. I need you to forgive me. You have to forgive me.” Half of your words are choked out between gasps for air, but you know he understands.

“Breathe. I know. I promise you, I know.”

You vaguely feel his grip on you loosen again, and you protest with every ounce of energy you have left. Your tears are soaking his shirt.

“Hey,” he says, rubbing a line down your arm. Warmth creeps into his voice and another sob wracks your body. “You’re hiccuping. You’re gonna be sick.”

He rubs your back through the entirety of it. You must make quite the sight, the both of you on your knees in the dirt as you empty your stomach.

You fall back against Luke when it’s over, pressing against him as much is physically possible. Your neck is craned at an impossible angle so you can see his face. You want to memorize every inch of it. You never thought he would be this close to you ever again.

“I don’t know how to do this without you, Luke,” you admit without an ounce of shame. Your voice comes out rough from the tears and coarse from your retching. “I’m so scared.”

He stays silent while he cradles you against him, his eyes unmoving from the sand. The dark circles under his eyes have somehow gotten worse, which makes you frown. His lips are red and bitten too. He looks just as sick as you.

After another bout of quiet, he finally looks at you. He wipes at the corner of your mouth, his stare blank.

“I was so mean,” you try again, nodding, like it’ll help him understand. “I’m so sorry. How could I have said those things to you?”

One of the last times you sat like this was the morning after you first kissed. You wonder if he realizes that too.

“You’re nothing like him,” you promise. “You’re good. So good, Luke.”

Luke’s face crumples with an emotion you can’t quite read. “I have to do this.”

You shake your head, desperate. “No. No. I’ll do better. I’ll be better. I’ll make it up to you for the rest of my life, I promise, Luke, I promise.”

He presses his forehead against yours, the two of you so close together that it feels like you’re sharing oxygen. His eyes are glassy and almost unfocused, and you brush your thumb over his cheek, greedy and desperate. You should feel guiltier than you are.

“He… he is the only one who can fix this. All of this. I don’t have a choice,” he says, almost whispering it.

Your head spins. It feels like he’s talking through you and not to you. “I don’t understand. You’re… you always have a choice, Luke. You’re nothing like your father. You don’t need him to do anything. And you know I didn’t—there’s not a world that exists where I actually thought those things. I didn’t mean it.”

You can’t believe you used his father against him. You can’t even blame Luke for wanting to leave you. What kind of person says those things to someone they love?

Luke’s features pull down into a grimace as he shakes his head. He says nothing else as his eyes trace the path of your tears down your cheeks.

The July humidity makes it feel almost unbearable to be this close to him, but you soak up every second he’s willing to offer you. Sweat beads at your hairline and in the small of your back.

A month wasn’t long enough to erase the nuances of Luke from your memory. You trace the cut of his jaw with your thumb. His tan has come in full force this summer, and you mourn the time you could have spent together.

“Leave with me.” You nod quickly, reaching for his hand that rests limply against your side. “It’s not too late, Luke. It’ll never be too late.”

You can’t remember why you’d even been angry with him at all. Your flight is tomorrow morning. How did you think you could ever leave without him?

He doesn’t respond, his eyes tracing down the length of your face. You wonder what he sees there.

You glance down at his lips, and wish instantly that you hadn’t.

Luke tenses, and it feels like you’ve been struck.

He shakes his head, his throat bobbing as he swallows stiffly. His words are even and practiced when he says, “Kissing me won’t change anything.”

“Then what will?” you beg. Your face heats, not with embarrassment, but with grief. The words sound just as desperate as you feel.

You feel his entire body go very still behind you.

You’re almost grateful that he doesn’t grace you with a response. You’re all out of words to say.

Your eyes slide shut when you feel the warmth at your back disappear.

Surprisingly, there is no tell-tale feeling of your eyes burning with tears. In place of grief is the all-consuming ache of numbness.

Sometime later, you get the strength to face the empty space behind you. Luke is gone.

For the next hour, you sit alone by the lake as the fireworks explode over your last night at Camp Half-Blood. Red and blue lights make shapes in front of your unseeing eyes. You wonder if Luke had even been here or if you’d just imagined him when you’d needed him most.

An hour later, by the time you find your way back to your siblings, it’s over.

You’re standing on the front steps of your cabin when you find out that Luke has betrayed camp.

—