The Wickwood manor’s foyer had been decorated with pumpkins covered in spiderwebs and unsettling skeletons with button eyes holding trick-or-treat buckets. Their grins followed Andrew as he trailed behind the girls toward the dining hall. This year’s theme was simple: Fall. Walking on a carpet scattered with velvety golden autumn leaves creeped Andrew out. It felt like the forest had reached twiggy fingers into the school again. He cupped his palm over his throbbing ear. They were plastic decorations, it was fine, none of this was real.
Before the bell had rung for dinner, Lana had fetched the sketchbook from her dorm and given it to Andrew without question. He’d torn it up, every last ink-smeared page, until not a single monster was left whole. This had to be the last of Thomas’s drawings, ithadto be.
Ahead of him, Lana was arguing that pumpkin cake was better than pumpkin pie, and Chloe wasn’t having it. Neither noticed Andrew getting farther behind. He needed to vanish before he had to make an excuse why he didn’t want to eat.
But he couldn’t go back to his dorm. Thomas might be there.
Andrew needed to find words before he saw Thomas again. He needed to pull himself back together and figure out how to explain himself in a way that made sense without his ribs snapping one by one. He was suffocating in a vortex ofhis own darkness. He needed Thomas to pin him to the floor, fingers tight around his wrists, hips against hips, their mouths inches apart, so Thomas could breathe two words into Andrew’s lungs—
Calm down.
Andrew couldn’t calm down.
He walked into the dining hall and lined up for food he couldn’t eat. The servers piled his plate as if he were an average teenage boy with an appetite, not this gaunt ghost of a creature. Lana strode off to snag them seats, leaving Chloe to expertly manage both of their plates—another sign these two were close friends in a way that didn’t need Dove. Someone moved in behind him and a few people complained about cutting the line.
Andrew didn’t need to turn. He could feel who it was by the shape of his breath, how he leaned forward in a way that spoke of deep familiarity, as if any part of Andrew he touched would instantly respond to him.
Andrew’s heartbeat picked up, but he focused on accepting his overfilled plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes. He swept a glance across the long tables crowded with green Wickwood uniforms until he saw Lana wave.
“I should never have called you a coward.” Thomas’s voice sounded wrecked. “Talk to me. Leave the plate and come outside.”
Make him beg.The thought came slick with tar, insidious and bitter, and Andrew hated the way it fed the monster gnawing behind his rib bones. He didn’t want to be this.
But his jaw felt wired shut, and he gave Thomas nothing, not even a glance, as he strode toward the tables.
Thomas swore and ran after him.
Lana had saved a spot at the end, and Andrew slid onto the bench across from her and Chloe. The noise was worse than usual, because everyone had been into the Halloween candy already and their sugar highs tipped them to Noise Level: Extreme. Seniors hyped each other up, playing viral videos on their phones and singing along. Bryce Kane seemed to be at the head of it, a lord overseeing his court. No teachers had called for quiet yet. Or maybe they’d given up.
Too much noise, too many bodies. Even the smell of the soggy meat loaf congealing in gravy turned his stomach. He wanted to run, but Thomas could corner him in a quiet hall and Andrew wasn’t ready for that. He forced himself to fork up mashed potatoes.
Thomas straddled the bench beside him, no uniform jacket, no plate, no interest in anything but Andrew. His face looked shattered.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said, low. “I lost my temper and it was shitty to call you a coward when you were just… telling me who you are.”
The chaos around them did an effective job of hiding their conversation, but Lana glared as she leaned forward in an unsubtle attempt at eavesdropping. She gripped her knife and fork in a threatening way, but Andrew gave her the tiniest shake of his head.
If he wanted Thomas gone, he could deal with it himself. He knew how to ruin Thomas the same way Thomas knew how to ruin him.
They could be so beautiful to each other. They could be so cruel.
Andrew stabbed at his peas. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” Thomas’s eyes looked bright as daggers. “Do you want to hit me again? You can. I’ll ask for it, I’ll—”
Andrew slammed his fork down and turned on him. “Shut up. Can you even hear yourself? You screw up and you want to be punished. You want to be absolved in violence. Do you realize how incredibly fucked up that is?”
Thomas’s face looked stripped, and it hurt to stare at him. Andrew turned away, his jaw so tight his teeth felt about to crack.
“I want… Ineedyou.” Thomas’s voice came so thin it was nearly lost under a wave of laughter from the other end of the table. “We can just be what we were. I swear I won’t ask for anything else. It’s just—I make monsters. Iama monster. I lost my mind for a second and freaked out that you could never love someone this wicked.”
Andrew’s mouth tasted of moss and metal, of trees and blood-soaked bark. He had this boy in pieces, had him carved down to a desperate, trembling nub. He’d sliced into Thomas’s heart with brutal precision and found no trace of Dove, so shouldn’t it feel like he’d won? Thomas couldn’t exist without him and he wouldn’t ask for things Andrew couldn’t give.
But he felt frozen, too sick to move. The food on his plate oozed brown liquid and… blood. It looked undercooked and roiling on his plate, a heartbeat still throbbing.
Another burst of laughter boomed across the hall, and Bryce Kane climbed onto the bench to take a bow. A teacher finally went over and demanded they settle down.
Lana had both elbows on the table, and she looked pissed that Thomas had run out of words before she’d heardeverything. She pointed her fork at him. “Give Andrew space. Pretty sure you’ve caused enough damage for one day.”
