I hadn’t even realized how much I was suppressing my attraction to Emily while Charlie was around. Because the moment he went away, and even in the midst of danger and uncertainty, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it’d be like to kiss her and feel her softness beneath me.

Emily ripped open the sleeve of crackers and shoved one in her mouth. Then she tossed one to me and leaned her head back as she squirted the cheese into her mouth.

I laughed and she gestured for me to do the same, so I tipped my head and opened my mouth. Emily grinned as she squeezed a generous serving of cheesy goo onto my tongue. Oh God, that was so good. Not as good as the dinner we’d eaten the night before with Tom and Jane and their family, but it’d been a long twelve hours with only a handful of almonds to fill our bellies, and so this was an unexpected windfall. Before I’d realized we’d turned in the wrong direction somewhere, I’d been thinking about snares and wondering how long it’d take to catch something for dinner.

“Wait,” I said, knowing how easy it would be to gorge ourselves on this. “We need to ration. Who knows if we’ll find anything to eat tomorrow.”

She nodded, her mouth too full to speak for a moment. “I know, I know. Okay. Just one more squeeze.”

We each enjoyed another mouthful of cheese and a few crackers and then regretfully packed them away in my backpack. But it was a relief to know that we had something for tomorrow too. Emily lay back on the wooden floor of the fort and smiled up at the canopy of trees. The sun was setting, the resplendent yellow sky filtering through the tree boughs. Everything looked mildly smudged and slightly out of focus as though we’d found ourselves in a make-believe forest. I lay down next to her, our hips touching as we stared upward. “This light,” I said, “it reminds me of the hayloft at Honey Hill.”

I didn’t look at her, but I heard her mouth move into a smile. “Magical,” she said. “That’s how I think of Honey Hill Farm. That’s how I remember it.”

“Golden,” I added. I felt unexpectedly choked up. “My memories of those years are gilded.”

She did look at me then, and I turned toward her. “It’s the first time you’ve talked about Honey Hill to me.”