“The women in my family always fall in love then find a way to ruin it.” I smirk, lips drawn up to one side. “I know you think I should be afraid of you. But you should be afraid of me.”

“Why?” he asks softly, carefully.

“Because I will end up hurting you.”

A smile forms in his eyes, and the space between us feels impossibly small. Only an exhale separating us. I don’t wait for him to speak—I don’t want to hear any more words—I cross the fathom between us and I lay my lips on his. And it’s not like before, not like when we kissed in my room to be certain we were both real. Now it’s a kiss to prove that we’re not. A certainty that this won’t last. That perhaps all we have left is here in this bed, lavender pollen against the pillows, air spilling from his lungs into mine. All we have left is this one, singular, fragile night. Snow on the roof and snow in our hearts and snow to bury us alive.

I kiss him and he kisses me back. And all at once, there is heat inside my veins, heat in the palm of his hand as he slides his fingers up inside my sweater, up along my spine. He wipes away the cold. And I feel my body shudder, pressing myself closer to him, touching his neck, his throat, his shoulders where they brace around me, drawing me to him. I exhale and kiss him harder. There is nothing but his hands on my bare skin. The weight of his kiss, of his chest breathing so deeply I can almost hear his lungs aching against his ribs.

Nothing but these slow seconds of time. Nothing but fingertips and swollen lips and hearts that will surely break when morning comes.

His kiss against my ribs, my fingers in his hair.

I close my eyes and pretend Oliver is just a boy from camp who never went missing. A boy I met on the shore of the lake. A boy with clear green eyes and no lost memories.

I pretend I never saw a bone moth in the trees the day I found him.

I pretend this room, with mountain moss and bleeding-heart acorns hung by string above my bed, is the only place there will ever be.

I pretend Oliver and I are in love. I pretend he will never leave—I pretend to make it true.

Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine

RUTH WALKER was born in late July of 1922 under a white deer moon. Her lips were the color of snow with eyes as green as the river in spring. But Ruth Walker never spoke.

Not once in her whole life.