Hours later, after Dr Betram had taken us to eat at a tiny restaurant and we had dropped Susie off at home, Ned and I sat on the back steps, looking up at the orange sky. I had finished my glass of water and sat turning it in my hands, watching the condensation collect at the bottom and spill to the step in fat, wet drops.

"What's on your mind?" I looked up to see Ned studying me seriously.

"What?"

"Whenever you're mulling something over, your shoulders get all hunched. Plus that glass has been empty for a while and you're staring at it like it has a secret."

I couldn't help gaping at him. He looked mildly alarmed. "I've known you for most of my life, too, you know."

I set my glass down and wiped the moisture off my hands, locking them in front of me, my forearms resting on my knees.

Next to me, Ned shifted uncomfortably. "You don't have to tell me if it's not for me hear. You just seemed troubled."

I wondered what that would do to our new friendship, me refusing to tell him my thoughts. It wasn't as if he had ever been entitled to know what I was thinking, and I'd declined to talk about things before. He had always respected my privacy. I examined my hands.

"I was just thinking about your family." It was only partly true.

He took a deep breath, turning his head to gaze out over our back fence. "Oh yeah? About how jealous you are of us?"

"I actually used to be jealous. At least a little. When we were kids." He nodded silently, waiting. "But you people."

He chuckled. "I know."

"You're a mess."

"Tell me about it. I've never seen a family like yours. Where everyone loves each other like that." I turned to see his profile, the line of his jaw hardened now from the way he was clenching his teeth. I wondered for a moment why it had never occurred to me that he might know my face and my mannerisms as well as I knew his. I had never thought of our friendship from his side before, not even that morning, waking up to see how careful he'd been the night before.

"I mean," he continued, making an inconsequential gesture with one hand, "your uncle is welcoming and he doesn't even know me. The fact that you know me is enough. And you and your sister adore each other, and then there's Billy…You know, I wasn't ever really jealous of you until he showed up at Mansfield?"

"You were jealous?" The surprise in my voice made him turn his head, smiling ruefully.

"Of course I was jealous. You had this big brother who adored you, who stood up for you, who prioritized you. You spoke to him and he listened. How could I not be jealous about that?"

The look on his face made me lean my head on his shoulder. His breath shuddered in, then out, and then his arm came up to wrap around me. We were quiet for a long time.

I didn't have to speak loud for him to hear me. "Nola hated for me to have anything that was better than what you had."

At her name, he stiffened, but pulled me in closer. "You don't have to talk about anything you don't want to," was all he said.

"No, it's good. It's better to talk about it than not."

"Did she…Did she ever hit you? Hurt you?"

"No, she never hit me. That was my mom. Nola just hated to see me happy. Whenever I made her angry, she'd try to take away something I liked." I could feel his anger in his breathing, the way he sat rigid, upright. "When I moved to Mansfield proper, it got better. She wanted me gone, and I ended being close enough that your parents might notice if something happened to me."

"So what did you do? When she was like that?"

"When she was angry? There was nothing I could do. She did what she wanted to do. But before she got angry, I could hide the things I cared about. I got good at hiding things. And then there was Billy and Susie and you. She couldn't take people away from me, no matter how much I cared about them. No matter how much she hated me."

"Jesus. God."

We were quiet for a moment. Then, I whispered, "You were a kid, too, Ned."

"Not for all of it. I should have at least seen it when I came back from college. When I was home for the summer. Something. You spent four years alone in that house with her, and I could have done something and I didn't." He took his arm off of my shoulder and I sat up to look at him as he laced and unlaced his fingers, as his eyes flicked to my face and then down and then away and then back to me. "Your life with us was messed up, and I knew it, even if I didn't realize that I knew. I could have stopped it and I didn't."

"Nola's your family, Ned. If I know one thing about you, it's how much you want to believe in your family."

He shook his head, staring down at the step underneath his feet. "You were more my family than she has ever been. I should have protected you."

"Maybe," I said, looking away. I felt his eyes on me, but I didn't face him. "Truth is, there were a lot of people who should have protected me. And Billy. We should have been cared for better. But if you'd stepped up more, done more, I might never have come here. Gotten to where I am. I would still be back a Mansfield, probably, waiting for you to come home. And we both know that I'm worth more than that." Now I did look at him, and the raw admiration on his face made tears prick my eyes. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to the exact center of my forehead, lingering for two breaths, three.

Our faces were still close when he pulled away and whispered, "Every day I wake up and I thank God for you."

I had never been terribly religious, not even with Ned for a best friend, but it was still the highest compliment anyone had ever paid me. I reached up to take his hand and laced his fingers with mine, my thumb gliding up and down his own.

"Ned. What are you going to do now? About Tom?"

With his free hand, Ned reached up to rub his face, sighing again and leaning back a little. "My dad's probably taking Tom back to Connecticut when we get the doctor's approval. That shouldn't be too long from now."

"That's not what I asked."

"I know." A squirrel skittered across the fence top, then the loudest noise was a car alarm blocks away. There was a humid stillness in the air that we didn't break.

"Summer's going to end soon. I need to go back to school and finish my program."

"Yes."

"And I should go be with my brother while he gets better."

"You should."

"I don't want to leave. Even with—even with everything, I feel better than I have in a long time." He stared down at our linked hands. His thumb played with mine.

We sat in silence again. The breeze picked up and ruffled his cropped curls, throwing my shoelaces across my sneakers.

"I have to go back to Mansfield." He made it sound like a death sentence.

I put my head back down on his shoulder, unaccountably relieved. "Yes, you do."

"But hey, I'll actually call you this time." His voice had an acid ring to it which I both appreciated and didn't.

"That would be delightful."

" 'Twould be my delight. There are a lot of things I need to do."

"Which one are you going to do first?"

"First? Well, first I'm going to give you your birthday present."

I sat up. His thumb stilled against my wrist. "My what?"

The corner of his mouth turned up ruefully. "I owe you a few. You may have noticed."

I watched him, blinking. He was smiling, but his eyes on my face were serious, watchful.

Despite myself, I gave voice to my earlier worries. "Ned, you really are going to call me, aren't you? You aren't going to give me gifts and then disappear again?"

He dropped his gaze to watch our hands, still linked together, fingers still laced. I watched his chest work as he breathed. When he brought his eyes up to meet mine, his jaw was set in a stubborn line. "I'm never disappearing again." I was the one who turned away, not interested in crying in front of him twice in the same day.

"It won't mean anything until I prove it, though," he murmured. I didn't contradict him.

"So what's my birthday present?" The toes of my shoes were dirty; a black speck on my left sneaker wouldn't be rubbed off.

He dropped my hand to fish in his pocket, pulling out a small box.

"This doesn't make up for all that I owe you, since it's a repeat present. But this one's better, I think."

"You don't have to buy me anything," I protested, taking the box anyway.

He grinned. "I think that's exactly what you said the last time I gave you something."

I lifted the lid. Inside, nestled on cotton gauze, was a leather bracelet with a silver medallion, the exact replica of the present Ned had given me on my eighteenth birthday. Instead of my nickname, though, this one was stamped with the name FLANNERY on one side and a line drawing of a Gothic-style building on the other. I looked up at him, smiling, my chest suddenly too tight for my lungs. I reached out the bracelet and my wrist and, grinning now himself, he tied it on me.

"Thank you," I whispered. His gaze dropped to my lips as he stuffed the empty box back in his pocket.

"Don't mention it."

Two days later, Liam and Susie and I were watching Ned get into the car his father had ordered for him. He didn't have a suitcase, just a backpack of clothes and a few books he'd taken with him when he first came looking for Tom. I held it in my hands as we walked down the front steps.

Liam shook Ned's hand briefly, then stepped out of the way for Susie to hand him a bottle of water from out fridge. The car had probably come stocked with water, knowing Dr Bertram, but Ned smiled sweetly at Susie and held out his arms for a hug. When they stepped back, she was doing her best to look disinterested and glum.

And then it was me. We stood close, watching each other.

"I'll call you. I'll come and see you." Even here among my family, his voice was pitched low.

"I'm sorry I can't come with you." I ran my thumbs over the bumpy strap of his backpack.

"You have finals. And I understand, you know. All the other reasons you can't come."

"Ned, I—" And then, for the first time in two years, it happened again. My throat closed up, and I started to choke on my own words. I made a coughing sound, and my face must have registered my surprise because Ned stepped closer, a look of wild alarm spreading across his dear, miserable face.

"Flannery! Are you okay?" One hand came up to cup my face while its twin rested lightly on my shoulder.

I coughed again, and found I could breathe again. So I did, deeply, several times before I looked up at him.

"I missed you, Ned. I missed you so much. I'm glad you're back."

His face changed rapidly, and I thought for a moment he was about to cry. I pulled him to me, wrapping my arms around him. He had to stoop to hug me, but he gave no indication that he was uncomfortable. When we pulled away, I pressed a kiss to his favorite spot, the dead center of the forehead. There had been walls, before, between us. We had rarely touched except for the occasional hug. Now, it seemed, we were close enough, comfortable enough, to share a kiss like this, to hold hands, to be intimate without discomfort or strain. Maybe he had been holding back. Maybe we had both been.

"Thank God for you, Flannery Calhoun Price." Then he was out of my arms, and my hands were empty, and he had closed the car door, and the car was driving away, and I felt, not emptiness, not really, but something similar to desolation. Except this time I knew that nothing was over. Or, rather, that my time in Mansfield was as over as I wanted it to be.

And what I knew, as an incontrovertible fact, was that Ned Bertram belonged in my life, and that I would fight his father, his sisters, his girlfriend, his own insecurities, and even his monster of an aunt to make sure he stayed there. He was my best friend; he was my family. We would never abandon each other again.