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Clouds cloaked the afternoon. The breeze caused my arms to pebble.

Skating to a halt at the level below his treehouse, I snatched fallen acorns and hurled them, watching as they whacked the flat of a window. The nuts skittered from the frame, to the sill, to the floor.

Click...click...click.

The shutters spread like wings. A figure appeared, thrusting light my way. Those eyes found me, and in them, I saw an immediate shock of blue. The irises flashed like steel blades, a reenactment of when we met, only without the angst.

His mouth hung open, a depression in his face, the shape of awe and disbelief. And creases of distress. And a flush of protectiveness.

We gaped at each other.

He broke from the window. I broke from the platform, scurrying up three side steps to the next level, hustling to the door as it flew open.

Aire had scarcely appeared when I launched myself at him. Right before I made contact, I saw that his arms had been opening for me. We hugged, crushing ourselves together. His palm cradled the back of my head, my face mashed into his neck, feeling the clamor of his pulse against my lips. He smelled and felt the same, and I found myself starved for this embrace, for the sameness of it.

He pulled me tighter, or I pulled him tighter, the knot we’d made forcing us backward, floundering into his bungalow. Aire kicked the door shut. I wheezed, out of breath and clinging to him.

Tiny flames trembled from tapers throughout the room. Two goblets of crimson liquid sat on a three-legged stool by the hearth. He’d been preparing for me.

“Aspen,” he said. “What’s happened?”

“I-I don’t know,” I sputtered. “I found what I was looking for, only it wasn’t what I thought, because I can’t fix Mother, but—”

“Shhh. It’s all right.”

“I can’t fix her, but I—”

Fixed myself?

Was that what I’d done? Had I fixed myself? Had I needed to be fixed?

“It cannot be,” he breathed, pulling back to gaze at me, his eyes raking over my form. “It cannot be,” he repeated.

“But it is,” I said.

“I don’t understand. Is this real? Is it you?”

“Yes. I’m real.”

Those words, my words.

He swept the hair from my face, then glided his thumb over my chin. “Aspen.”

His lilt and my name rang like a denial and a vow.

Our hands couldn’t stay still, roaming all over the place, me on him, him on me. My mouth lurched for his, because that had to be same. I had to know it would feel the same.

He gathered me to him, kissing me back. And yes, he tasted as he always had.

I fumbled with his shirt, needing more of him, needing more of the same. Aire complied, his sweet kiss tipping my head backward as he attended to my own shirt, his fingers dipping past the neckline.

While stumbling toward the bed, he stopped. His mouth tore from mine. “What—” He glanced down, his brows slanting. “What is this?”

“Huh?” I mumbled, surfacing from the kiss. “What’s what?”

“This.” He traced something on my chest. “What...what is this?”

The question, and his wandering touch, struck me like a hammer. With a sense of foreboding, I registered the location of his digits above my breast, where my new heart pounded. The shape that he drew on my skin could only indicate one thing.