Chapter 63

By the time I reached the back stairwell, my heart was beating so fast I could hardly catch my breath. The corridor behind me was still quiet. My phone was still in my hand.

Kelse. Please.

I stared at those two words as I climbed the stairs, as if maybe they would change or disappear if I dared to look away.

The higher I went, the stairwell grew colder. At the top, there was only a long, narrow hallway lined with old doors whose paint had dulled and cracked. Dust filmed the floorboards. The last door on the left looked no different from the others except for the dark scratch marks around the frame, as though it had been forced shut and opened too many times. I stood there for a moment, my hand hovering. Then I pressed the doorknob and pushed.

The door resisted at first, exactly as Ethan had said. Then it gave with a low moan from the hinges, and a gust of cold, stale air met me from the dark beyond as I stepped into a room that even time seemed to have forgotten.

Dust lay over everything in a fine grey coat. Books were stacked crookedly along one wall, slumped sideways where whole piles had given up and collapsed. There were old atlases with cracked spines, rolled astronomical charts poking out of a rusty umbrella stand, a line of tarnished trophies on a shelf so high they disappeared into shadow, and near the far window, a telescope stood on a brass tripod with one leg slightly shorter than the others. Cobwebs hung in the corners like old lace.

For a second, the room almost made me want to laugh. Of all the places in Cold Creek High to conduct a secret meeting, Ethan Greystone had apparently chosen a haunted Victorian observatory attic.

Then I saw him.

He stood near the window with one hand braced against the fraying old frame, his body angled toward the murky glass, every line of him taut with focus. He must have been watching the grounds below, because even before he turned I could feel the tension in him, the way his posture carried cold alertness like armor made of ice.

He sensed me before he heard the door close. His head turned. And the moment our eyes met, I felt the pull and nearly gasped. Because this time, it felt different on a deep, cellular level. It was no longer that intense, under-the-skin feeling that had made me feel hijacked by my own body, dragged toward him by some strange current I could neither trust nor fully resist. This felt quieter, deeper, warm, like stepping in from the cold and finding a hearth already lit.

Ethan changed too the instant he saw me. The hard line of him, the heir scanning his father's territory, softened in one small, visible crack, just enough to show what sat beneath the skin. Something rawer. Less certain.

I shut the door behind me and stood with my hand still on the knob.

"I thought your father forbade you to talk to me." I meant for it to sound dry and failed miserably, because there was just enough tremor in my voice to betray me.

His eyes narrowed slightly. "He did," he said. "But I made you a promise."

The words hit harder than they should have. A nasty little hurt, already waiting in me all morning, rose before I could stop it.

"Is that why you called me up here?" I asked, something acrid pouring into my tone. "Out of pity?"

He frowned. "Why would you think that?"

I looked at him.

Because you passed me in the lot like I was nothing. Like that night in the woods hadn't happened. Or didn't mean anything. Because you suddenly look focused and distant and almost fine. Because I spent half the morning trying so hard not to mind that and feel like an idiot, and I still do.

I said none of those things.

"Look," I said instead, swallowing. "I'm glad you're feeling better. I don't know how it happened, but I'm glad it did." I heard the weakness in my own voice and hated it. "But you don't need to pick a fight with your father just because of something we said on one freezing night while we were both half out of our minds and bleeding."

For one second he only stared at me. Then something in his face drew inward.

"Are you taking it back?"

The question landed like a slap.

I opened my mouth. A part of me wanted to say yes, to lift up a lie as a shield. Yet nothing came out, because I couldn't. I could not take back the memory of his head on my shoulder, or the fact that even after seeing him at his most frightening I had stayed. I could not take back the way my own heart had crossed some line out there and kept going. So I said the only thing I could.

"I'm saying you don't owe me anything," I said. "Especially not if it puts you in danger."

That made him go very still. His eyes widened. His throat worked. He walked toward me slowly, each step measured, as if he didn't want to startle me. His boots crossed the floor with almost no sound. Then he was close enough that the shift in air around him reached my skin.

"Have I hurt you?" he asked quietly, his eyes never leaving mine.

A lump formed in my throat. I looked down. I didn't look up until I felt his fingers, careful and warm, under my chin.

"Kelse."

The way he said it made my heart stutter.

I raised my eyes. He was so close that the whole room seemed to tilt around him. Dust motes drifted silver in the grey light that spilled through the narrow window. His pupils were wide enough to make the rest of his face look stripped down and exposed.

"I meant every word," he said quietly.

My breath caught. He studied my face with an intensity that made looking away feel impossible.

"It's true that things have changed," he said. "My head is clearer. I can think. Focus." He stopped, and I saw the moment he understood the weight of what he was about to say. "Before that night in the woods, it felt like there was a force outside me dragging me in one direction. Like gravity. Like I had become something caught in someone else's orbit."

He paused. There was nothing sweet or romantic in the way he had said it.

I hated that it still hurt.

His hand slipped from my chin. I missed the contact immediately. Then he took my hand. Slowly, watching me the entire time, as if this too were something he would stop at the first sign of resistance. He lifted it and placed my palm flat against the center of his chest. His heartbeat struck against my hand, hard and steady.

"Now," he said, his voice lower, "it feels like the axis of that gravity moved inside me. Like I'm no longer running to catch up with it for the world to make sense." For a moment his eyes slid to an old, broken globe.

I followed his gaze as the room seemed to narrow around that sentence, that globe. My mind snapped at once to a different room, a different day, Elise's voice low and clinical. A new permanent axis. A system rewiring.

I stared at him. "Ethan." I waited until his eyes met mine again. "Are you talking about a... bond ?"

The words came out almost as a whisper. And the moment I heard them, all the air in my lungs seemed to freeze, because my thoughts filled with Dad. Mom. The barn. The shape of what a broken bond had done to a man who had once laughed in the kitchen, taken us on silly camping trips, and warned me away from boys he hated on sight. Exhilaration and terror crashed together so violently it almost made me dizzy, winding together so tightly it was impossible to separate them.

He was quiet for a long time, oblivious to the storm raging in me. The sky outside whitened as fresh snow seemed to drift from above, sticking and melting against the window glass. Then, finally, he said, "I can't tell for sure. I don't know what a bond feels like. It's not something all of us get to experience." His eyes did not leave mine. "But whatever it is, it can't be stronger than this."

Something in me went utterly still. A part of me was stupefied by his proclamation. Another part was horrified. I didn't want this for him. I didn't want to become his anchor and his chain. God, I didn't.

He must have seen what flashed across my face, because his expression changed at once.

"What is it?"

I shook my head and stepped back before I could stop myself. My hand slid from his chest. The loss of the contact felt abrupt and wrong. I went to the window because it was the only place in the room where looking at something else seemed remotely possible. Outside, the school grounds spread below us in winter-grey patches of pavement and snow. Tiny figures moved from building to building, oblivious.

"I didn't know what my father was before I came here," I said, staring outside. "Not really. I didn't know what a bond was either." The words felt strange in my mouth. Too bare. "But I remember my parents," I said. "Their marriage. Our home before all of this. Before..." I trailed off. "It was beautiful."

The last word almost embarrassed me. It sounded naive and soft and far too simple for what I was trying to say. Still, it was the truth.

"And when I was little, we had a pair of tiger parrots," I said. "Just tiny striped things in a cage in the kitchen. One of them died, and the other one stopped eating."

I heard Ethan move behind me, but he didn't interrupt.

"My dad told me it was natural," I said. "At the time I didn't understand what he meant. I thought he was just saying random depressing adult things because he didn't know how to explain death to a kid." I let out a breath. "Now I know he was explaining a part of himself. Or trying to."

The window glass had fogged faintly where my breath hit it. I lifted my eyes to Ethan's reflection in the pane.

"I don't want that to happen to you," I said. The truth drifted down from my lips like snow outside. "Especially not because of me."

For a moment he only looked at me. Then he crossed the distance between us. He took both my hands this time, one in each of his, and brought them together between us. Then, slowly, as if he was waiting for me to budge, he lowered his forehead to mine. The contact was light. Warm. Intimate enough to turn everything inside me to one long trembling note.

"I want you to know one thing," he whispered. "Because you have every right to be worried. But sometimes life hits us with things we didn't choose, yet we still choose how we answer."

He gave a small, bitter huff of laughter. "Inversion had its try at me. God knows it did." He let a beat pass. "But it didn't cause this."

Despite everything, my mouth twitched. "What, then?" I whispered.

A strange smile touched him. Something so soft and vulnerable that it changed his whole face. "Violet," he said, the word soft as a snowflake.

I blinked. "What?"

His hands tightened around mine by the smallest fraction. "You," he said, and let it settle. "Not your scent. Not your blood." His gaze searched my face as if he wanted to make sure I understood every word. "You. The way you stand upright even when you're afraid. The way you keep going anyway. And most of all, the way you refuse to give up on the people you love. Not when anyone else would have. Not even when giving up would have been the easier, smarter, even safer choice." He paused, waiting for the words to sink in before he continued. "I say violet because that's what you remind me of, a violet pushing through the ice. Something delicate that has no business surviving in this harsh, cold valley... but it does anyway." He smiled, and when it reached his eyes, they seemed to glow from within. "And that night in the forest, when you stayed..." His smile gave way to something rawer as his throat worked. "You were breaking the ice again. For me. And suddenly everything just cleared, settled into place. I don't know how else to explain it, I just know..." He breathed, closing his eyes for a moment, "you're in me now."

The air between us trembled, like the surface of water after something heavy was dropped into it, then shivered and smoothed down into silence. I didn't move. Neither did he. For one long, suspended breath I could do nothing except stand there with his forehead against mine and my hands caught in his and the unbearable feeling of being truly seen, exposed in ways I had never been before.

Something in me surged like electricity, and before I even realized what I was doing, I rose on my toes and pressed my mouth to his. Quick. Barely more than a touch. Soft and silly. My brain stuttered somewhere in the background— what are you doing, what are you doing —but it was already done, over before I could decide whether I had ruined everything.

Beneath my lips, Ethan froze. Completely. His whole body went still and taut, turning into stone. His breath stopped. His pupils pulsed once, wide and dark.

I pulled back immediately, heat rushing up my throat and into my face. Oh God. What had I just done? He was staring at me like I had slapped him instead of kissed him.

"I, um." My mouth stopped working. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry."

I stepped back. He caught my wrist in a grip that was both fast and gentle.

"No," he said. Then, with a visible struggle, "I'm... I didn't..." He frowned in obvious frustration. "We don't... not like humans. Normally."

The sentence died there. Whatever explanation he had tried to force into shape clearly abandoned him halfway through. And then, as if language had officially proven itself useless, he leaned down and kissed me. Or tried to. The angle was wrong, like he had no idea how to do it but tried to anyway, desperately imitating something for my sake that didn't really come to him naturally. I would have found it endearing in a weird sort of way if it hadn't also sent a fresh wave of heat through me so intense it made my knees weak. The pull surged. Not under my skin this time, but through me. Warm and deep and immediate, like something within him called and it rose in answer. My free hand came up to catch at his shoulder. His other hand found my waist. The kiss changed. Deepened. Lost whatever caution it had started with. The pull intensified, growing hotter, bursting through my pores like fire that burned without hurting. All thought fled and dissolved into the stale, cold air. My hand slipped to the back of his head, tangled into his hair. His chest vibrated as a low sound escaped him, something vaguely not human, but I didn't care. His hands pressed against me, lifting me and pulling me closer...

Bang!

The clatter of something large and metallic crashing split the air like a gunshot.

He released me immediately. We both jerked apart.

The telescope lay on its side behind us, one brass leg twisted awkwardly under the weight. For the length of a single breath neither of us moved. Then I became aware of my own breathing. Too fast. Too loud. Ethan's too. His pupils were huge. The room felt suddenly far too small.

"Oh my God," I whispered.

Ethan dragged a hand over his face and looked at the telescope as though it had betrayed him. Then, very carefully, he looked back at me. The heat in me hadn't gone anywhere, dimming slowly into embers but still there. At the same time, a very human kind of panic had started clawing its way up through it. I had just kissed Ethan Greystone in the attic of Cold Creek High. Then he had kissed me back in a way that threw us both off balance.

He seemed to come to the same conclusion at exactly the same time. He pressed his forehead against mine as his hands held my upper arms in a firm, yet gentle grip.

"You have to go," he said quietly, regret thick in his voice. "Before someone comes to see what that noise was."

My gaze flicked to the fallen telescope. Right. That.

He was already moving again, his posture changing as he forced himself into a harder, colder, more functional box, even while his breathing still remained too fast, just like mine did. He crossed to the door, opened it a crack, listened, then slipped into the hall for two seconds that felt like twenty. When he came back, he moved past me to the other side of the room and checked the window too, quick and precise, as if scanning exits was the only thing keeping him from grabbing me and kissing me again.

Maybe it was.

"It's clear," he said. "For now."

I stood there like an idiot, still trying to calm my own breathing. My lips still tingled. My mind was reeling. I have never been kissed like this. Not by Mark. Not by anyone.

Ethan came back to me and stopped just short of touching me.

"Go now," he said more softly. "Before anyone remembers this room exists."

I blinked at him. "And you?"

One corner of his mouth moved. "Diversion and perimeter control."

My confusion must have been obvious, because something like real amusement flickered through his eyes for the first time since I had come in.

"Never mind," he said. I noticed his eyes now held a glint I had never seen in them before. "Just go."

I nodded. I got three steps toward the door before his voice stopped me.

"Kelse."

I turned. His face had changed again. Still flushed. Still slightly wrecked-looking. But underneath it there was that new steadiness from this morning, and something else too, something that simultaneously seemed warmer and more dangerous.

"Wash your face before you go back," he said.

I frowned. "What?"

His gaze dipped briefly to my mouth and then lifted again. The meaning struck me all at once. Heat roared up my neck.

"Oh."

"Scent," he said, his voice roughening on the word. "If someone gets close enough to..." He stopped and exhaled through his nose. "We have to be careful." Then he added, quieter, "Just trust me."

Right. Of course. Cold Creek reality, returning like a hit to the back of the head.

I swallowed. "Okay."

He nodded once, smiling. Pushing away the hesitation, I opened the door and slipped back into the hall.

The cold stairwell air hit my face like cold water. My heart was still hammering hard enough to make my ribs ache. By the time I made it down the first flight of stairs, my legs had finally remembered how to work, though only barely.

I didn't let myself look back.

Because if I had, I wasn't sure I would have kept going.