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My sisters would agree to time me but would forget to either start or end the timer, meaning I had to keep trying to get an accurate measurement.

I met Damian on one of those days.

I surfaced in the middle of the lake, in my goggles and my boring bathing suit I had selected because it was utilitarian—it had two pieces, a top that came down to about my belly button and a pair of boy shorts—and it was covered in pictures of little pink octopuses.

Somehow, it had not yet occurred to me to care if anyone liked the look of me.

And then he saw me.

I was thirteen. Damian was fourteen, so practically my age, but he seemed older somehow. Or maybe seeing him just woke me up to my actual age. Maybe it was too easy to continue to pretend to be a baby. My sisters were acting grown up, and my parents liked for me to remain the little kid. They liked me to still be the youngest, to still cavort and play and stay young. I liked it, too.

But there he was, and I suddenly realized what I looked like, surfacing from the water in my little-girl bathing suit with the cartoon octopuses all over it, my hair in a sloppy ponytail, big goggles on my face.

He was in a canoe with Vincent, his big brother. Vincent was sixteen, and because their parents were both dead, they were both technically alpha wolves at that point, and Vincent looked like a man, like a grown damned adult, with his broad shoulders and the hair on his chest and stubble on his chin. He and Damian stopped rowing, lifting their oars up, and they both looked down at me.

I had never felt so self-conscious in my life.

Damian himself, he looked like a kid. He had not yet filled out, so he was a little scrawny. His hair was wavy and sunstreaked. He had those intensely light green eyes of his, though.

They were very attractive boys, the both of them, and I had sort of never noticed attractive boys in that way before. The way where I wanted to do something with them—the boys—and where I wanted them to want to do something with me.

But when I locked gazes with Damian for the first time, I felt a bolt of shame and disgust for myself go all through me, and I suddenly understood why my sisters spent all their time lying around bronzing in the sun, making sure never to get their hair wet or their faces wet—keeping their makeup intact. I realized it was because they wanted to look good, and that I did not look good, that I looked like an idiot child who did not care about my appearance.

I said something like, “Sorry I’m in your way.”

Damian said, and he was grinning at me, “Wow, it’s so cool you’re out here right in the middle. It’s deep out here. The current can be strong. Lots of girls wouldn’t swim out here.”

“Yeah, well, I should probably swim closer to the bank,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to get hit by a canoe.”

Damian and Vincent both laughed, as if I’d actually said something funny and not cringey. I wanted to die. I wanted this not to have been the first impression I made on those boys, especially Damian. I wanted to look away from him, but I couldn’t seem to do it. I felt like I was stuck there in his light green eyes, like I was trapped there.

Eventually, I forced myself to do it. I turned and I started to swim, not even saying goodbye, just wanting to get free as quickly as I could, to get out of this mortifying situation.

“You here for the summer?” called Damian.

I stopped, treading water, facing his canoe. “We’re in that cabin.” I tried to gesture to it. I had drifted a bit downstream. The current was a little strong out here.

“Okay,” he said. “That one.” He was still grinning.

I started to swim again.

“Hey, what’s your name?” he called after me.

“Leona,” I called back, but I kept swimming. I was terribly embarrassed. I didn’t want him to look at me anymore.

CHAPTER TWO

NOW, I WAS going back to Riverside, and when I got there, he would be there.

Damian.

It was a four-hour drive to Riverside from the city.

I didn’t want to see him.

Oh, maybe I did. Maybe I really, really did.

The Red Moon River actually wound up near the city, a branch of it, anyway, that people just called the East Branch, since East Branch of the Red Moon River is a mouthful. By the time Red Moon River got down to where Riverside was, it was all flowing together, both branches. Sometimes, if there was a lot of rain, the river could be fierce and terrifying, too deep to swim in, the current too strong to navigate, a dangerous strength that could drag you down under it and drown you in its pull.