He looks hurt, like he doesn’t understand.
“If you tell me,” I say, the words breathless on my lips, “I know it will change everything.” My teeth clamp down. “If you tell me, you can’t take it back.”
He steps toward me, his dangerous, perfect, awful green eyes melting in with the dark room.
“And I don’t want to be afraid of you,” I say. The worst kind of afraid. The kind that won’t let you sleep, that burrows in so deep that even bone moths steer clear of such things. Such memories. Such awful deeds. Max is dead and Oliver went into the woods and all the boys were at the lake that night. All of them were there and maybe it wasn’t an accident, maybe they all played some part, maybe they’re all to blame.
And there’s no way to make it right.
“You’re not afraid of me now?” he asks, inhaling deeply.
“No.”
He watches me in a way that makes my heart swim, loosened in my chest—my lungs caught mid-exhale. He looks like someone stuck in a place he doesn’t belong, a spike of fear running through his center—he looks as wild as the wilderness beyond the window.
Maybe it’s the look in his eyes: of desperation, of restlessness. Like every second is a clock counting down.Tick, tick, tick.Something stirs inside him, something neither of us can escape.
He shifts forward and presses his lips to mine.
His fingers find my collarbone, gentle like snowflakes caught in hair, and I kiss him back. I kiss him before my heart swells up into my throat. Before I crack open and become a puddle who used to be a girl. I kiss a boy who’s been to the farthest, deepest edge of the Wicker Woods and returned, who tastes like the violent winds that settle over the lake in winter. A boy who is more forest than flesh.
I press my fingers against his shoulder, his chest, searching for his heartbeat. Touching all the places I’ve wanted to a hundred times before.I need to know if he’s real.Or if the woods have made him something else, soil and stones. He kisses me softly at first, and then with an ache inside him, his hands against my ribs—pressing, pressing, as if he were leaving little bruises where his fingertips rest. Maybe for all the same reasons. To be certain I’m real. To see if I taste like memories, like winter, like the forest that nearly killed him.
We’re both looking for something to hold on to—gravity or fingertips or lips to make us real. To make us last. Before the truth wedges itself firmly between us.
His lips are warm on mine and his hands slip around my back, around my neck, around and up into my hair. His dark, sleepy eyes close and I sink into him, pressing my lips harder. His touch feels like moonlight beneath my skin.
Beating hearts and swollen rib cages.
He is familiar when he shouldn’t be. He is not mine to keep, but I found him and brought him back.
The walls bow outward away from us, the ceiling bends and drifts away, the snow outside the window and my small wooden bed are watercolor blurs at the edge of my vision. I feel my heart slow, as time stalls like a single drop at the tip of a leaf, waiting to fall,to shatter apart on the ground below. My room expands and I’m certain I’ve been here before, felt Oliver’s lips on mine, kissed him just like this.
I draw my mouth away from his.
My lungs burn.
I press my palms to his chest, for balance, to keep from sinking to the floor. To keep time from wheeling away from me.
Something is happening that I don’t understand.
His eyes shiver open—as if waking—emerald eyes and full lips and I know I could drown in him if I let myself. I could vanish. And it feels like a tale from a book. Rosy cheeks and forever kisses and sunsets that last and last and last. Where there is no heartache and no death. No tears making rivers at your feet.
But this is not that tale.
His throat shivers before he speaks, his fingers falling away from my hair, careful and slow. “It’s late,” he says gently. “You should sleep.” But he’s peering into me, his gaze refusing to let go.
Words bloom in my throat and press against my lips. But I don’t let them out because they are the wrong words. Dangerous words. Frail, breakable things that I won’t be able to take back. And sleep tugs at me, exhaustion like a black hole.
He looks just as weary—a darkness in him that needs rest. “So should you,” I say.
“I’ll stay awake,” he answers, eyes still soft and lidded. “I’ll keep watch.”
Little sparks rise across my skin—a feeling I can’t trust. But one I don’t know how to ignore.We see heartache coming from a mile away,Grandma would say.But we don’t know how to step out of the way.
The snow softens outside, only a few flakes whirling against the glass, and I crawl into bed—sinking gratefully into my pillow. I’m still wearing all my clothes—just in case. In case I have to wake suddenly, kick back the blankets, and run from the house.
In case the boys come for me.
