It’s odd how easily you can fool yourself into believing there is nothing to fear. How easily you can look at a boy you hardly know and trust every word that leaves his lips. Maybe I am a fool. Or maybe the buzzing, tenuous feeling in the center of my chest, the fragile stutter of my heartbeat, means something. Maybe there is truth in that feeling.

A feeling I shouldn’t ignore.

A feeling I don’t want to.

“No,” I say at last, his gaze on me a moment too long, making it hard to breathe. “You can sleep in the loft.”

His eyes soften and the room starts to quiver, walls melting from the edge of my vision, the clock in the kitchen clicking too loud. Oliver blurs out of focus, and I think about him standing in the trees, watching me at the bonfire. He followed the boys from camp because he was worried about me. And I’m not sure how to feel or what to say, but my heart is spurring against my ribs, causing little fits of pain.

I look away from him, afraid the house is going to splinter around us, afraid the clock on the wall will cease to tick.

“You all right?” he asks, touching my arm, my hand.

But when his eyes meet mine, all the words dissolve on my tongue, catch inside my teeth, so I only nod. Fine, fine, fine. Everything is fine. My head doesn’t feel like it’s going to cleave in half and let all my thoughts spill out onto the floor. The house doesn’t feel like it’s going to cave in. Time doesn’t feel like it’s going to shatter.

I’m fine.

He releases my hand and I walk to the front door to lock it—sensing a storm building outside. Not from the mountains, but from something else.

A storm made of fury and spite woven inside reckless boys’ hearts.

I light a candle—a ritual now—and walk to the stairs. The house no longer swaying. The clock no longer a drum against my ears.

Without a word, Oliver follows.

Maybe he belongs here now, with me, inside this house.

No one has ever belonged to me before—not really.

In the loft, my bed is still unmade, pillows slumped and wrinkled from the previous night. And Oliver stands at the top of the stairs, scanning my room, the stacks of books on the floor, while Fin plods past him—making a low huff sound as he settles onto the rug at the foot of the bed. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” Oliver says, eyeing the place where Fin has curled into a ball, nose tucked under his tail.