“I think that’s the last of it,” Ollie says, scanning his empty bedroom walls. “Unless there’s stuff in the garage.”
His father stands in the doorway, arms folded. There’s more space in the bedroom than Ollie remembers, but maybe that’s because he spent over a month sleeping under a tarp and anything feels spacious. Or maybe it’s because the house feels less suffocating now that he doesn’t live in it. Without the bed, desk, posters, the piles of clothes, the empty soda bottles wedged wherever they fit, it doesn’t look so bad. Just lifeless.
“I checked the garage,” his father says flatly. “I know it doesn’t mean much, but you’re welcome back if you’re missing something.”
“Yeah,” Ollie mutters. “Maybe.”
It’s been three months, and this is what they’ve got.
It was July 11 when they were pulled out of the woods and flown to the nearest hospital in the early morning hours. Ollie remembers it only in flashes—the men at the hunting lodge scrambling to sit him up, someone dialing 911, someone else telling him to breathe through the pain. He remembers paramedics hauling him onto a stretcher, wheeling him from the lodge and back under the wide-open sky, the sprawl of white stars dizzying. He remembers wishing they’d wheel him back into the warmth, away from the trees.
He remembers the hospital and he remembers the phrase that finally let him rest. Your friends are all alive.
His father wasn’t allowed to see him for a week. It was all brain scans and tubes and mandated bed rest until, finally, Ollie woke feeling like a battered, sore version of himself. When the nurses told him he had a visitor, he expected one of the others—Devin, pushing her way past concerned nurses, maybe. Instead, it was his father stepping into his hospital room with deep gray bags under his eyes and a somber, harrowed smile on his face.
Ollie’s father held him, then. Told him how relieved he was to see him alive. Foolishly, Ollie thought maybe something had changed between them. But that first hug, the one that made Ollie think they might survive this, was a one-time deal. Even now, Ollie is sure it’s the only time since the rescue his father seemed relieved to have him back.
They move into the living room and Ollie looks at the empty stretch where his grandma’s hospice bed was parked. The carpet is still flattened in the shape of it. He wishes he’d gotten to see her. There was a moment when he first returned, when he realized that his grandma was gone and his father was just as cold as before, that he thought the mimic of Liv had been right. There was nothing for him outside the woods.
And then Devin came.
Ollie sets the last box of his things by the front door and pats the dust from his hands. His phone vibrates and he silences it. He watches his father, still leaning in the doorway, and he tries not to picture his head hanging behind his shoulder blades, his skin drooping from his face, all the other horrifying iterations the mimics came up with. There was one face they used to hurt him most in the woods. He tries not to shovel that fear onto his living, human father. But sometimes, when he looks at his father, he can’t see the difference.
“You look at me like I’m gonna hit you.” His father sighs. “I just … I don’t know if it’s because of stuff you told the cops you saw out there, or if we’ve got some kind of problem, but—”
“Stuff?” Ollie scoffs.
His father pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’ve got brain damage, Ollie. Two of you did, and the other two were a drug addict and a child.”
Ollie steels himself. They’ve had this argument so many times Ollie doesn’t bother anymore. Since their rescue, Ollie has tried to explain the mimics to anyone who will listen, but in the real world, shape-shifting creatures with a goal of replacing humans is too much to comprehend. On the news, the story was simple—a poorly managed behavioral program lost its way in the woods, and the troubled, delinquent survivors are too traumatized to coherently say what happened. Ollie’s seen his face on the news a thousand times now, each more exhausting than the last.
When Ollie doesn’t speak, his father looks him in the eye. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be living by yourself in your condition.”
“I’m not,” Ollie says. He pops the front door open with his knee and hauls his box through. Without looking at his father, he throws out a quick, “Bye, Dad.”
“Ollie—”
The door shuts behind him. His father doesn’t follow him outside.
Ollie loads his last box into the back of his car and looks back at his house. It’s almost serene in the early fall light, bordered with unruly shrubs and flowerbeds tangled with growth. It’s wilder than it was when Ollie left, the only indication he can find that his father was distressed by the last few months.
Ollie slides into his car and pulls away from the curb. Away from his father’s house, and he doesn’t think of it as home. His phone vibrates again.
He pulls it from his pocket and Aidan’s name pulses in the center of the screen. He slides to answer, pulling out of his father’s neighborhood entirely. “Hey.”
“Did you see what I sent?” Aidan asks.
Ollie blinks. At the first stoplight, he moves his phone from his ear and swipes into their group chat. A link to an article sits unread at the bottom of the chat: GETTING BETTER GONE WRONG—WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT REVIVE AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THREE IN THE SALMON-CHALLIS NATIONAL FOREST.
“Oh, god.” Ollie laughs, taking another turn. “Any highlights?”
“I think you should read the whole thing,” Aidan says. “Is Devin there, too?”
“No, she’s up north, remember?”
“Oh.” Aidan gasps. “Is that today?”
“Yeah. Did you send a card?”
“I forgot.”
“I’ll sign for you when I get home.” Ollie laughs.
Since their rescue, he’s spoken to Aidan almost every day. He and Devin may have ended up back in the same city, with Sheridan only a few hours north, but Aidan is in Montana. He’s on the other side of the woods that held them captive. At first, Ollie offered to find a way for Aidan to join them so he wouldn’t have to be alone with the weight of what they’d seen. But unlike the rest of them, Aidan had a home to return to. A real one.
Ollie pulls into his new neighborhood, adjusting his phone from one ear to the other. “How’s things with your mom?”
“Good.” Aidan sighs. “My friends from school came by last night to give me a care package. I wish you guys could sign my cast, too.”
Ollie chuckles. “Sign it for me and I’ll sign your name on the birthday card. How’s that?”
“Sounds good.”
Ollie parks at his new apartment building and looks out the windshield, down the tree-lined street, out to the water. It moves slow, cords of highway cast across the water like fishing line. This is what he wanted. This is where he wanted to end up. But there’s a hunger in him, still. An aching in his chest.
Something’s still missing.
After hauling his last box into the elevator, Ollie steps into his apartment. It isn’t much yet—a sofa, a TV, a plastic table for two. Nothing on the walls, since he and Devin realized almost immediately that neither of them have an eye for decoration. It’s bare and it’s simple, but it’s theirs. Neither of them have done this before; taken care of themselves, lived on their own, created a life they could actually like. But living with Devin feels familiar in all the ways living at home never could. In their sparse, poorly set up apartment, he can breathe.
Ollie tosses his keys on the kitchen counter and slaps his phone down. On the other end of the line, Aidan’s breath is quick. Ollie navigates to the article Aidan sent and is hit immediately with a harried photo of his own face. It’s from their rescue, a leaked photo of the four of them in blankets, being hoisted into the helicopter. Ollie presses the heels of his hands to his eyelids. “God, this looks fun.”
Aidan groans. “I hate that picture.”
Ollie skims the beginning of the article, which is the same as all the others. A summary of what went wrong—poor planning and food management, adults unequipped to handle the wilderness or the teens they were charged with, and a whole lot of question marks. They condemn REVIVE for faking letters to and from home to avoid finding ways to safely check in with the real world. And then, halfway down the page, there’s another cluster of pictures. Ethan at a party with friends from his college, laughing with a drink in hand. Liv at the summit of a scraggly, wooded mountain, flexing for a photo. Hannah’s school photo, cheeks rosy and eyes wide.
The last picture gives him pause. He keeps reading:
Many of us, however, are left wondering what became of the three missing persons in this ongoing case. Rescue officials continue to search for REVIVE coaches 22-year-old Ethan Carmichael and 21-year-old Olivia Reid, as well as 17-year-old Sacramento teen Hannah Kennedy. Given the vastness of the region and the remoteness of its trailheads, rescue efforts are slow. Search and rescue officers believe that there is a chance the three missing persons could still be alive, but at over four months from the time the group entered the forest, hope begins to fade. Sources close to the survivors, however, are aware of another theory behind the disappearances. Statements taken from survivors detail a complex, bizarre tale of shape-shifting “creatures” in the woods. Search and rescue officers have not encountered any such creatures during rescue efforts thus far, but will keep wildlife in mind as a potential explanation for the disappearances. This story will continue to update as the case develops.
Ollie shakes his head. “Well, at least no one’s accused us of killing them ourselves.”
“Yet.”
Ollie’s fingers brush over Ethan’s and Liv’s photos and there’s a tightness in his chest. They were only a few years older than him. Sheridan was right: they had no business guiding anyone through the woods. They were practically teens themselves. It hurts to look at them, but it hurts worse when his fingers brush over Hannah’s picture.
On the other side of the call, Aidan must do the same. “I really miss her.”
“Me, too,” Ollie says.
“Sometimes, when I start to miss her, I get scared I’m not actually missing her,” Aidan says, voice suddenly heavy. “Some of the things I remember about her weren’t even her.”
“Yeah,” Ollie says.
The room spins. Maybe it was the hit to his head, or maybe it’s just the blur of the days they were in the woods, but when Ollie tries to remember the difference between the real Hannah and the fake one, it’s impossible. He cried into not-Hannah’s shoulder long into the night, kissed her when he thought they were safe. The little moments he felt himself melting into her, opening up his chest and giving her bits of his heart … he can’t remember which Hannah saw him. He can’t remember which Hannah made him feel alive.
“I saw her dad on TV,” Aidan continues.
Ollie’s eyes widen.
“He’s suing REVIVE. Because of the fake check-ins thing.”
“I don’t know how fake it was that he didn’t write to her,” Ollie says. “God, if he knew the way he ruined her life.”
Aidan is quiet for a long time, but Ollie doesn’t hang up. His eyes slide back to Ethan and he frowns. Devin swears she saw his body, but even after months of searching, he hasn’t been found. The woods are endless and all-consuming. Ollie lies awake some nights wondering if they’ll ever bring Ethan home.
“What are you guys gonna do when it’s all three of you?” Aidan asks.
Ollie laughs a little, pulling himself from his daze. “I don’t know. We’re gonna make Sheridan decorate, first of all. Then just … I don’t know, live?”
“Do you think they’re still…?”
Ollie smiles. “Yeah. They definitely are.”
“Devin talks to you about it?”
“No.” Ollie laughs. “She won’t say a word about it.”
He paces to the window, eyeing the store-bought cake they got for Sheridan’s surprise party after a failed attempt at baking something from scratch. It will be different with Sheridan here, with Devin and Sheridan together again, with the three of them pent up in one little apartment. But even crowded, even turned into an awkward third wheel, Ollie’s excited for it all. For the first time in years, he’s excited to come home, excited to talk over TV and botch dinner recipes and spend his nights looking out his window, watching the river flow.
“You’ll be okay out there?” Ollie asks.
“I’ll be okay,” Aidan says softly. “And you guys will be okay, too?”
It’s a difficult question, but the answer comes easy.
“Yeah,” Ollie says, tracing the river against his window. “We’ll be okay.”
Devin pulls up outside a massive, well-groomed house in a sprawling neighborhood of massive, well-groomed houses. The sloped street is in a quiet part of Seattle, all presidential names and towering oaks. It was a three-hour drive to get here, and the sun sits high overhead, glaring through the windshield of Devin’s newly acquired used car. The breeze is cool with autumn and Devin really wishes she’d hashed out this plan ahead of time. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes.
Should she go to the door? Should she just text? Should she, god forbid, introduce herself?
She steels herself. This is not the time to doubt. In a way, she’s spent the last three months preparing for today. All the apartment setup with Ollie, all the check-in calls with Aidan, all the legal documents and lawyer talks have been her life, but this is the moment she’s been waiting on. She’s parked in front of Sheridan’s house, a week after Sheridan’s eighteenth birthday, and she’s here to take her home.
Now that she’s here, though, staring into the second-floor windows of a house nicer than any she’s ever stepped foot in, it’s like her stomach has turned inside out.
She turns off the car and pats the fast-food crumbs from her jeans. She’s spent a not-small amount of time wondering what Sheridan will think of her without the uniform green T-shirt and cargo pants. If this—the hoodies and too-large jeans, short hair cropped closer to her scalp than ever—will live up to expectations.
When she makes it to the front door, she doesn’t get a chance to knock. The door inches open, revealing a woman on the other side. She briefly thinks Sheridan decided to abandon the pastel colors and reverted to all neutrals. But the woman’s eyes are set with faint wrinkles, the blue in her eyes dark and murkier. The woman in the doorway isn’t Sheridan; it’s her mother.
“Are you Devin?” the woman asks.
Devin cranes her neck, attempting to peer around the woman’s shoulders. “Uh, yeah. Is Sheridan here?”
The woman holds out a hand.
“I’m her mom. I’m … glad to finally meet you.”
Devin narrows her eyes, but tentatively, she shakes Mrs. West’s hand. Behind her, Devin can just make out a stack of cardboard boxes and trash bags. She clears her throat and takes a step back.
“Sheridan will be down in a second,” Mrs. West says. “But I wanted to say I’m … I’m very sorry for what you went through. And I’m very glad you’re alive. I’m very glad you kept Sheridan alive.”
The breeze buffets the wide legs of Mrs. West’s pants. Most of her hair is a satin brown, save for the first streaks of gray at her hairline. Up close, the lines of her face are deep, the skin under her eyes practically gray with exhaustion. Devin isn’t sure what she expected. Sheridan’s mother doesn’t seem evil. She just seems … sad.
“Well, um…” Devin clears her throat. “She kept us alive, too. She kept me alive a lot of times.”
Mrs. West offers a small smile. “Yes. Well, I think you know her very well now. You understand what I mean.”
Devin is left without words. The door opens wider and a man appears behind Mrs. West. He’s a full head taller than her, square jawed and broad shouldered with a tired set to his eyes. He pauses when he spots Devin, looking her over like a dog at the pound. Immediately, Devin’s jaw tightens.
“This is her?” Mr. West asks his wife.
“Yes.”
Mr. West motions to the curb with his chin. “Is your car unlocked? I’ll start loading.”
At Devin’s nod, Mr. West starts hauling boxes out of the house, down the pristinely maintained stone path, and into the backseat of the Honda. It’s too peaceful. Devin isn’t sure if she expected a fight—isn’t sure what she expected at all—but this isn’t it. There’s a buzz of anxiety under her skin, a question without an answer.
And then, finally, Sheridan appears.
She stands halfway up a comically grand staircase, hands on her hips. Devin’s heart drops a foot, a particularly humiliating reaction. But after three months of limited FaceTime calls and texts, she forgot how familiar it feels to see Sheridan. She’s redyed her hair, the vibrant purple of it shocking compared to the pale silver it was when they left the woods.
Sheridan lugs two suitcases to the bottom of the stairs and pauses to catch her breath. She eyes Devin with the playful half smile Devin’s spent the last three months picturing in her sleep. “I hope that car you bought is a U-Haul.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Devin says. “You get a Honda Civic.”
To Devin’s surprise, Sheridan makes her way to her mother’s side, pulling her in to a brief hug. Mrs. West plants a quick kiss on Sheridan’s cheek. “Okay. We’ll talk soon.”
Sheridan nods. “Yeah.”
After hauling the last of the boxes to the car, Mr. West joins them inside and pats Sheridan on the head. It’s more loving, more tender than Devin expects. It isn’t the bold-faced ire of Ollie’s father. The three of them look like a perfect family portrait, like they’re sending Sheridan off to summer camp.
They wheel Sheridan’s suitcases to the already-packed car and silently climb inside. Sheridan gives her parents a quick wave before slouching back in the passenger seat.
“Happy belated birthday, by the way.”
“You think we should hit Chuck E. Cheese?” Sheridan muses.
Devin laughs at first, but Sheridan doesn’t join her. There’s something off about her. Too quiet, too distant, too anxious. Devin pauses with her key in the ignition. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
Sheridan twirls the ends of her hair around her finger.
“That was extremely weird.” Devin waits for Sheridan to meet her eyes. “They’re being so…”
“Normal?”
“If that’s what you’re calling it.”
“We, uh … we talked about stuff. Everything.” Sheridan looks down again. “They didn’t like the idea of us doing this, but when I told them I don’t think I can stay better with them, they … yeah, it’s all good now.”
Devin blinks. “You told them?”
Sheridan nods, but there’s no joy in it.
“You feel okay about that?”
Sheridan looks back at her house with a small frown. When she meets Devin’s eyes again, though, she’s smiling in that easy, casually joking way she’s so good at. The one she wears when she’s hiding. “I would feel more okay if we started driving so I don’t have to carry boxes in the dark. Remember when you were the one telling me to hurry up?”
Devin laughs, but she can’t fight the twisting in her stomach. They pull away from Sheridan’s neighborhood and onto the highway, the quiet so thick it makes Devin ill. She clears her throat.
“You’re sure you feel okay about leaving?”
Sheridan is quiet for a long moment. “I’ve been feeling a lot of things about a lot of things. I don’t know how I feel about anything.”
“Okay,” Devin says carefully. “You feel okay about this, though, right?”
Sheridan says nothing.
“Sheridan?”
“Can we pull over?” Sheridan asks abruptly.
Devin hesitates. She pulls to the shoulder of the highway, shoving the Honda into park as other cars streak past them. Each passing car rattles the Honda in its wake. Devin doesn’t look at Sheridan, focusing on the early fall sunlight spilling across the dashboard. Because she already knows what this is about. She should’ve known that, just like the mimic said, this wouldn’t be good enough for Sheridan. A few months outside the woods and she’d change her mind.
“You okay?” Devin finally asks.
Sheridan sucks in a sharp breath and looks out the passenger window. “Is this real?”
Devin blinks.
“Like, are we really doing this?”
Another batch of cars rushes by and Devin tries to find her words. A good person would offer to take Sheridan back and call the whole thing off. A good person would be okay with that, and even though Devin has spent the past few months trying to become a good person, she doesn’t want to be good today. She wants to be horrible and selfish and she wants to beg Sheridan to stay. The Devin that stepped into the woods four months ago would be ashamed.
When Devin doesn’t answer, Sheridan eyes her. “Devin?”
“Do you want to go back?” Devin asks.
Sheridan reaches across Devin’s lap and turns the ignition off. The quiet pours in, heavy and hot. And Devin feels a thousand things at once. She wants Sheridan to stay, wants her to speak plainly, wants her to say something snide so they can fight about it. She wants to reach across the center console and take Sheridan’s face in her hands. She wants to kiss her so hard it leaves a mark.
“I don’t want to go back,” Sheridan says finally. “I just need a second. I’ve been … I was picturing today for a long time.”
Devin’s eyes widen. “Like for your birthday? I don’t want to ruin anything, but—”
“Oh god, no.” Sheridan laughs. “I mean the day I left home.”
“Ah.” Devin reaches over, cupping her hand on Sheridan’s knee. She clears her throat again. “Do you think you’ll still talk to them?”
Sheridan shrugs. “Does that make me a coward?”
“No,” Devin says. “No. I mean, Ollie said he was cutting his dad off but now it’s like … it’s different than he thought it would be.”
“Yeah.” Sheridan wipes her nose. “That sounds right.”
“I’m not gonna judge you for it,” Devin says. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I don’t think any of us have room to judge each other anymore,” Sheridan says through a laugh. The car rattles again and Sheridan shakes her head. “Never mind. I’m just being weird. We can keep going.”
Devin watches her. The sun tilts over her eyes, turning her watery blue irises the color of snow. And even if Devin had no home to pull her roots from when they got back, she understands. Sheridan’s life has been one long process of being pushed and pulled from her parents’ hearts like the ebb and flow of a tide. This time is different. It’s good and it’s healthy and it scares her.
Devin swallows. “You okay taking the long way?”
“I wouldn’t even know what the long way is,” Sheridan muses. “You can take me whatever way you want.”
Devin arches a brow at that, which earns her a playful smack on the leg. They peel away from the highway, whipping along rugged back roads until the last of the urban sprawl dies away and only the woods are left. Even this close to the trees, when they press in tight it’s like Devin’s blood vibrates. Sheridan is quiet, too. Devin imagines the fear and excitement and familiarity burns just as bad in her.
They spill into a small town somewhere near the coast and Sheridan raises a curious brow. But Devin reveals nothing. She texts Ollie to tell him they’ll be late. She doesn’t know the details of her plan yet, but she knows how she wants Sheridan to feel. Like everything is different, but nothing has changed. Like the life they promised they would reach for on the outside still exists. They don’t need to be lost to find each other.
She pulls into a fast-food drive-thru and purchases an obscenely large basket of fries. At a convenience store, she buys a two-liter bottle of soda and a bundle of candy bars. She drives farther into the trees, tuning out Sheridan’s playful demands for an explanation. It’s been years since Devin drove up this ridge—three fosters ago, she thinks—but she still remembers the way.
Once they’ve crested a steep hill, Devin finally pulls the car into a stretch of empty parking lot. Green grass rolls out until it meets the jagged end of a cliff. Past the drop-off, the ocean glitters, stretching wide across the horizon. The trees press in on all sides like the cliff was carved out just for this view. The sky is familiar, barely kissed with sunset, the first pinpricks of starlight seeping through. It takes Devin by surprise at first, how much it looks like the woods again.
Or maybe everything looks like the woods since they left.
“Are we having a picnic?” Sheridan laughs once Devin parks the car. “This is very sentimental for you.”
“Just grab your fries and follow me,” Devin says.
She climbs out of the car and clambers onto its hood, lying back so that her head leans against the windshield. The wind is cool over the ridge, the parking lot empty and the trails clear. There’s a tug in Devin’s chest at the loneliness of it. It’s too similar to the nightmare they just escaped, but alone in the woods with Sheridan, it all feels familiar.
Reluctantly, Sheridan lies back next to Devin, eyes trained on the sky, laughing a little under her breath. “You wanted to retraumatize me by bringing me here? You’re sick.”
Devin waits until Sheridan’s mouth is full of fries to speak.
“Okay,” she says. “Everything you think can go wrong with this. Go.”
Sheridan makes a muffled, surprised noise that Devin can’t decipher. When she swallows, she glares. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
Sheridan considers. “What if we fight too much?”
It’s a doubt Devin’s lingered on, too. It’s easy for their words to come out barbed, easy for them to shut down at the slightest sign of danger. When she looks at Sheridan, she sees a thousand fights down the line about dishes and alone time and car usage. Trivial things. But after the woods, she can’t imagine any of it sticking. With a small smile, she says, “Define ‘too much.’”
“Okay.” Sheridan huffs. “What if Ollie gets tired of us?”
“I’ll kick his ass.”
“What happened to personal growth?” Sheridan teases. “We’re threatening roommates with violence?”
Devin rolls her eyes. “Next issue.”
“What if we get tired of each other?”
Devin laughs out loud. “I was tired of you the minute I met you. You get used to it.”
“Wow.” Sheridan smiles. Without looking, her hand finds Devin’s wrist. She slides her fingers down Devin’s palm before tentatively lacing their fingers together. “You’re very romantic. Has anyone told you that?”
Devin squeezes Sheridan’s hand and it feels too normal. Too natural. Like the girls she saw holding hands with their boyfriends back at school, casually intimate in a way that makes her feel like she’s falling. She musters up what little bravado she has. “Glad to hear I’m sweeping you off your feet.”
Sheridan goes quiet. She looks up at the sky and something shifts in her eyes. Her hair flickers at her cheeks and, in an instant, Devin sees the entire history of her. The girl that lived in her sister’s shadow, the girl that found herself devastatingly alone, the girl her parents kept running through the wash, hoping each time she would come out clean. She sees the Sheridan from the woods, too, broken down and built back stronger. Smart and funny and cutting. Devin watches Sheridan’s face and she sees them all.
“What if I don’t get better?” Sheridan asks.
Devin stills.
“Like, ever.” Sheridan closes her eyes. Her grip on Devin’s hand tightens. “What if I keep trying and it never works? What if I go backward?”
“Like using again?” Devin asks.
“I haven’t since we got back. But I’ve been more … aware of it? When we were out there, relapse wasn’t an actual choice. It was survive withdrawals or don’t. Here, it’s different.”
Devin swallows. “You feel tempted?”
“I’m just scared it never really goes away. After everything, it feels like it was just waiting for me to come home. Like it didn’t end and I didn’t get better. It just paused.”
Devin chews on her answer a long time before she speaks. “The bad stuff follows me, too. It’s not like your stuff, but I feel it. So does Ollie. I think it follows all four of us. The things we did before. Who we were.”
She’d hoped that the moment she smashed the last of not–Mr. Atwood to pieces, the moment she set his body ablaze, the space he occupied in her would burn with him. But just like every fight, every loss, every night spent lying awake in the dark, every half-baked escape plan, none of it ever leaves. She’s made of every bad thing that has happened to her, just like she’s made of every good thing. She’s made of every good thing before the woods and every good thing she found in its unyielding grip. She’s made of Ollie and Aidan and Hannah and Sheridan.
Sheridan is made of her, too.
“What if we never get rid of it?” Sheridan asks, an edge of laughter to her voice like she plans to turn it into a joke. Instead of finishing the thought, she turns onto her side to face Devin, their hands still intertwined. “Is that good enough? Walking around with it hanging on us?”
Devin turns, too. Looking hard into Sheridan’s eyes, it’s like they’re back in the woods. Without thinking, Devin reaches over and brushes a strand of Sheridan’s hair behind her ear. The wind is cool enough to pull goose bumps from her forearm.
“We survived shit most people can’t even imagine,” Devin says quietly. “We’ve seen the worst. I’m not … I don’t know anything, but I think the rest of it will just be echoes.”
Sheridan raises a brow. “Echoes?”
“A little less every time,” Devin clarifies.
Sheridan smiles. She eyes Devin’s mouth and her expression shifts. “Okay. You make a compelling argument. I agree to try tolerating you long-term. How about I tell you something I’m not worried about?”
“Sure?”
“Now…” Sheridan trails off, voice heavy.
Her hand leaves Devin’s, creeping instead to her waist. She takes a fistful of Devin’s T-shirt, scooting until she’s conquered the few inches of space between them. Before Sheridan even touches her, Devin feels the dizzying warmth of her breath. Sheridan’s fingertips stroke Devin’s jaw.
Against Devin’s lips, she breathes. “… I can do this all the time.”
When she kisses Devin, it’s slow and aching. It’s a disorienting rush back to the woods, more tender than the ranger station, more hopeful than the lake. A sunset on the hungry, lonely girls they were when this nightmare began. A sunrise on something new.
Devin threads her fingers through Sheridan’s hair—soft now, like silk against her knuckles—and sinks into her. The trees shift around them, the roar of distant water no louder than a hoarse breath, the sky easing finally into night. And for the first time since she can remember, Devin wonders how she got this lucky.
It isn’t perfect, but it’s enough.