“And I don’t want to be afraid of you,” I say. The worst kind of afraid. The kind that won’t let you sleep, that burrows in so deep that even bone moths steer clear of such things. Such memories. Such awful deeds. Max is dead and Oliver went into the woods and all the boys were at the lake that night. All of them were there and maybe it wasn’t an accident, maybe they all played some part, maybe they’re all to blame.

And there’s no way to make it right.

“You’re not afraid of me now?” he asks, inhaling deeply.

“No.”

He watches me in a way that makes my heart swim, loosened in my chest—my lungs caught mid-exhale. He looks like someone stuck in a place he doesn’t belong, a spike of fear running through his center—he looks as wild as the wilderness beyond the window.

Maybe it’s the look in his eyes: of desperation, of restlessness. Like every second is a clock counting down. Tick, tick, tick. Something stirs inside him, something neither of us can escape.

He shifts forward and presses his lips to mine.

His fingers find my collarbone, gentle like snowflakes caught in hair, and I kiss him back. I kiss him before my heart swells up into my throat. Before I crack open and become a puddle who used to be a girl. I kiss a boy who’s been to the farthest, deepest edge of the Wicker Woods and returned, who tastes like the violent winds that settle over the lake in winter. A boy who is more forest than flesh.

I press my fingers against his shoulder, his chest, searching for his heartbeat. Touching all the places I’ve wanted to a hundred times before. I need to know if he’s real. Or if the woods have made him something else, soil and stones. He kisses me softly at first, and then with an ache inside him, his hands against my ribs—pressing, pressing, as if he were leaving little bruises where his fingertips rest. Maybe for all the same reasons. To be certain I’m real. To see if I taste like memories, like winter, like the forest that nearly killed him.

We’re both looking for something to hold on to—gravity or fingertips or lips to make us real. To make us last. Before the truth wedges itself firmly between us.

His lips are warm on mine and his hands slip around my back, around my neck, around and up into my hair. His dark, sleepy eyes close and I sink into him, pressing my lips harder. His touch feels like moonlight beneath my skin.

Beating hearts and swollen rib cages.

He is familiar when he shouldn’t be. He is not mine to keep, but I found him and brought him back.