“Mom,” I say, looking at her over his shoulder. Her eyes are knives. “I’ll be in in a minute, OK?”
“Lexie,” she starts, a warning, but I set my chin and stand up straighter, resolute. She gives. “A minute.”
“Nice to see you, Ms. Rynne.”
“Fuck you, Liam.” She slams the door.
Liam’s back is to me, and for a minute, he makes no move to turn. We stand in that butter-thick silence for what feels like an eternity, until I’m practically vibrating with curiosity and fear and desperation all at once.
“Nice reception,” he finally says, softly. Then he looks at me over his shoulder and grins, that same fucking knife-like grin, and something in me breaks.
I swallow the reflexive tears that rise to my eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Right to the point,” he says, shifting to look at me straight-on. He’s taller than I remember; I have to look up at him to meet his eyes. “Always liked that about you.”
I flinch. “Don’t.”
He nods, like I don’t need to explain why I can’t bear to hear him talk like that; like he never left, like I’m still sixteen and he’s Margot’s forbidden older brother, always a razor-edge of danger about him, unbearably hot and valiant and shadowed. Like he hasn’t been in my head every night since he went to prison.
“I like your place,” he says, in answer to the silence that spreads between us. He has his hands in his pockets and he leans back to take it in. “Bet you bought this place just for the trees.”
My throat thickens.Fuck you, I think, but don’t trust myself to say. I hate him right then, so much it hurts. I hate that, of anyone in my life, he still knows me best.
“Wild thing,” he says softly, like an afterthought.
I clench my hands into fists. “What are you doing here?”
His smile is unreadable in the half-dark. “Somewhere we can talk?”
I run a hand over my hair, but nod. I have a sense my mom is watching from somewhere. I turn and cross the drive, rounding the house toward the trees. A soft wind is blowing, tousling only the highest boughs, pushing us toward the woods like they want to see what’s going to happen. My heart is racing, I realize, as I take the familiar, hidden path through the yard, toward the little black stream that runs through the copse that I can hear through my bedroom window.
There’s a fairy-tale vibe to this place, which is another reason I chose it. But it’s not the princess and prince and castle kind of fairy-tale, the Disney kind. It’s the ancient kind, the stories told to kids at night by the oldest person in the village, the ones where the main character always ends up dead in some grisly, poetic way.
In the oil-black night, Liam’s quiet footfalls behind me through the trees, the dangerousness of this place, makes me feel powerful.These are my woods,I think. I stop by the water and turn to face him.
My eyes have adjusted, and faint starlight lights up the billows of fog that move slowly through the trees and up the slope to the house. The windows are gold, edges heathered by distance and mist. Here the wind is silent, and the creek whispers over the old riverbed.
“How are you?” Liam asks. He’s a respectful distance away, and I kind of hate him for that too.
“Fine.”
He nods.
“Liam,” I say, and my voice seems to barely travel, seems trapped in this tiny, haunted, fog-insulated place. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?” He smiles, teeth bright in the dark. “Can’t a guy come check on his friend—”
“Fuck you,” I say, with practiced coolness. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“There it is.” His face is unreadable.
Still, my hackles go up. “Therewhatis?”
“You. The real you.”
“You don’t know the real me. Not anymore.” I wrap my arms around myself tightly and take a step toward him. “Go home, Liam. Don’t come back here.”
“Really?”
