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"Is it? I don't know. It probably shouldn't feel this easy, considering someone's still out there watching me. But when I'm with you, it doesn't feel like a threat I have to manage every second. It just feels like I can breathe."

The words land somewhere I don't have good defenses for. I've spent years building distance between myself and anyone who might matter enough to lose, and something about the plain honesty in her voice cuts straight through all of it without even trying.

"You shouldn't feel that safe around someone you barely know," I say.

"Maybe not. I don't really understand it either. I just know it's true."

I should step back. Every instinct built over seventeen years of keeping people at arm's length is telling me to step back, put distance between us, remember exactly what happens to the people I let matter.

Instead I stay exactly where I am, close enough to see her breath catch, close enough that leaning down those last few inches would be the easiest thing I've done all week.

Her eyes drop briefly to my mouth, and something in me nearly breaks loose entirely.

"Zoey." Her name comes out low, half a warning to myself as much as to her.

"Yeah?"

I don't answer right away. I want to. God, I want to, more than I've wanted anything, but somewhere underneath the wanting is the old, familiar fear, the one that's kept me alone for good reason. If I let this happen, if I let myself have this, I'm not just risking my own heart. I'm putting her directly in the path of everything dangerous about my life, the secrecy, the pack, the very real chance that loving me gets her killed.

I step back instead, putting space between us that costs more than it should.

"We should head back before it gets dark," I say, and hate how flat it sounds even as I say it.

Something crosses her face, quick and hurt before she smooths it over. "Right. Of course."

We walk back mostly in silence, the easy warmth from earlier gone cold and careful between us, and by the time we reach the cabin neither of us has said much of anything at all. She stops at her porch steps, arms crossed against the evening chill.

"I don't know what I did," she says quietly. "But if I misread something back there, you can just tell me."

"You didn't misread anything." It's the most honest thing I've said to her yet, and it costs me to say it. "That's the problem."

She waits for more, and when I don't give her anything else, she nods once, something resigned in it, and goes inside without another word.

She deserves someone who can give her a straight answer instead of half a truth and a retreat. She deserves someone who isn't carrying the kind of secrets that could get her killed just for standing too close.

I just don't know how to be anything other than exactly what I am.

7

ZOEY

Ineed space after last night, so I take the SUV out to the overlook Yvonne mentioned my first day here, a pull-off about twenty minutes up the county road where the whole valley opens up in a wash of red and gold. I tell myself it's just to clear my head. I don't examine that too closely.

The overlook is empty when I arrive, no other cars, no sound but wind moving through the trees below. I sit on the hood for a while, arms wrapped around my knees, replaying the moment by the stream more times than is probably healthy. The way he looked at me right before he stepped back. The flat, careful way he said we should head back like he was slamming a door he'd almost opened.

I don't understand him. I don't understand why a man who clearly wanted to close that distance chose not to, and I especially don't understand why it's bothering me this much. I've known him a week. I shouldn't care this much about a week.

By the time I've talked myself in enough circles to give up, the light's started slanting gold and I decide to head back before dark. That's when I notice the SUV won't start.

Not a dead battery, not a stalled engine. Nothing. The dashboard doesn't even light up when I turn the key, like something's been disconnected entirely. I pop the hood and stare at the engine for a long minute, useless, because I don't actually know what I'm looking at or what's supposed to be there.

My phone shows no signal, same as it's shown since I arrived on this mountain, and the overlook is empty in every direction. No cell towers. No other cars. Just me, a dead vehicle, and a valley that's about to lose the last of its light.

I try to stay calm the way Kellan's been teaching me, cataloging what I actually know instead of spiraling into what I don't. I know the way back to the cabin, roughly. I know it's a few miles on foot, doable in daylight but considerably less appealing once the sun's gone. I know someone did this, because cars don't just stop working like this on their own, and knowing that sends a cold, familiar fear crawling up my spine.

I'm halfway through deciding whether to start walking or wait it out when I hear an engine on the road below, and a few minutes later Kellan's truck pulls into the overlook, headlights cutting through the dimming light.

He's out of the truck before it fully stops. "You didn't come back," he says. "Yvonne said you left hours ago."