Her face collapses. Her body folds in on itself.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Annie gets out of the car, slams the door shut, and strides into the forest.
EIGHTEEN
Annie
He didn’t doit on purpose.
“Annie.”
He didn’t ruin your life.
“Annie!”
You ruined your own.
I turn around and walk towards him, towards his warmth and security and care, eyes full of concern. But I change my mind, because, fuck. I…fuck. I turn back and blindly find a trail marker and start walking towards it.
“Annie!” His voice cuts through the trees, his footfalls crunching through the dead leaves and the underbrush of the trail.
He grabs my hand and swings me around. “Sweetheart.”
I wrench my hand away and realize I’m crying.
“Talk to me,” he orders.
“No.”
“Fuckin’ talk to me, Annie.”
“No.”
He takes a deep breath, his giant chest expanding, contracting. When he speaks, it’s evident he’s really trying tokeep his shit together. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take this new information you’ve gathered about my dad dyin’ and turn it into something about you without telling me what’s wrong.”
With that, something caves. “I’m sorry, Nico.” I swipe at my face. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He opens his arms.
I don’t hesitate.
He wraps me up, but this time I squeeze back. We stand like that, tangled in each other, surrounded by bad, tainted, incorrect memories. But also there’s his scent—clean soap, warm skin—and the quiet hush of the forest morning, and the rhythmic thud of his heart under my cheek.
Eventually, I pull back. “I’m so sorry about your dad, Nico.”
Nico cradles my face in his big hands, wipes tears from under my eyes for the second time. Soulful brown eyes searching my face with concern, as if he can find the source of my hurt there and make it all better, when I should be doing it for him. “Come,” he tells me, dropping his hands only to twine his fingers with mine, tugging me further down the trail.
He doesn’t let go. “What just happened?” he asks me eventually, probably knowing I needed a minute. Again.
I exhale slowly. Step over a tree root. “I had no idea.”
“What, that Dad died?” He peers down at me. “Why would you know that? I didn’t share it with anyone. Well, except for my teachers and the principal. Just left school for the rest of the year. It was actually during that Chem project we—” He stops short.
Nico’s face shifts. Realization dawns.
I look around. We’ve stopped at the edge of what feels like the end of the world. Below us yawns a vast, glittering basin—an old quarry, its waters deep and still. It’s carved out of solid stone and cradled by a halo of green, trees crowding the rim likethey’re guarding a sacred secret. The silence hums, thick and alive.
