Chapter 66

By the time I passed the school doors in the morning, I had already done the deeply embarrassing thing of checking my phone three times in the parking lot, even though Ethan had not sent anything new.

I already knew we would meet during fourth period, up in the attic with its dust and cold floorboards and old telescope that had probably seen more secrets in a day than it had stars in fifty years. The thought bloomed warm, then hot beneath my skin.

For once, I walked through the school corridors almost light.

That lasted until I opened my locker.

Something fell out and hit the floor with a sad little clatter. I paused, looking at it.

My pencil case lay open by my boot, the zipper torn, half the pencils snapped clean in two. A folded sheet of paper had been shoved inside it. I knew better than to open it. Of course I opened it anyway.

Someone had drawn a dog, or maybe a wolf, with rabbit ears and two buck teeth. No words, just the drawing.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

Around me, the hallway continued as if nothing had happened. Lockers slammed. Voices rose and overlapped. A girl near the water fountain looked straight at me, then quickly away. Two other girls at the end of the hall found the ceiling suddenly fascinating.

Right.

So that was how we were doing this now.

For a moment, everything tilted. The small, warm thing I had carried in with me shrank, but did not disappear.

Then I tore the paper once, twice, shoved it into my pocket until I could find the nearest garbage bin, and gathered the broken pencils back into the ruined case. I clenched my teeth. Undoubtedly, there were those who objected to what had happened in the forest because of me. But I was protected by Jason's decree. They couldn't hurt me. These pathetic pranks were all they could do. It could only hurt if I allowed it. And I wouldn't.

I straightened my coat and slammed the locker door louder than I should have. Some of the nearest students jerked in response. I paid them no attention.

***

By the time I climbed up to the attic, those thoughts had completely abandoned me, replaced by the old excitement.

The room itself felt less cold than the day before.

Or perhaps it only seemed that way because I was sitting still on the dusty floor with Ethan's shoulder pressed against mine. We had already said very little. That seemed to be becoming its own language too.

Ethan sat with one knee bent and the other leg stretched out a little, his back against the wall beneath the window. I sat close enough that our arms touched, close enough that the heat of him reached through the fabric of our clothes and settled under my skin. For a while, neither of us moved.

Then he turned his head toward me. I felt it before I looked up, that small shift in the air as his attention narrowed onto me. My pulse tripped once.

He lifted one hand slowly, giving me plenty of time to move away if I wanted to. When I didn't, his fingers brushed the hair back from my face, not fully tucking it behind my ear, just clearing a path. My breath caught.

He leaned in.

The first touch wasn't really a touch at all. The bridge of his nose traced lightly along the edge of my hairline, then lower, so gently that my skin barely registered pressure, only heat and the strange, exquisite anticipation of contact that never fully landed. He moved with maddening slowness, down past my temple, the shell of my ear, the side of my neck. The soft feather touch of his breathing reached my skin before he did. Then lower still, to the hollow above my collarbone.

Every fine hair on my body rose. The room seemed to contract around that single line of motion. His breath shivered through me, warm against winter-chilled skin. It wasn't anything like being kissed. It was somehow more unnerving, and yet despite it, or maybe because of it, more intimate. Like being read in a language my body understood before my mind did. The warmth of it didn't stop at my skin, turning into heat somewhere deeper down.

When he reached the hollow at the base of my throat, he paused. For one suspended second I thought that was all, that he would stop there, inhale once more, and draw back, leaving me to quietly die of whatever this was. Instead he hovered there for another long second, and in the next breath he kissed me.

He was still learning the mechanics of it, but whatever he lacked in technique he more than made up for in the way he paid attention, in the way he seemed to read every small catch of my breath and adjust accordingly. I forgot to breathe and my hands tangled in his hair before I even realized I had moved.

When he drew back, both of us were breathing harder than seemed reasonable for such a small thing. I looked at him. He looked back at me with pupils wide and his face stripped down and open in a way that made me feel warm and unsteady in equal measure.

A smile tugged at my mouth. "You're learning fast."

Something softer than amusement flickered through his eyes. "That's because I'm motivated."

I laughed under my breath. The sound seemed too bright for the attic, too alive for all its dust and shadow. Maybe because I wanted to see if I could make him look like that again, or maybe because I wanted, absurdly, for him not to be the only one learning things in this room, I shifted closer and tried to imitate what he had just done.

He moved away a bit, eyebrows lifted. "What are you doing?"

"Learning," I said with dignity.

Then, before he could ruin it by looking too entertained, I leaned in and dragged the tip of my nose carefully along the side of his jaw.

He went very still. Immediately I felt stupid for trying. "That was bad, wasn't it?"

The corner of his mouth moved. "Not bad. You do seem very committed." He raised an eyebrow as a small laugh escaped him.

I drew back and gave him a look. "Don't laugh at me."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"No. I'm smiling because you're adorable." He tapped my nose lightly.

I narrowed my eyes at him in what I hoped was a convincing display of offense. He reached up and brushed his thumb once over my cheek. It undid the entire performance.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry in the slightest.

"No, you're not."

"No," he admitted. "Not really."

I should have left it there, stayed in the warmth of that half-joking place and let the attic hold us in it a little longer. Instead, because my mind had developed an infuriating habit of pressing on the exact thing that hurt, I looked down at our hands, at the dust on the knees of my jeans, at the pale grey light on the floorboards, and asked, "So how does it work?"

He frowned slightly. "How does what work?"

"Lupine..." I waved vaguely. "Dating."

Something in his face changed. Not dramatically, but enough. He glanced away first, toward the telescope, toward the window, anywhere but directly at me. Then he took my hand. That should have softened the awkwardness, but it only made me more aware of it. Our fingers slid together, his larger hand closing around mine with a care that felt almost ceremonial. His thumb moved once against the back of my hand, then stilled.

"Why?" he asked quietly. "It's not like it matters for us."

I looked at him because he looked like he had packed too much into too few words.

"I'm still curious."

"Kelse."

"What?" I shifted a little so I could see him better. "I'm allowed to ask. Also, I literally know nothing. Which feels unfair, considering I seem to be implicated in all kinds of lupine nonsense on a daily basis."

A faint shadow of humor touched him and vanished. I waited.

He looked down at our joined hands as if the answer might be written there.

"In a town this size," I prompted, "where do people even go? Do you go anywhere? Or is it all very tragic and serious and done entirely under pine trees?"

That got another one of those brief glints that almost counted as amusement. Then his face settled again.

"Yes."

I frowned. "Yes to what?"

"The forest," he said. "We go to the forest."

The words dropped into the room and changed its temperature. I felt it immediately. The warmth between us thinned. My eyes stayed on him.

"To run."

He nodded once, and then his gaze dropped. "And hunt," he said, barely audible. "That's about it."

My mind went blank, then remembered that text about the boar.

"Hunt," I echoed, my mouth suddenly dry.

"In pairs, yes," he said after a moment. "Usually. It's a..." He hesitated, eyes lifting to study my face. "A courtship ritual. Of sorts."

I looked at him as something inside me constricted and then went numb. The way he said it made it clear that he knew what came next and did not want to give it to me. I made him anyway.

"Like you and Lara."

He held my gaze, his jaw tightening. "That's only an act. A performance. Nothing more."

The flatness of it made me blink. "A performance," I repeated.

"Yes."

"Does she know that?"

His jaw clenched tighter. "I have never lied to Lara about the nature of the arrangement between us," he said. "Not once."

I held his gaze. All softness and warmth seemed to have drained out of him, leaving cold steel.

"It exists because our parents made it," he said. "I keep it in place to buy us time and room to think." He exhaled through his nose and looked away again. "It has never been anything else." Then, so quiet I barely heard him, he added, "It can't and won't be. Ever."

I sat very still. Somewhere below us, muffled through floors and walls, a school bell rang and then quieted. I thought of Lara beside him in the parking lot. Of how serious she had looked. Of how little I understood about what it meant to stand where she stood. I thought of myself here, in an attic over a school, clutching the hand of a boy whose people ran their courtship in the wilderness through snow while I could barely survive one lap around a track without resentment.

When I spoke, my voice came out lower than I meant it to. "I can't do that."

His eyes came back to me. "What?"

I swallowed. "That." I looked down because saying it while staring at him felt impossible. "Run with you like that. The way your kind does."

The silence spread between us like a wall.

I continued. "I can stand in an attic and kiss you and let you smell the side of my neck until my skin feels alight, but I cannot follow you into that other shape of life."

He scooted closer before I realized he was moving. His hand tightened around mine. His other hand came up and settled lightly at the side of my face. When he leaned his forehead against mine, it felt at once familiar and devastating.

"I can't take you to fine restaurants," he said quietly, "or to the cinema. I can't even walk with you openly in town. All I can offer you is this dusty attic." His mouth twitched faintly on the last words, but there was no humor in it.

"It's not the same thing," I began, but he interrupted me before I could finish.

"Kelse," he said, and the way he said my name made me lift my eyes. "I walked into this with my eyes open."

I didn't answer. I wasn't sure I could.

"Whatever this thing between us is," he went on, "it was never going to look like a normal lupine mating. Or human, for that matter." His thumb moved once along my cheekbone. "So we'll find another way."

My throat tightened.

He held my gaze and said it more firmly, as if laying something down in front of both of us. "Not yours, or mine, but ours."

The words hit me with painful force. I nodded because not nodding would have required speech, and speech at that moment felt like too much. But the sadness stayed. It sat under my skin even while his forehead rested against mine and his hand held mine steady. The sadness did not mean I didn't believe him. It meant I did, and still knew what he would be giving up. Or maybe what we both would.

And still, with painful certainty I knew it didn't matter.

***

After a while, I pulled back first. Reluctantly. The cold rushed into the small gap between us at once. The pull that had settled into a warm and steady presence within me, awakened whenever he was near, tugged in protest.

"I should go before someone notices I've been gone too long."

He looked at me with the kind of attention that made me almost reconsider leaving. Then he nodded.

I stood and brushed dust from the back of my jeans with more focus than the task deserved. My fingers shook a little. I hoped he didn't notice.

"You'll come back?" he asked gently. The question came out too quickly for it to sound casual.

I looked up. There it was, naked on his face before he could hide it: hope so bright it was almost desperate.

"Always," I said.

The change in him was small but immediate. His shoulders eased by a fraction. The line of his mouth softened. It was astonishing, and a little frightening, how much of his equilibrium now seemed to rest on things as simple as whether I would return to a dusty attic room above the school.

I reached for the doorknob.

"Kelsey."

I turned. He had not moved. He still stood in the same place in the pale grey light, one hand at his side, the other half-lifted as if he had almost reached for me again and stopped himself.

"Don't forget..."

I nearly smiled. "I'll wash," I finished for him. "Don't worry."

I did not add that I had started choosing bathrooms by sound now, waiting outside doors until I was sure no one inside was laughing.

"See you tomorrow, Ethan." This time I did smile. But I felt immediately that it hadn't reached my eyes. He saw that too.

I opened the door before either of us could say anything else that would make leaving harder. Then I stepped back into the cold stairwell and pulled it closed behind me, leaving too much behind to name.