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It’s cold in the cabin. The fire went out in the stove, and no one has relit it. I wear layers of sweaters and sit in silence at the kitchen table, waiting.

Connor returns at last with cheeks red from the cold and an apology muffin for being late. He’s been gone more than an hour. I’m still stuffed from the waffles but accept the muffin as the tribute it’s intended to be, and he kisses me tenderly as if he can’t be sure what kind of touch is safe, won’t hurt me.

“What did Nick say?” he asks. At my startled silence he adds, “About your hand.”

Right. “That I’m an unbelievable klutz. Not in so many words.” I waggle my eyebrows, going for playful. Why did you lie to me, Connor?

He sought me out. And he hid it. He never told me about the art show, and neither did Harper. There must be some innocent explanation, because this is Connor, the boy without scars on his skin, whose only wound is sorrow. He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t spend all these months hiding things from me to lure me here for some unknown purpose.

He goes to start a new pot of coffee. “Does he think you need to get it looked at?”

“No, it should heal just fine. I took a couple of ibuprofen to help with the pain. Should be much better in a few days, and look completely disgusting until then.”

Connor starts up the coffee and takes the same seat where Nick installed himself. “I’ve been thinking,” he says.

“That’s unusual for you,” I tease; he huffs.

“My family—okay, mostly my grandparents—are worried about me marrying you. They think we don’t know enough about you,” he says. He scratches the side of his face. “I know that you don’t like talking about your childhood. But maybe if you laid it all out on the table, they would see that there isn’t anything nefarious there.”

“Nefarious?” I repeat. He lifts his shoulders, lets them drop. My spine stiffens. “My past is none of their business.”

“But isn’t it mine?” he asks. “I don’t even know your parents’ names. I don’t know how they died, if you have other family, if you liked school or if you got good grades or…” He spreads his hands.

I look away, staring at the wall, at the window, at nothing. “Elizabeth and Joseph Scott,” I say. “And I was homeschooled. They weren’t good parents, Connor, and I don’t like talking about it.”

“You know, maybe we could find your birth parents,” Connor says. “I know you hit a dead end before, but you didn’t have the same resources that we do. I bet you anything Granddad has somebody who could—”

“Why are you pushing so hard on this?” I ask him. “For me? Or to make your grandparents happy?”

He taps a fingertip on the table, thinking over his next words. “My family is very rich, Theo. If we don’t look into you, someone else might. And my grandparents need to know that there isn’t anything to find that might damage the family. I know that it’s intrusive. But think of it from their perspective.”

He puts his hand on my thigh. He sits on the edge of his chair so he can lean in toward me.

“You have to help me out here,” he says. “You have to start telling me things.”

“I tell you the important things,” I say.

He shakes his head. “You’re so hard to read. Hell, you’re a blank book.”

I flinch back. He’s dug his fingers into a wound, a fear I always hold myself curled protectively around. Who am I? Maybe I’m no one and there’s nothing inside me except all the little pieces I’ve collected from the people I’ve wanted to love. Maybe I’m just a silver dollar hidden in a shoe, a pink shell, a polished piece of tiger’s eye, a knife.

“What’s so terrible that you can’t tell me?” he asks. “What’s so important to keep secret?”

Blood in my teeth. On my shirt. Blood that won’t stop. The cruiser’s lights flashing.

Yes, I’m keeping secrets, Connor. But I’m not the only one.

“The night we met, why did you come over and talk to me?” I ask. His head jerks up. Just a twitch, really. It could mean anything. It could mean nothing.

And then he smiles. “I need a reason to go talk to a pretty girl?” he asks. He rises, coming around the side of the table. He leans against it facing me so I have to crane my neck to look up at him.

“I’m not pretty,” I say, Trevor’s words an echo in my chest.

“Of course you are. You’re beautiful,” he says. They’re different things, I don’t tell him. “You looked intriguing. I wanted to know who you were. It turns out that was a harder proposition than I was expecting.” He says it like he’s teasing me, but also like it’s true.

“You looked familiar. But we’d never seen each other before,” I say. I’m leaving him the opening, the option. If he tells me, I’ll tell him everything, I think. But if he keeps his secrets, I have to keep mine.

“Maybe it was just a sign that we were fated for each other,” he says.

“You didn’t recognize me?” Trying not to sound like I’m pressing. That I know there’s anything to press about.

“I don’t think we’d ever run into each other before,” he says. “I wouldn’t have waited to talk to you.” He cups my chin in his hand, his thumb against my lower lip. He sighs. “I love you, Theo.”

Any other day, any other point in my life, it would be enough to undo me.

Today I only turn my head toward his palm to kiss the inside of his wrist, and I say nothing at all.