Two weeks after Astrid left, Diana woke up with a cry. She grabbed the neckline of her oversized T-shirt and beat it rapidly against her collarbone, struggling to catch her breath.

The dream had been a recurring one. It had taken place on the island, in Jennifer and Todd's beautiful, warm bed. Usually, it was Caine who was there with her.

This time, though, Sam was in bed with her instead. Her fingers combed through his dark blond hair, their legs tangled together, and he'd kissed her jaw and neck, making her toes curl.

After getting her bearings, Diana went to the bathroom and scrubbed a damp towel over her face with vigor. The dream's vestiges lingered; she could still feel Sam's breath on her skin. It made her feel faintly sick.

"Astrid's going to kill me," she whispered to her wide-eyed, damp-haired reflection. "They're both going to kill me."

Diana was no stranger to being the homewrecker, the other woman, whatever you wanted to call it; high school boys were fun to toy with, and their girlfriends were even more fun. This, however, was different. This was Sam—Schoolbus Sam, Sam the hero, Sam who barely blinked before welcoming Diana to Lake Tramonto after a year of being the girlfriend of his worst nemesis.

And Astrid. What to think about Astrid? She didn't like her, exactly—or did she? It was hard to dislike someone when they looked at you with glistening eyes and cried about their boyfriend to you in the middle of the night—while sharing a bed, to boot. No, she didn't dislike Astrid. She maybe liked her a little bit, even. She was irritating, sure, but not bad. She was trying to get better. Like her. They had that in common.

But having feelings for her boyfriend...Diana's stomach twisted at the thought. Astrid had been through enough shit. They'd all been through enough shit. Hadn't they?

It was like her brain was trying to keep her a bad person, she thought gloomily, touching her stomach. Maybe her baby would be a messed-up witch, too. Why not?

No. No, that wasn't the right way to think, damn it. Diana rubbed her eyes and took a breath, tucking her long dark hair behind her ears. A dream didn't necessarily mean anything. Hell, it might've been some weird psychological fluke—she had been spending a significant time with Sam lately, and he was a better person than Caine ever was, so it made sense that some wires had gotten crossed somewhere and her pregnancy-addled brain mixed up her twins.

Diana wasn't convinced. Still, a lie was better than nothing. She dressed and went out to the deck. It was early—the lake was silent save for the fishing crew waiting for the morning catch to bite. Everything Diana saw was tinged with the light blue of early morning. Pre-FAYZ, she'd be getting up to go to class at about this time, she realized, leaning on the deck's railing, enjoying the breeze chilling her sweaty skin. Thank God Sam wasn't up yet. She didn't know what she'd do if she met him in the hall or in the kitchen.

She had to get away. She couldn't be in this houseboat. Diana hurried onto dry land, ignoring a few early risers' curious glances. She wished she'd brought a jacket; it was a little chilly. She was never up this early if she could help it.

There was nowhere she could go, she realized as she wandered around the vicinity of Lake Tramonto's dock—no place except her old trailer, which was now Astrid's. Just her luck. Would she even be up yet? Astrid was a pretty early riser, she thought. And even if she wasn't up, she'd let Diana in and let her stay for a little while. Just so she could process things in a safe place. They were friends, after all. Sort of.

Astrid opened the door, looking sleepy. "Diana?" she said, squinting.

"Yeah. It's me." For a moment, Diana worried she would close the door on her face. Then Astrid pulled the door open.

A few minutes later, she was sitting at the table while Astrid set a cup of water in front of her. The two girls sat together, sipping their drinks and not saying much of anything. Nerves made Diana's stomach crawl; seeing Astrid was a lot different than just thinking of her. She imagined the horror and fury and revulsion on her face if she told her about her dream.

"Is it the baby?"

"What?" Diana jumped a little. Astrid looked at her evenly, her short hair mussed and sticking up in a way that was funny when juxtaposed against her serious expression.

"You look worried. Is it something to do with the baby?"

Diana shook her head. "No, thank God." Astrid's imploring gaze made her want to continue. She cleared her throat and added, "Sam misses you."

Astrid picked up her cup and drank, then said slowly, "I miss him, too."

Something in Diana's gut twinged guiltily. She nodded. "How are things going here?" she asked, looking around the trailer. It was shabby and stark, not that much different from when she lived there.

Astrid shrugged. "Fine." There were dark circles under her eyes, and her mouth seemed at a permanent downward tug.

"You...working things out?" Diana asked, unsure how careful she should be. She never had to ask about Caine or Drake's well-being like this.

Astrid paused. Her lip trembled a little. "I don't know," she admitted. "I'm...confused."

Diana felt a stab of horror at the tears suddenly glistening in her eyes. Why did Astrid think it was okay to cry around her? "Uh, about what?"

"Sam." Astrid took a shaky sip from her cup. "I've been…" She took a breath. "You can't tell anyone."

"I won't. I promise." Diana didn't know what she was promising, exactly, but her curiosity outweighed her caution. She thought briefly of all promises she'd made to various girls at Coates, and how often she broke them.

"I've been going over to Howard and Orc's. I've been trying to help Orc find God."

Diana opened her mouth and closed it again. That certainly wasn't what she'd been expecting. "I thought you weren't a Christ—"

"I'm not. But he—Orc—asked me to help him with reading the Bible. That's what he's doing while he gets sober. So that's where I've been going. But Howard thinks I'm...helping him for the wrong reasons."

Astrid's halting words were so lacking in her usual confidence that Diana had to lean forward to hear her properly. What she heard, though, seemed irrelevant—especially compared to her own problems. "So?" she asked. "Who cares what Howard thinks?"

"But what if he's right?"

Diana resisted the urge to scoff. "Who cares?" she said instead. "You're doing a good thing, right?"

"If I'm doing it for selfish reasons, I don't want to do it at all."

"Okay, then, problem solved. Don't help Orc." Diana suddenly wanted to leave. It'd been a mistake to come. She wished she could talk to someone about her dream, but that person couldn't be Astrid—of course it couldn't. She stood up, glancing through a nearby window at the clear blue sky. "I should get going," she said.

Astrid followed her to the door. "Tell Sam...tell him I've been thinking of him."

"Yeah," Diana said quickly, "I will."

Astrid chewed her lip, standing in the doorway. Diana thought she might say something else, but instead, she closed the door.

Diana walked, her mind buzzing. When she thought about going back to the houseboat, her heart rate sped up. But where else would she go? Should she walk aimlessly until night fell? That might arouse Sam's suspicions—they always hung out on the boat together, albeit most of the time in separate rooms, always aware of each other's presence. Any time, Diana would know almost instinctively that Sam was on the deck or in the kitchen or in his room, wiling away the hours in the privacy of his own head.

She shivered; something in her mind clicked. A few days ago, she'd woken up at dawn and vomited bile onto the floor. Sam has come in, looking worried. She was so out of it, so sick of being pregnant, of feeling swollen and achy and delicate, that his concern made tears—hysterical, stupid tears—roll down her cheeks. He'd touched her back gently, then left to get paper towels. "I'll clean it up," he'd told her, voice low with sleep. "It's okay."

Just thinking of it made butterflies bang around in her stomach. Her pregnant stomach, made that way by another man—another boy, she corrected herself.

Diana took a breath. This was fine. She could control herself, for everyone's sake. She was a good person now, or at least trying to be. Having a silly crush on Sam wasn't in itself a relationship-destroying thing, as long as she didn't act on it.

She started toward the lake, keeping her head up and shoulders back, ignoring the creeping ridiculousness she felt at the swaying of her stomach.

Having Diana around wasn't the concern he'd initially thought it was, Sam often reflected. The more time he spent with her on that quiet houseboat, the more it crystallized how she'd changed since they'd first met. She was cagey, sardonic, at first—Sam has expected that—but even that failed to rankle the way it had before. He could see that she was adrift without Caine, a lackey without an authority to kowtow to. Now, with Astrid gone, it was easier to see what Diana was also missing in Caine, cruel as he was.

Sam wondered if Diana missed him the same way he missed Astrid. She tore him up inside with her coldness, her distance. He loved her more than anything, but more and more it seemed she was slipping away. More than that, she was sliding back into Christianity in the uneasy-fitting way someone would slide into a childhood sweater.

Sam resisted the urge to clench his teeth, remembering the last time they'd talked about it. He didn't have her intelligence, sure, but it didn't take any sort of genius to recognize that she was going to Orc and Howard's place for more than just their company, or the self-righteous satisfaction of performing a good deed.

No, Sam thought worriedly, she was doing it because she wanted to delude herself again, wanted to comfort herself with the belief that there was a higher power. That wasn't a good sign. It wasn't true—she knew it wasn't true. It would hurt her if she started to believe again. Besides, they didn't need a higher power, he wanted to tell her when they argued. They had each other. They had the houseboat gently rocking them to sleep, they had the warmth of each other's naked bodies, they had understanding, they had love. Wasn't that enough? Shouldn't it be?

Not for Astrid, he thought bitterly. He glanced over at Diana on the bed, feeling a little guilty. Even when he had a pregnant girl to watch out for and keep company, Astrid still occupied his thoughts. But if Diana resented him for it in the last few weeks they'd spent being vaguely friendly toward each other, she gave no sign.

Now, Sam studied her sleeping face, half-buried in the crook of a light brown arm that looked too skinny next to her bulging stomach. She really was beautiful, he had to admit. If Astrid was all sharp angles, with her bony elbows and long, solemn face, Diana was all warmth and softness. Her hair, springy and curly in a way his mother would envy, spread across her pillows. Her long eyelashes fluttered slightly as she slept, the nostrils on her puckishly upturned nose quivering.

Sam looked away, feeling uncomfortably voyeuristic. He eased Madame Bovary out from under Diana's outstretched fingers and placed it on her nightstand before departing.

Diana would scoff at him if he said anything, but Sam couldn't help but think that she had a sort of glow around her. She had the type of sun-kissed, easy beauty you would see on actresses lounging on a beach in sunscreen commercials and the glow of pregnancy adults always mentioned. Sam didn't know any other pregnant women to compare her to, but he bet Diana's glow was something like the one people always talked about—like there was a warm, rosy light emanating from her figure, softening the edges of her silhouette, warming her sardonic smile and turning it genuine. Sam didn't know how to describe it.

They'd been reading together, Sam flipping through a magazine while Diana scrunched her eyebrows through Madame Bovary. Occasionally, she brought up Astrid—obliquely, as if saying her name would summon her. "I don't know how she reads this," she grumbled.

"You don't have to keep reading it."

"I know." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Diana glance at him. "But I want to. Then we'll have something to talk about when she comes back."

Sam had felt a pang. She said it so casually. Not that he wasn't sure Astrid would come back, eventually—she had before, hadn't she? But that had made sense, in its own horrible way. When she'd gone away last time, she'd been wracked with grief over Little Pete and working out how she felt about her lack of faith. They'd already been fighting. This time, there was no buildup to her decision that Sam could see. It left him at a loss. They'd been happy. Sure, they'd disagreed about helping Orc, but still—they loved each other, didn't they?

Sam pressed his fingers to his temples. He was going in circles again. He started to walk out onto the deck, then paused and turned back. He might as well take a leaf out of Diana's book and nap. That was one way to stop himself from thinking about Astrid, he thought wryly. The other….

He remembered Taylor, the way her eyes glinted against her soft dark hair, how his fingers had pushed it behind her ear so he could get a better look at her. He remembered the way he'd acted, drunk and needy and wallowing in self-pity, and gave an internal wince. No, he couldn't drink. He wasn't that far gone.

As he reclined on his bunk, Sam thought again of his housemate. Beautiful, repentant Diana. His gut gave a sudden, awful twist as a new thought came to mind. If he did drink, who's to say he wouldn't make the same stupid mistake he did with Taylor? All she did was arrive at exactly the wrong time. And Diana was always there. She was as lonely and hurt as he was—even more so, considering the kind of person her boyfriend was. If he did drink, would he be tempted?

The thought chilled him. No, he thought. The thing with Taylor was different.

Wasn't it?

Sam turned his head to the side and inhaled Astrid's faint, lingering scent on his pillow. It was, he told himself. He wasn't that guy anymore. He wasn't nearly as screwed up or frustrated or angry. He wouldn't betray Astrid like that, not again.

You didn't think you would betray her the first time, either, a voice accused. But you did.

Fear and doubt filled Sam in equal measure. He wanted to clamp his fists over his ears and block out the little nagging voice in his head. Instead, he turned over onto his side, sticking his hands between his thighs to warm them. That was the way Astrid slept, usually, and he'd taken up the habit.

He wanted more than ever to stroke Astrid's blonde hair, to cup her cheek and kiss her, to feel her body move as one with his, as natural and right as waves swelling and crashing again and again on a beach. His heart ached, his body thrummed with want. He was alone again.

Not completely alone, though, he couldn't resist thinking. Diana was there with him. They were alone together.

Sam set his jaw, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep.