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1
Sadie
What was I doing?
I jerked the hood of my sweatshirt up over my curls to both ward off the chill of the night air and hide my blonde hair. Trotting down the side of the highway, I took care not to turn on my flashlight until I diverted into the woods. The yellow beam did a poor job of illuminating the gigantic trees around me, but it was better than nothing.
If anybody saw me, they would immediately assume I was up to no good. And on the one hand, I was. I didn’t want my mom or brother to know I was out here in the middle of the night.
On the other hand…
Well, on the other hand, there was nowhere I would rather be.
Mikhail and I had agreed to meet tonight, far away from prying eyes.
Far from my mom, who’d always treated Mikhail as another son. And far from my brother — Mikhail’s best friend. Far from anyone who would see us and gossip. In a town like Smythe, which boasted exactly two traffic lights and a boarding school, Tides Academy, the news that Mikhail and I were more than friends would spread like wildfire.
It was stupid, but these were the precautions we were taking.
I ducked under a failing barbed wire fence, the sound of waves pounding the shore growing louder. After a few more minutes of walking, I couldn’t suppress a shudder as the old house loomed suddenly from the fog that was rolling in from the ocean. It would fit in perfectly at a carnival of horrors or on the set of a scary movie. It had been abandoned for as long as I could remember. No one really came out this way — particularly since it was trespassing on private property.
Plus, the terrain was treacherous. If I slipped on a loose stone or tripped over an exposed tree root, it could send me tumbling down the hill — and over the edge of the cliff to the shore below.
It seemed like a foolish risk to take, but I was a fool. A fool in love.
“Sadie!”
I couldn’t hold in a tiny shriek as Mikhail popped up from behind a particularly bushy fern.
“Were you trying to scare me?” I demanded, angry and flustered and suddenly so nervous it was almost painful. “Dammit, Misha!”
“Nyet — of course I wasn’t,” he said, his cheeks dimpling as he made a very obvious attempt to hide a grin of delight. His blue eyes danced. “Your little squeal was so cute, though. Is that a preview of what’s to come?”
I shoved at his shoulder. “What a terrible pun.”
“That means my English is as good as it gets,” Mikhail gloated, tugging me close to him. “Puns require the maximum command of the language.”
“Well, I command you to never tell me a pun again. Way to ruin the mood.”
That was a blatant lie. There was nothing that would ruin the mood for me. Not when I was pressed up against him like that, his tall, lanky frame belying his sheer physical strength. He radiated warmth, which I was more than thankful for.
“Glad you made it, Sadie,” he said softly, tracing my face with the tips of his fingers.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said, biting my lip. “Even though I think it’s stupid to sneak around. We’re not kids.”
“We both agreed that Mamachka wouldn’t like it,” Mikhail reminded me, using his nickname for my mom. “And that Jonathan would never accept the two of us together. He’s protective of you.”
“Just because he’s a whole two minutes older than I am doesn’t mean he has a right to butt into my private life,” I grumbled. “We’re twenty years old and sneaking out like we’re still at Tides, avoiding the security guard.”
Mikhail snorted fondly. “We could’ve directed a marching band past his office and he wouldn’t have woken up. Ridiculous old man. Remember the time we had the midnight soccer game? Epic.”
Of course I remembered. We’d been all of eleven years old, Mikhail and Jonathan organizing two full soccer teams to sneak out, en masse, from the academy’s dormitories on the night of a full moon. I’d somehow scored, and Mikhail had hugged me and lifted me over his head.
I could probably pinpoint that as the first time I realized I had feelings for my brother’s best friend.
“I had to beg Jon to let me come — and you had to insist,” I recalled a little sourly. “He knew he’d be in big trouble if Mom found out he’d let me sneak out with the rest of you. He’s always hated when he had to share you with me.”
“Don’t make me choose between you and my best friend.” Mikhail’s voice and intonation were flat. We’d had this discussion before. Mikhail called my mom Mamachka because his mother was across the world with his father, both of them managing the family business. He called my twin bratan because Jonathan was the closest thing to a brother that an only child like Mikhail would ever have.
