For a moment, I wondered what Winter would look like in my world. What I would look like in hers. What it would feel like to have her in my arms every night and wake up to her warmth every morning.

When she fell asleep on my chest, I studied her face so closely she’ll never be able to have another emotion without me detecting it before she does. I moved the hair from her face and swirled my thumb over her cheek, and down her neck. Her skin felt like hope. It was the fullest I had ever felt in my life.

It made me nauseous to feel so utterly consumed by my feelings for her.

Why I slipped out of her bed, I don’t know. Because that’s what I do, I guess. I sleep alone because, well, I’ve never had the desire to sleep next to anyone. But also because of my dreams. I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. I’ve always accepted that when I sleep, I relinquish control to the beast inside, and in my dreams, he takes over. I’ve woken up in cold sweats, yelling, gripping and clawing at the blankets like I’m falling a thousand feet to the earth, and I’m desperately trying to pull the line to my chute. I wake with the memory of watching both of my parents throw their hands up to shield the bullets that would travel into their skulls anyway. I wake feeling tethered to the boy who watched his parents being murdered, then hid for three days under his bed, in his own mess, until the urge to eat grew so strong he contemplated eating his own fingernails.

I didn't want Winter to experience that. I didn’t want to lessen what we shared by bringing my beast into her bed. And if I woke from my past and found her next to me, I didn’t want to feel what it would be like to have Winter bring me back to life. Because that would surely be a feeling I’d cling to. A feeling I’m not sure I could let go of.

And when I woke up that morning, I ran an extra six miles to shed the angst of having came so fast our first time together, I couldn’t possibly live it down. Also because I made her wake up alone after what felt like a monumental step between us.

I hated myself for that.

Guilt isn’t a feeling I’m used to. A growing trend in my current situation, feeling things I’ve not yet felt until Winter.

Then Hayden showed up. To revel in the fact that he knows just how to get under my skin, no doubt. Games are his favorite pastime and everything is a game to Hayden, especially people.

When Richard and Mildred Fox gathered me from the children’s home and told me I would live with them thereafter, that I would be their son, I would be a Fox, I vowed to let no one place fear in me ever again. I vowed to remain un-fucking-moveable.