Page 58 of Wild Thorns

And then: I’m going to find out what it is.

I fell asleep with the window open, the howling fading into the distance, dreaming of magnolia groves, golden eyes and hands that promised things words couldn’t say.

Then the dream fragmented.

I was standing in a forest I didn't recognize, surrounded by darkness. And there was something in the trees with me. Something watching from the shadows, its breathing heavy and wet.

Little bird, a voice whispered. Not Callum's. Not Jasper's. Not Eli's. Something older. Something wrong. Did you think the wolves could keep you safe from me?

I woke gasping, my hand pressed to my chest, heart hammering.

The howling had stopped.

The preserve was silent.

And on my windowsill, placed carefully in a pool of moonlight, was a single white rose.

Chapter sixteen

To Be Continued

Iwoke gasping, my hand pressed to my chest, heart hammering.

The moonlight pooled through the window highlighting a windowsill barren of roses. It was just a bad dream. You’re okay. I count my breaths. I refuse to allow Marcus to steal one more moment of joy from me. I search for a thought, a place, powerful enough to disassociate. I find it dancing with Callum under string lights: bodies closer than socially acceptable, intense, electric heat. Then Jasper: effervescent, comfortable, safe and warm. Sleep found me again somewhere between Jasper and Eli.

I wake up to sunlight and the memory of almost.

Almost kissing Jasper on the stairs. Almost crossing some invisible line I'd drawn in the dirt without quite knowing I'd drawn it. Almost forgetting every single reason I packed my bags and drove across the country to disappear into a town I'd never heard of.

I lie there and let the morning happen around me, the light moving across the ceiling, the sound of something moving below in the main house, the smell of coffee drifting up from somewhere, and I replay it like a film I've already memorized.

His breath against my lips. The roughness in his voice when he said I'm running out of reasons not to do this, like it was a confession he'd been holding too long. The way time had done that impossible thing where it stretched and compressed at once, so that a single breath felt like an entire season.

And then, Eli's voice cutting through the darkness. Jasper. Callum needs you.

And then, Jasper's frustrated exhale, the laugh that wasn't really a laugh at all. The way he'd pressed a kiss to my knuckles instead; slow, deliberate, a punctuation mark rather than an ending. To be continued. Three words. A promise with teeth.

I press the back of my hand against my mouth and stare at the ceiling.

To be continued.

That's fine. That's good, even. Continued implies choice. Continued implies I still have time to decide what I want, who I am in this town, whether staying is something I'm doing intentionally or just something that's happening to me.

Continued implies I'm in control of this.

I'm very aware that I may not be in control of this.

I also remember what came after.

After I climbed the stairs and didn't turn on the lights. After I sat on my bed in the dark and tried to sort through everything: the heat of his hands, the almost-kiss, the shape in the trees on the walk home that Jasper had been too careful to look at.

I got up and crossed to the window.

Three figures crossing the yard in moonlight, moving with that fluid coordination I'd noticed before and filed away as eccentric old-money family; probably nothing. The file was overflowing. Callum in front, that particular gravity to his movement, the way he led without seeming to try. Jasper flanking, more subdued than I'd ever seen him. Eli at the rear, his hands in his pockets, his attention sweeping the edges of the property as they went.

They disappeared into the preserve like they belonged to it. Like the dark opened for them.

And then, a moment later, the sounds of the night, the howling.