Tori waited until her mother’s car was out of sight before slipping off into the woods with the firemen’s blankets tucked under her arm. Maybe she should have felt relieved. The insurance money might be enough for a fresh start. Her family could take the money and move someplace else. Back to the city. And when Tori turned twenty-one, she could sell her land back to the Slaughters and be rid of this place for good. That is, if the curse didn’t follow her.

But the thought of leaving…the idea of abandoning Nathaniel and Will and Matilda. Of letting their stories be buried. And never seeing Nathaniel again…The faster Tori ran, the more the burning walls of her chest felt like they were caving in.

The barn was a shadow against the trees up ahead. No sign of life. No firelight in the window.

Tori pushed her legs faster. She threw open the barn door. It was pitch-black inside. A small square of the dirt floor was illuminated by a pale beam of moonlight through the smoke hole in the roof.

“Nathaniel!” she called out, tossing the blankets to the floor. The barn was silent. Motionless. A lump hardened in her throat. Then something moved in the shadows.

Nathaniel rushed toward her, and it was only when his arms were around her that Tori felt like she could breathe again.

“I thought you were gone,” she said into his chest. He was bundled in one of her father’s thick knit sweaters. It smelled like smoke and cedar and faintly, the river.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to risk building a fire. I was afraid someone might see. Have they all left?”

“I think so.”

“You’re cold.” He started to pull away, toward the stack of firewood, but she held him in place, her arms locked around him as she stared at the frail witch’s bottle, half-hidden under a pile of straw. For a moment, neither of them moved. Tori didn’t want to tell him about the tree in her brother’s closet. That Slaughter had won. That her home was unlivable, and soon, they’d both be gone. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to the top of her head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “About your home. And your father’s possessions. I would have saved them for you, if I had come sooner.”

“It’s okay,” she said, pushing herself gently from his arms, from her father’s sweater. The truth stung and she blinked it away. “It’s time we let him go.”

“It’s not okay.” The urgency in his tone startled her. “He was your home. And you…” His eyes pinned her in the dark. “You have become mine. You’re the reason I came. You’re the reason I’ve stayed.”

His hand was on his scarred chest, begging her to need him. To remember him. He was afraid, she realized, not of death, but of being forgotten.

“I won’t let you go.” She brushed the tips of his fingers with her own, the way he’d touched hers in the river. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Tori stepped into him until she could feel his heart beating, memorizing the moonlit shadows on his face—the cut of his jaw, the small knot at the bridge of his nose, and the stray lock of hair that fell across it. She cupped his cheek, following it down across his lower lip, feeling his warm breath against her finger. Then she leaned in until her lips were close enough to feel it too.

Tori felt Nathaniel’s heart leap. His hand found the small of her back and pressed her closer as their mouths brushed.

Tori kissed him back deeper, until she was breathless and shaking. She pulled back slowly. His eyes fluttered open and came to rest on Tori’s hands where they gripped the hem of her shirt.

She held her breath and pulled it up over her head. Clutching the fabric at her side, she stepped into the dim square of light, until she was little more than moon-white skin in a plain cotton bra and row after row of pink and purple scars, as naked as she’d ever been in front of anyone.

His gaze locked on the oyster shell around her neck, then traveled over the rest of her. She swallowed hard, aching for him to see past it, to find something beautiful and shining beneath that she wasn’t entirely sure was there. Tori grew cold all over under the weight of his stare, blood rushing to her cheeks. Then, in a burst of three quick strides, he was all she could see. His mouth fell on hers, their lips and teeth colliding. His hand tangled with her fingers through the fabric of her shirt, and without breaking the kiss, he tossed it away.

Clumsy and hungry, they pulled each other close. Tori’s hands slid under his sweater, over the scars on his back, pushing the fabric up with them. Nathaniel yanked it over his head, a few long strands of his hair coming loose from the knot at the nape of his neck and falling against Tori’s cheek. His forehead rested on hers, his chest rising and falling in the pale light of the barn. Tori trembled as she caressed his cuts with the tip of a finger, wishing she could erase every terrible thing the Slaughters had done to him without changing him at all. He was strong, beautiful in ways the moonlight couldn’t see.

His fingers weaved into hers. He kissed her, softer, carefully this time, as if he were asking permission. She pulled him down with her into the straw and whispered that it was okay.

That she was safe. That this is what she wanted. And that she would not let him go.