A stick tapped his ankle and he jumped back a solid three feet into the safety of her yard.
She rolled her eyes.
“I recall,” he said.
“You came out the other side all butnaked—”
“The memory haunts me.”
“—covered in mud and leaves like a thirteen-year-old girl covers herself in glitter—”
“I had no choice but to camouflage myself.”
“Theo.” She leveled her gaze at him. “You came out carrying a whittled stick like you were fighting for your life inLord of the Flies.” Her sweater fell off one shoulder and she tugged it up before pointing at the woods. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove right now. And I don’t know all the ways you’ve changed, but I do know there isno wayyou are going to walk through those woods in the pitch-black dark. So why don’t you just go on home?”
“In my defense,” Theo said, turning to face her properly, “the bear washunting. In the woods. For me.”
She threw a hand out. “For the millionth time, it was a bear. A tiny, adolescentblack bear—”
“A rabid beast cloaked in deceivably adorable fur,” he replied.
“Well, maybe if you’d listened to me and hadn’t doused yourself in that ridiculous fruity concoction you liked to call cologne—seriously?” Skye put her hands on her hips as hebegan rubbing dirt over his glinting cufflinks. “Why are you doing this?”
“Simple,” Theo said. “It’s been months since I’ve been back, and I would be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to enjoy the spoils of a fine evening like tonight—”
As if on cue, a thick raindrop landed squarely on Skye’s head. She looked up to see one of those little ominous clouds anchoring above their heads. “It’s raining.”
“It’smisting,” Theo replied, holding his palm upturned toward the sky with a smile. “‘As dew leaves the cobweb lightly threaded with stars’—”
“Aaand there he is,” Skye said, turning on her heel. She raised a hand over her head as she walked toward her door. “Well, you enjoy that good old-fashioned poetry walk. Let me guess. Your favorite little guy, Sterling?”
“Teasdale,” he replied, clearly suppressing a smile at the fact she so easily remembered his most annoying high school habit of reciting poetry at every leaf and stump like some afflicted peasant of the 1500s. “‘Dew.’”
“I’ll see you around.”
“Bright and early,” Theo called back, turning the flashlight on his phone toward the forest.
Skye felt the grinding of wheels in her stomach but forced herself to ignore them.
“Wait a moment. What is this? This is new.”
Skye turned. The beam of Theo’s phone flashlight fell upon a building twenty yards off and moved slowly up and down its glass walls.
Strips of moonlight passed through the overhanging trees and glinted off the new windows. A dozen hanging flowerbaskets cluttered the awning. A couple of old easels stood propped against one wall.
He took a step toward it. His eyes lingered on empty paint bottles on their sides by the door.
Protectively, Skye took a step toward it. “It’s my greenhouse. And... studio.”
His eyes lit up at the word. “May I see?”
For only a moment, Skye wavered.
She looked at him standing there with both hands in his trouser pockets as he gazed at the greenhouse. His skin nearly melted into the dark forest behind him. He was only a sliver of a silhouette as he took in her new and greatest treasure, his expression clear. He wanted to see it. Part of her, the old part of her, wanted to show it off to him.
She turned away. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Before Skye closed the door, she watched his shadowy figure move into the forest with the small beam of light guiding the way.
