There is a question buried in his statement and how his hand tightens on mine. He wants to know that I won’t say anything, that if the stars should fall from the sky and our fake and real friendships imploded into nothing, I wouldn’t take this story to the press and sell it to the highest bidder.

He wants to know that he is safe.

And though it is dreadfully inappropriate, while sitting beside the graves of his sisters, with the manifested fog of my dead friend weaving its way around us, I kiss Nolan Endsley on the cheek.

He freezes, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake, if I’ve misinterpreted the hand-holding and the sleeping in a pile on the bookstore floor. My face reddens with a blush of embarrassment and I make to pull back.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

But his head whips toward me, his hand coming around to the back of my neck. For an unfathomable period of time, we stare at each other, the kind of staring where your eyes don’t blink and your toes curl in your shoes the longer you look. The air between us is humming with a charge for which I have no name as the line between us tightens just short of breaking.

Behind his eyes, the trees in the once-dark forest are orange in the growing light. Wolves scamper off and gnash their teeth at the rising sun, and all manner of threatening, creepy shadows melt into nothing as I watch the world that is Nolan uncurl from its sleep.

When the light reaches his eyes and shines out, he tilts his head ever so slightly. I hold my breath as he both pulls me in and leans into me with a sigh that sounds like a crashing wave.

“Amelia,” he whispers, and then his lips are on mine.

It’s not my first kiss. There were boys I dated. But I forget their names and faces in this moment, as I press forward, trying to shrink the space between Nolan and me into nothing.

Nolan and me.

He kisses like he talks when he is passionate about something—thoroughly, completely, and with such precision you wonder if anyone else could ever compare.

We fall into a rhythm, quick, slow, quick, slow, but eventually the lack of breath catches up with me and I gently push him away.

“Need to breathe,” I exhale.

He brings my lips back to his, but doesn’t press them together.

“Breathe like this,” he says against my lips, “but don’t go.”

A cruel reminder.

I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry I have to go back to Texas.”

He leans back a fraction, sprawling his hand against my neck and rubbing his thumb up and down my cheekbone. “I’m sorry you feel trapped,” he whispers.

I smile, but if his kiss was the sea, this smile is a puddle. “I’m sorry that you’re sorry.”

He tilts his head forward, stopping just short of our lips meeting again.