“What do you need saving from?” I ask him. I want him to tell me about the circles under his eyes. The darkness around the edges of him. The parts of him that are sore and broken. I want to hear about the things that haunt him. I need him to name his ghosts for me. Because I have this aching need to know Cole Culver. Really know him. Again. Like when we were little. “What is it you’re so afraid of?”

He opens his mouth, and I think he’s going to tell me. But then I feel his fingers in my hair. Something inside me twists, and before I stop to wonder if I should, I’m pressing my lips against his neck. I hear Cole gasp in surprise, and he drops one hand down my back to slide it under my shirt.

My breath comes in a rush. I’m pressing myself harder against him. I want more contact. More of my lips on his neck. More of his heart beating against my ribs. More of his fingers on my skin.

I find his ear. Tease it with my lips. And my teeth. I feel him shudder. He breathes my name into the dark. Slides his palm across my back.

It’s the scratch of a match.

The sizzle of flames.

My whole body has been lit on fire. And I’ve never felt heat like this.

Not when I first crouched in the courtyard of our apartment back home, hunkered against the Texas wind, trying to get a pile of leaves to ignite.

Not when I was ten and set off the school sprinkler system lighting toilet paper in the bathroom sink.

Or when I burned my gym bag in the alley eighth-grade year, just to see how big the flames would get.

Definitely not when Denton Erikson rammed his tongue down my throat in the back seat of his car after the winter formal last February.

Not with anybody else. Ever.

But Cole makes me feel so much. And not all of it is good. Some of it is confusing. And a lot of it is scary. But all of it is real.

Because Cole makes me feel alive.

He pulls back a little and takes a shaky breath. “You okay?” he asks. And that strikes me as funny. It makes me giggle, because I feel so strange and giddy all of a sudden. Disoriented. Like I just got off some spinning ride at the fair.

It’s dizzying, going from desperate and lost and hurting to this wanting feeling that’s so strong I can’t see straight. But Cole’s face is serious. So I nod.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’m okay.” And I really feel like I am. At least for this moment.

He reaches out to touch my cheek. Something sparks inside me again. But it’s a candle this time. Not a bonfire.