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“My dad. The last time I saw him, I…I said…things I didn’t mean.” It’s easier to tell her with my eyes shut. I swallow hard and say in barely a whisper, “I couldn’t know that…that they would be the last words I’d ever speak to him. That he’d ever hear.”

In the contemplative silence that follows, I hear the echoes of my words as though they’re traveling yawning distances of space and time:

Fine! Go, then! If you love the woods so much, stay there forever! I hope you never come back!

Kiara remains quiet, but her fingers don’t falter. I inhale the sweet, bright scent of the oil that clings to her skin and mine. I’m already feeling much better; even my spirits are lifted.

“The day of the Fall Festival,” I say, “I met a girl in the woods. She wanted to know why I was there. She and her brother went looking for the wishing well with their friends, but it didn’t work out. He thought she sabotaged their trip by messing with their supplies. But he forgave her?”

I make a soft noise that’s part disbelief, part envy. Even now, I think about her certainty with wonder. About the way they’d laughed and clambered in the car. Aaliyah’s brother bore her no grudge. Everything forgiven and forgotten. The exact opposite of my life.

“And she said that’s what family does,” I tell Kiara. “I haven’t been able to stop wondering what that would be like.”

“To be forgiven?” Kiara asks. I don’t have to see her face to hear the confusion in her voice.

“Yes.”

“Your dad knows you didn’t mean it. Whatever it was that you said.”

Hot tears prick at my eyes. I screw them shut even tighter. “But I’ll never know for sure.”

“That’s why you wander around in the woods? For absolution?”

“No. I’m going to get him back.” I hear how it sounds and quicky add, “I mean, I’m going to try. If I can. If he’s still…”

My breath catches. I hadn’t meant to say that. The words hang between us.

To my surprise, her hands move farther down my face to cup my jaw.

Her thumbs settle at the corners of my mouth.

I open my eyes, but this only means that I can see her face hovering scant inches above mine.

Was she always this close? I can practically count her every eyelash.

What is she doing? What is she waiting for? Can she smell my morning breath?

My thoughts frantically rattle, so I take a deep inhale and hold it until my chest starts to burn, which only makes the butterflies swooping in my belly flap their wings even harder. Kiara doesn’t look sad, exactly, but it’s not a happy expression, either.

“Can’t save everyone, Nova,” she says.

To her credit, she doesn’t say that finding my dad is impossible, that rescuers far savvier than me have tried and failed, that it’s so, so futile to expect anything more than bones.

“I will save you both,” I say fiercely.

Now she does smile. “It’s not your job to save me.”

“Oh, quit it, Kiara.” I roll my eyes and lift myself from her lap, turning so I’m on my knees in the V of her crossed legs. “I lied to my mom in order to be here, so I’m not giving up on you.”

Her expressive brown eyes flick to my lips. We’re close enough to kiss. It’s such an unhelpful thought, but my heart does a silly little backflip anyway. Actually, it does about a dozen consecutive backflips. No, I think dizzily. A hundred.

If I leaned in, if I tilted my head just right, if my mouth landed on hers…would we be in sync?

Or would it be a disastrous repeat of our first and only kiss?

“Do you want to hear something funny, Nova?”

I’m too preoccupied staring at her lush lower lip to manage more than a distracted “Mm-hmm.”

“When I went to Madame Aurora’s tent, there was a question I wanted to know the answer to.”

My stomach leapfrogs. Feigning nonchalance, I say, “Oh?”

“There’s a girl I like,” says Kiara. “That I’ve liked for a really long time. The thing is, though, she’s pretty hard work. Can never get a read on what’s going through her head, let alone her heart.”

I swallow hard. “Doesn’t seem worth the effort, honestly.”

One corner of her mouth tips up more than the other. “Except,” Kiara says softly, “as inscrutable as her heart might be, I know it’s a good one.”

The impulse to shake my head, to deny it, is overwhelming.

I wish I had never opened my eyes. Never saw her as more than the one who got away.

It was so much easier when I could pretend that, if I thought of her at all, it was with annoyance.

I can’t go back to the Before when I could pretend not to care.

Her stare pins me like a butterfly in a corkboard.

In the quiet, I am aware that we are caught in the now, a fleeting moment where there is no Before or After. Only what happens now.

A choice. And it’s mine.

“Nova,” she says. My name curls around her tongue, sends shivery anticipation licking down my spine.

I close the gap between us, stroking a finger down her cheek. “I want to kiss you.”

Her smile tells me she wants the same thing, but Kiara voices it a second later. “You can.”

There’s nothing in my vision except her.

Leaning in, I press the softest of close-lipped kisses against the corner of her mouth.

She makes a soft noise of disappointment, angling to catch my lips, but I already foresaw the move.

Our first kiss was awkward enough; the last thing I want is for my stale, unbrushed breath to ruin our second.

With regret, I tell her, “My teeth are all furry.”

“Yeah, and my leg stubble has grown back, and it fucking itches.” Kiara rolls her eyes. “So what?”

I hide my smile behind my hand and rock back on my heels, putting a solid foot of space between us. “So…maybe we wait?”

“I’ve waited long enough.”

There’s a roughness to her voice that makes me look at her more closely.

This isn’t a girl pouting because she didn’t get a kiss.

There’s a note of bitterness, a trace of frustration, a flare to her nostrils that wasn’t there before.

“Not really,” I say. “Even I didn’t know I wanted to kiss you until a minute ago. ”

She looks away. “It’s been a lot longer than that, Nova.”

“Okay, well…how long?”

“Forget it. Forget I said anything. It’s fine.”

I don’t need to be a relationship expert to know it’s most certainly not fine, but from the determined look on her face, this is all I’m going to get out of her. It occurs to me that she feels rejected, when really, it was just a not right now .

“Kiara, can you look at me? Please?” When she does, I say, “You remember our first kiss, right? It wasn’t…great. I mean, it was memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. I kept replaying it in my mind for days after that, analyzing it from all angles, working out the ideal kiss conditions.”

I blush, ducking my head. My earnestness is mortifying, but it’s out there now, so I may as well continue.

Unable to look at her while I say the next part, I mumble, “I’ve spent every day since then wishing that you knew what it was like to be as obsessed with someone as I am with you.

So you’d know for even a minute how it felt to be the one chasing instead of the one being chased.

Pardon me if I want everything to be perfect, and lying on the cold, hard ground in a stuffy, cramped tent isn’t it. ”

“Got what you wanted,” she says. “Me obsessed with you.”

I snort. “And what happens after?”

“I know it’s been a while since we first kissed, but typically, you’d kiss me back.” She darts for the corner of my mouth and presses a kiss there, warm and firm and tingly.

“Kiara!” I yelp. I clap my hand against my lips and pull back just a little. She looks totally pleased with herself, but there’s also a question in her eyes, a silent Was that okay?

I mean, yes, it was okay. Better than okay.

My entire body feels like honey, the tension softening, and the headache soothing, and the hungry wanting in my belly momentarily sated.

I have an overwhelming desire to simply slump into a puddle on the sleeping bags and throw an arm around her warm waist to bring her with me.

I want to touch every inch of her: the fabric of her ribbed white tank top, the collarbones peeking out, the smooth tan skin below.

Through my haze, I almost forget that she misunderstood my question.

I meant what happens after we get back home. When Tayla inevitably wins her back, where does that leave me?

“Fine, fine,” Kiara says with an exaggerated, long-suffering sigh. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” I mutter.

“Nova Marwood is a romantic,” says Kiara. She smiles, everything forgiven. “Who knew.”

I scoff, but a weight is lifted. “My mother. She was convinced the camping trip was just an excuse to get closer to you.”

Kiara’s dimples are out in full force. “Oh yeah, you hexed me just so I’d need you to escort me to the wishing well. Good plan, Nova. A-plus for effort. F for execution.” She laughs and doesn’t seem to notice that I don’t.

The crushing weight is back with all the force of a boulder.

I push my tongue against the back of my teeth, trying desperately hard to keep my expression from betraying me.

Do I laugh at her joke? Roll my eyes? I’ve been in this body for seventeen years, and I can’t remember what would naturally come next.

Kiara’s good at knowing my guilty, squirrelly face, apparently, and I’ve already taken too long to respond.

Clawing anxiety scrapes my heart. The tent closes in around me, sucking out all the oxygen. I taste the film on my tongue and want to vomit.

This is it. It’s over. It’s all in the Before. There’s never going to be a kiss in our After, is there? No more touches and teasing. She knows.

“Do you think you could be my good luck charm?” she asks, breaking our stare-off.

I choke out a laugh. “What?”

“Just saying, think about it. Whenever you’re around, things don’t seem quite so bad.”