You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.

Okay," he said. He took a breath. "What would you do, if you could do anything?" I took a step toward him, closing the space between us. "This." I said. And then I kissed him.

I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome. "Okay," he said. He took a breath. "What would you do, if you could do anything?" I took a step toward him, closing the space between us. "This," I said. And then I kissed him.

In the end, though, maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

Something had changed in me, even if I didn't know what it was just yet. All I could think was that I felt alive for the first time.

"I just don't know," I said, my voice sounding bumby, not like mine, "how do you help someone who doesn't want your help. What do you do when you can't do anything?"

Like so many before them, they didn't care that my dad was only the messenger. They still wanted to shoot him.