“You’ll need to get justice for Olivia,” I reminded Henry in a trembling voice, not wanting him to suspect how much darkness had crept into my thoughts. “You’ll keep searching for answers.”

He switched off the truck’s engine and turned to face me. “I don’t care about answers anymore. Maybe I used to want to understand why Olivia had to die, but answers aren’t important anymore. Just ending this—however we can—that’s important.”

“I don’t know. I just…” I wanted to give Henry a reason to believe that there was still a way out of this, even though I couldn’t connect my thoughts together well enough to decide what to do next. “Jennie said the spirits are, like, inside of Mischa. We have to draw them out of her using some kind of bait if we want to get the curse off her.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to hear about it anymore. I don’t want to—”

He stared blankly out the windshield and continued, “I thought if I went to France and was in a new place, meeting new people, keeping myself busy with tennis, that all of this would fade into the background. This town. What Violet did to my sister. My parents and—and—my mom’s just, like, plummet into depression.”

I held my breath as I waited for him to admit he was angry about our routine of talking every morning. Hearing him express regret about that would have made the tears gathering in my eyes start to fall. Talking to Henry had been the best part of my day every day in Florida, in many ways even better than my restricted phone calls with Trey because I’d had to be so careful about the words I chose on Tuesday nights.

“But I don’t want to move on. I know everybody talks about how much Willow sucks and how there’s nothing to do here, but this is the only place I ever really want to be. And you’re the only person I ever want to be around.”

Henry fell silent and slowly raised his eyes to meet mine. Before I knew it, he was leaning toward me, and since he hadn’t buckled his seat belt in his haste to leave Violet’s house, he slid across the seat and took my face in his hands. His lips were on mine before I realized what was happening. From the instant our mouths connected, I knew intellectually that it was wrong, that I was only supposed to kiss Trey and him only. But Henry’s kiss felt so safe and filled me with so much warmth—it was like crawling under a heavy comforter during a thunderstorm—that I didn’t pull away.

I didn’t want to pull away at all.

And as his lips moved against mine, I realized that I wanted to keep kissing Henry forever, as if the homecoming dance hadn’t been rescheduled, as if we’d fallen in love that night, and Olivia hadn’t pitied Violet enough to invite her to her birthday party.