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The boy shrugged. “She just said I was already going to have a friend when I came here. She says she’s got a sixth sense about these things.”

“Like she can see ghosts or something?”

The boy laughed. “Nah. She just knows things before anyone else does.”

“Whelp, guess she was right about me. That’s as long as you like football.” Trevan narrowed his eyes at him like it was gonna be a dealbreaker.

“Personally, I like baseball better, but I’m good with football, too.”

“Silas, right?” Trevan asked.

“That’s right.”

Trevan cocked his arm back. “Then you’d better go long, Silas.”

Silas jumped down the steps and jogged far across the lawn. “Why’s that sound like a challenge?”

“Because if you’re going to hang out with me, you’re gonna have to keep up.”

Silas scoffed with a grin. “I think I’ll do just fine.”

And that little girl was suddenly right at Trevan’s side, yanking at his shirt as she jumped up and down. “I wanna play! I wanna p-p-play! I can keep up, too!”

“You think so?” he teased.

She beamed. “I know so!”

He chuckled a soft sound. “All right then, you can play. Just make sure you stick close to me.”

Stick close to me.

He had no idea what making that statement would really come to mean.

SEVEN

ELENA

My eyes blinked open to the first rays of daylight burning through the sheer drapes that covered the window.

It didn’t matter that it was an unfamiliar room. I was still inundated with comfort, and a smile crawled like a slow wave of bliss to my mouth as my lashes fluttered against the satiny fabric of my pillow.

They say waking up with the sun is the best way to start your day.

Maybe I couldn’t speak for everyone, but I’d say the best way to start your day was with a biker’s tattooed fingers woven with yours.

Warmth seeped up my arm and filled the rest of me so full I felt like I would burst.

I pushed up a fraction from where I lay on my stomach.

My vision caught on our intertwined hands.

Trevan’s fingers were big and rough, dark tattoos covering his knuckles, the color a sharp contrast against mine. Tattooed on his left forearm was an old castle that seemed to be consumed by vines, and you got the sense that the foliage had snuffed out the oxygen and life. Haunted and forever plunged into darkness.

Hidden within the vines was a cursive W, so out of place yet seeming to belong. Written in the hallow walls. Its meaning was something he’d never been willing to share with me. Stating it was nothing.

Of course, dripping down from the scene was the crow with the skull clutched in its talons.

Love to Death stamped below it.