Page 147 of Silent Shadows

I want to touch it again.

I want to touch all of her.

I want to tell her that I have spent my whole life trying to prove something impossible is real, and somehow she is the thing that feels most impossible.

Instead, I sit there like an idiot with one earbud in for the next half hour.

When the episode ends, she pulls in a breath.

“Well?”

I take out the earbud and hand it back. “It’s not good.”

Her face falls so fast I almost panic.

“It’s great,” I say quickly. “Sorry. Bad pause. Terrible pause. I deserve consequences.”

She hits my arm.

I catch her hand before she can pull it away. Just for a second.

Her fingers settle against mine. “Taylor could walk out here any second. We can't.”

I look toward the dark trees.

Toward whatever is out there moving beyond the edge of proof.

Then back at her.

“I know.”

But my hand stays around hers. And this time, she lets it.

Then I nearly jump out of my skin as she lets out the loudest dad sneeze I've ever heard.

chapter

nineteen

DAISY

I wake up feeling victimized by nature.

Not metaphorically this time. Literally. As if the forest itself climbed into the RV overnight, sat on my chest, and whispered, “Remember when you ate it and got caked in mud from head to toe? Real cute.”

My throat burns. My head pounds. Every inch of me aches in that post-hiking, post-cold-rain way that feels less like soreness and more like betrayal.

Sleeping on the bunk mattress—or shelf, prison cot, emotional punishment device, whatever Miles insists on not calling it—did not help.

Neither did sleeping approximately zero inches from another human while trying not to think about the fact that said human has become essential to my emotional stability.

At some point in the night, it seems I kicked off the blanket.

At another point, Miles, half asleep, mumbled something incomprehensible and pulled it back over me without waking up.

Which should not still be affecting me.

And yet.