“If they really want to find me, they’ll check all the homes anyway.”

Oliver’s hand taps at his side, and he walks to the back door to make sure it’s locked, then scans the trees. But no one is there. The boys probably haven’t even realized I’m gone yet.

“Let’s go up to the loft,” I say. “We can see farther into the woods—if anyone does come.” I don’t know why I want him to stay. But I do know. It’s the knocking around inside my rib cage, the soft ache I can’t trust. He’s familiar—not like the others. He’s the only one who makes me feel not so alone.

Oliver nods. But I can’t meet his eyes.

He saved me, that must mean something.

The loft is warm, the heat trapped by the ceiling, and Fin takes up a post at the top of the stairs. Like he senses there is danger out there somewhere.

I sit at the edge of the bed and look down at my hands. I want to trust Oliver, I want to believe him. He says he didn’t kill Max. But a thousand lies rest beneath the surface. A thousand little cuts filled with salt.

“Did you see the moth?” I ask. “At the window, before you found me?”

“No.” He shakes his head.

I exhale and press my hands together.

“It’s a bone moth,” I explain. If he won’t tell me his secrets, I’ll tell him mine. “It’s been following me.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was there the day my grandmother died. And now it’s back.” Tears well against my eyelids, and they break down my cheeks before I can stop them—the weight of everything slamming through me. They fall to the floor and soak into the wood—becoming a part of the house. A sadness that will live in the grain of the wood forever.

Oliver moves across the room to only a foot from the bed, and the gravity of him so close makes it hard to breathe. But he doesn’t sit beside me, he doesn’t touch me—he doesn’t want to hurt me. To split me in two, to make me shudder away from him in fear. “A moth?” he asks.