I close my eyes and that Glade PlugIn stench comes floating back, just like it did at Eliana’s mother’s apartment. It’s as real as if someone is wafting it under my nose, even though it’s almost forty years in the past.
“Were you close?” Sage asks, dragging me back to the present.
“We were… Yeah. Yeah, we were. We were about as close as you can get, for a while there.”
He hears what I’m not saying. “But then…?”
“But then we ended up at a crossroads, sort of.”
“Don’t talk down to me,” he warns angrily. “I’m not a little kid. I deserve to know the details.”
“I’m not, I swear. I’m just trying to find the best way to explain a whole lot of complicated s**t that happened a long time ago.” I rub my chin as I think. “But, yeah—a crossroads. We both had a choice to make, and we… we chose dif
