I open my mouth to scream for Josh, but then Brecken steps out from behind the tree and I need to run. I have to stay away from him.

Except it isn’t Brecken. The shadows swallow his features, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere. My throat closes up, my mouth curdling around the shape of the name.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Josh.

It’s Josh standing on the hill. I can see the bulk of his jacket. The shaggy edges of his hair. And his crutches are nowhere in sight.

Numbness is a gift. That’s what the nurse told me, and I believe her now. Because for one blissful breath I feel nothing looking at Josh. He stole our things. Wrote me letters. Pushed poison pills into Kayla’s outstretched hand. He did all of this, and now he is hustling down the mountain without the vaguest hint of a limp. He is walking and I am back on my knees, watching this all unfold like I have nothing to do with it at all.

I take a breath. It smells like Christmas in this forest.

Get up.

My instinct overrides my stupor, launching me to my feet. I’m wobbly. Shivering. And it’s too late. He’s on me.

“Do you see me now?” he asks. “Do you finally remember?”

I open my mouth, but I have no idea what to say. I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything, and I don’t understand what he’s asking. I’m frozen, rooted into this ground like one of the evergreens towering over me.

His laugh is a cruel joke, and it’s clear I’m the punch line. “Aren’t I the fool to believe you’d be smarter than this?”

“I…” No words feel right, so I trail into nothing.

“Do you really not remember me? I was wearing this same damn brace when I bought your coffee. I made everything better for you in that moment. You wept, Mira!”

His words are a hodgepodge of sounds that don’t belong together and hold no meaning for me. And then something begins to coalesce, the dark impression of a truth. Someone did buy me coffee. The night that Phoebe died, in the hospital, I forgot my money and someone bought my coffee.

But it wasn’t Josh! He had a beard. He didn’t…

My thoughts strangle themselves to silence because I don’t remember enough to be sure of anything except this: someone did buy me coffee. And I cried. Not because of coffee but because of Phoebe.

Because I was breaking to pieces.

“Oh, are we done playing games now?” he asks. “Done pretending you don’t know me like you did in the gallery that day?”