Something wicked and wanting surged in Andrew’s chest, but the guilt followed like a swift uppercut. For the way he’d treated Thomas yesterday. For how he’d won their fight and made sure everything would go his way. It wasn’t fair and he didn’t know how to fix it. What to give and what to take.
But as he stared up at Thomas’s face, all he could think of was kissing every one of those freckles. He nodded, his throat tight.
Thomas’s smile was crooked and full of tentative delight. He shoved off the bed and Andrew felt robbed of his touch.
“Let’s get dressed. I’ve still got my dad’s suspenders around here somewhere. My tux hasn’t fit for like two years now.”
Andrew felt too washed-out to get up. He needed to slow down and focus on what he had to do before his dad arrived. Destroy the last of Thomas’s drawings, that had to be the main priority. If the monsters wouldn’t stop, that meant there had to be some art still left.
After that, he needed to—
Kiss Thomas. Somehow, somewhere.
Find Dove and tell her everything. Absolutely everything. If she wanted to stay at Wickwood, she could. He wouldn’t blame her for putting her senior year over him.
Then Andrew had to stop the monsters, whatever it took. He would not leave Thomas alone with them.
Thomas left for the showers and Andrew took his sweet time hauling himself upright and rummaging through his wardrobe for his tux. He’d rather skip the dance, but they needed tolook normal—not guilty, not unhinged, not like boys about to lose everything. The pounding of feet up and down the hall and the collision of voices said that everyone else was overexcited for tonight. It took their minds off exams and all the creepy things that had been spilling from the school.
But nothing guaranteed the monsters would stay away from the auditorium. Andrew and Thomas would need to be in the forest early to fight them back and spill enough blood to satisfy the monsters’ appetites. It didn’t matter whose blood, theirs or the monsters’.
Someone just had to suffer.
Andrew unbuttoned his shirt. Then he stopped.
His ribs had hurt so long he’d grown used to the way they pressed sharp against his skin. How he could fit his finger between the grooves. How he was starving and yet felt too full to fit anything in his mouth.
But this was new.
His stomach looked distended, skin stretched like rice paper. He spread a hand over his belly, fingers trembling, and he pushed.
Tentative, careful.
“What the—” he whispered.
His skin didn’t give. It was like pressing fingers to a tree trunk, smooth and unforgiving. Hard lines coiled under the skin and crisscrossed over his stomach, and his shaking fingers followed one line and then another, tracing all the way to his hip.
Vines. Leaves. Roots.
He could see their unmistakable outlines.
This couldn’t be—
No.
Instead of feeling the soft, forgiving skin of his stomach, he felt vines growing through his intestines. They shifted under his touch, still growing as they twisted and tightened around another organ.
Horrible, hysterical panic rose up his throat, and he was going to be sick. He had to get it out. He had to slice his stomach open and get it out, get it out—GET IT OUT GET IT—
Andrew sank to the floor, knees to his chest, hyperventilating as the room spun. He couldn’t show Thomas. Not yet. They had too much to finish tonight.
He couldn’t do this. He gripped his wardrobe door and concentrated on breathing, but he could feel the briars in his lungs, taste the blood in the back of his throat where thorns had pricked his tongue.
The forest had been growing inside him for a long time, he’d just refused to think about it.
The door swung open and Thomas ambled in with wet hair and a towel slung over his shoulders. He looked roguish in suspenders and white shirt with collar popped, his dress trousers cuffed to hide the fact they were too short.
Thomas stopped, still drying his wet hair. “Are you okay?”
