The world smelled violently of roses.
“Now what.” Andrew tried to look unimpressed. “You’ll have to let go of me to reach my notebook and I know exactly how ticklish you are. I’ll murder you.”
Thomas leaned forward, his whole weight pressing Andrew thin as paper. But he’d forgotten he’d wanted to struggle.
“Can I ask you something?” The mischief had gone from Thomas’s eyes and he sounded unsure.
“Denied,” Andrew said easily. “Get off before I headbutt you and there ends your perfect nose.”
“You think my nose is perfect?”
“Well, it’s straight,” Andrew said.
Thomas’s mouth quirked a little. “At least one part of me is.”
Andrew frowned and started to contest this, because Thomas also had straight teeth, but someone cleared their throat with dramatic annoyance, and he peered over Thomas’s shoulder to see Dove.
Thomas flung himself off Andrew and somehow put athousand miles between them in the space of a heartbeat. He had his sketchbook in his lap. Grass in his hair. His eyes looked electrified as if he’d been caught breaking all the rules.
Despite a long day of classes and a rigorous English exam, Dove looked pressed and composed, as if she meant to give a presentation or head to a formal dinner. Not a wisp of hair out of place. Not a smudge on her uniform. She folded her arms as she surveyed them with narrowed eyes.
“We were studying,” Andrew said. “I’ve got your flash cards… um, somewhere.”
“There are twenty-seven,” Dove said. “You have to memorizetwenty-sevenbefore tomorrow, Andrew. Why do you two need supervision to get anything done?”
“You could study with us?” Thomas said.
Dove gave him a cool look. “Pretty sure I’m not studying the same things you are, Thomas Rye.”
He shot her a frown, but Dove ignored him and smoothed out the pages of one of the textbooks they’d messed up while wrestling. She collected the scattered flash cards and smacked them over Andrew’s head, which he grumbled about without any heat. Without her organizing his exam prep, he’d have flunked out of Wickwood long ago.
What he wanted, though, was to lie among the roses and sleep away the warm afternoon. Maybe with Thomas’s head on his chest.
“I want to talk,” Dove said.
It sounded likeTalkwith a capitalT, and Andrew immediately folded into avoidance mode. At home, if their fathertried to have a discussion, Andrew would bury his face under pillows in the sofa or block his ears and sit in the linen closet until everyone gave up and left him alone. It was childish, sure, but he had panic attacks that felt like willow switches against his bare back. They all knew this. They knew he couldn’t cope.
He could only handle life if he looked at it carefully from the corner of his eye. It was easier this way.
Thomas scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go to the forest. To the Wildwood tree. Then you can talk.”
“Aren’t we getting too old to climb trees?” Dove said.
“Never.” Thomas snatched up his sketchbook.
“It’s out of bounds…” But Dove sighed and flung her hands in the air as if she didn’t have time to fight Thomas today about rules. “Fine. I guess we can sneak past the soccer field while everyone’s distracted by practice. But we have to be quick, all right? I have a study session with Lana.”
Andrew hadn’t moved and they didn’t notice yet. When Thomas and Dove were together, this happened every time. Private conversations with their eyes. Their bodies both magnetizing and yet repelled. Their words thorny and sweet as their bickering turned to jokes and back again with such swift speed Andrew always felt left behind.
He watched how close they stood, how Dove’s finger brushed the back of Thomas’s hand as he argued about if one could grow out of loving a tree.
“I don’t want to.” Andrew collected his homework as he stood. He skin felt itchy from the grass, his chest tight.
“Please?” Dove had on her softest, wheedling voice. “We need to talk, all three of us.Aboutus.”
“I’m too tired.” Not a lie. His cottony weariness of earlier had turned to a sludgy sort of ache against his bones. Too many late nights studying. Too much holding his breath during exams.
Annoyance edged onto Dove’s face. “I’m literally begging here.”
