She touches the sleeve of my coat and feels that it’s soaked through, as if I were made of ice and am now melting, making a puddle at my feet.

“We need to get you out of these wet clothes,” she tells me, a hint of urgency in her eyes. In her breathing.

I nod, my brain clicking forward on autopilot, the cold sapping any ability to protest.

I shrug out of my coat, my long-sleeve-shirt, and my jeans, right beside the fire. If it were any other day, if my mind were clear and sharp, I might feel strange standing bare chested in only my boxers, my body shivering, jaw clenching, in front of a girl I don’t know. But the cold is all I feel. All that’s left.

Her eyes sway over me, catching for a half second before she turns away. Pretending she wasn’t staring. Pretending her cheeks aren’t flushed.

I sit back on the chair and she drapes a heavy wool blanket from the couch over my shoulders, then hangs my wet clothes above the woodstove to dry. They have the scent of pine and wind and wilderness, a scent that’s hard to describe—unless you’ve trekked into the forest and returned with it clinging to your hair and the fibers of your clothes. It’s as if the woods followed me back, trailing me like campfire smoke.

“In the morning, I’ll take you back to the camp,” she says, facing the fire now, rubbing her own palms together. “They’ve been searching for you.”

“How long have I been gone?” I ask bluntly.

She chews on her lower lip, revealing a row of white teeth, and it feels like I’m seeing too much of her. Like I’m staring too closely, watching every shiver and shift of her dark eyes. “Since the storm,” she says at last, lowering her hands from the fire. “Two weeks.”

The room slips out of focus, wobbles briefly, then snaps back into place. Two weeks, two whole weeks. I shake my head. “That can’t be right,” I mutter, blinking to keep from tipping out of the chair. “I would have died out there if I’d been gone that long.”

“But you didn’t,” she answers, and she moves to the window, her reflection staring back: dark hair and dark moonless eyes. “Maybe the woods kept you safe.” I don’t understand what she means, and a gust of wind rattles the house, sending dust down from the overhead beams. “Everyone at camp thinks you tried to run away.”