“You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
For a moment, we sit in silence while a man plays fetch with his dog in the square out in the cold. I wonder if he knows about Emma and Sienna. I wonder what’s happening online as we sit here in the quiet. I wonder what Harper’s going to tell her brother, Jake, when she gets home.
Jude pulls at his jaw. “I don’t say this as an excuse. It’s just—I’m not used to that part.”
“Which part?”
“Thetogetherpart.”
“Oh.”
The hard little knot goes soft and gooey.
He’s right, of course. For the past several years,togetherhasn’t been a thing for him at all. Jude’s been on his own. The only family he has left is a stepmother who shipped him off to boarding school before his dad’s body was even cold in the grave.
“Well,” I say, squaring my shoulders. “You’re gonna have to get used to it. And I’d really appreciate if you wouldn’t hide things from me anymore. Even if they’re scary.”
“For the record, I’m not scared.”
“For the record, I am.”
Jude wraps his hand around the back of his neck and peeks at me apologetically from thecorner of his eye. “Is there anything I can do to help with that?”
“For starters,” I tell him extending my pinkie, “you can promise to never lie to me again.”
“I won’t,” he says, glancing curiously at my proffered finger. “What are you doing with that?”
“Making it official.”
He quirks his eyebrow.
“It’s a pinkie promise,” I say, lifting my small appendage higher. At the blank look on his face, I drop my hand into my lap. “You’ve never heard of a pinkie promise?”
“Are they more serious than regular promises?”
“They are the most serious of all promises.” I reach across the console, muttering about living under a rock. I take his hand and curl my pinkie around his. “To make it official, you have to say, ‘I pinkie promise I won’t ever lie to you again.’”
Jude grins, and the sight of it is so dazzling, I have to press my lips together to keep from smiling back.
And dang it if he doesn’t play along.
With his eyes locked on mine, he adopts a look of utter sincerity and says, “Selah Mae Whitlock, I promise with the entire might of my left pinkie to never, ever lie to you again.”
I’m flying through the woods, carved out and hungry. So incredibly hungry. Her auburn hair flashes in front of me and I lunge. I tackle her to the ground. I pin her to the forest floor. I lift menacing claws and rake them down her chest, then I watch in horror as she morphs into Jude, his mark spreading beneath my hands, expanding like a bloom of black blood I cannot stop.
He bleeds and bleeds.
Until his eyes are empty and dead.
Horrified, I back away.
I scuttle like a crab until my shoulders press into stone and I can’t go any further.
A howl echoes through the trees.
Someone grabs my arm.
Nails bite into my wrist.
