And somehow, that unsettles me more than it should.
The longer I look at him, the more time I spend with him, the more I see pieces of everyone I love most.
Or maybe I’m seeing something that’s not there.
“Need anything before I leave?” I test.
Again, he just stares at the ceiling.
All right. I can take a hint.
I put my back to him, resigned to being wrong about him.
It was the intensity of the extraction, or the emotions from the fire. Nothing more.
“What’s your name?” he asks when I reach the threshold.
Over my shoulders, I find his eyes on me. The very same ones that seared my soul the first time.
He doesn’t look away as I hold his stare.
“Aspen,” I answer, after a beat.
“You should get some sleep too, Aspen.”
His breathing evens out, and when it hits a soft, easy rhythm, I step over the threshold, back into the hall.
I’ll be back.
I shouldn’t, but I will be.
CHAPTER
FOUR
EMMETT
Screams trap me, freezing me in the past.
Time and sleep don’t dull the memory of that night—nothing ever has. Sixteen years later and reliving it is no less painful than the night I started the fire.
I pace between the barn and the house, my hands pulling at my hair as I spin in a circle, every breath coming at me faster than the last as I watch the flames grow.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what happened. I can’t stop it and I can’t take it back.
“Rory!”
My grandmother’s scream splits the night as she stumbles down the porch steps, her body moving faster than her feet can carry her. “She’s not inside, Mark. I can’t find her.”
His head jerks toward the flames swallowing the barn, then to me, then back to the black smoke mushrooming against the blue sky.
“Was she in there?” my grandfather asks.
“No. No. No.” I tug at my hair, knocking my baseball hat to the ground.
She can’t be inside.
I can’t be the reason something happens to her.
