If you search “things to do in Tallwood, WA” on the internet, this comes up on a message board. I have no idea if we’re on someone’s land right now, or if we’re about to get chased off by the cops, but I don’t particularly care. Judging by the beer cans strewn around, we’re not the first people to come to this place.

We throw rocks into the river for a long time, shouting and screaming and grunting, and no one ever comes to ask what the fuck exactly we’re doing, so I guess it’s fine.

After a while, I can’t even lift little rocks over my head any more. My arms are shaking and sore, and I’m barely doing more than dropping them into the gorge. Trent’s still going, but I can tell he’s starting to get tired. There’s a half-circle of sweat ringing the top of his t-shirt, it’s dripping down his face, and he’s breathing hard.

And I can’t stop staring at him. In a completely pervy way, and I know it’s wrong and weird to do it because I’m watching him work out some kind of psychic pain about his brother, but I can’t stop. I’m completely powerless.

Because it’s fucking hot, and we’re alone here. There’s something raw and primal and animal about watching him just go for it, tossing these massive rocks into the river like they’re nothing. I mean, he’s sexy and ripped and he’s lifting heavy things. What’s not to like?

Finally, he stops. He runs one hand through his sweaty hair and leans against a thick pine tree. His shirt’s sticking to him as he breathes hard, the muscles in his chest and abs flexing and bowing as he closes his eyes for a moment.

I.

Fucking.

Stare.

I finally have to close my eyes so I stop staring, because this whole rock-throwing episode feels like it’s shaken loose the last part of me that can fucking behave herself and I’m just thinking about running my hands down his slick chest, his thick arms, unbuttoning his jeans while he kisses me hard, his fingers curling through my hair—

“That felt good,” Trent rumbles, his eyes still closed.

It doesn’t help the pervy thoughts, not one fucking iota.

“You feel better?” I ask, my eyes lingering on the spot where his shirt is sticking to his abs, right above the button on his jeans.

“A little,” he admits.

“Even though it was stupid?”

He opens his eyes and one side of his mouth hitches upward in a smile.

“Stupid things can help,” he says, and pushes himself off the tree. “Though that was a pretty good stupid thing.”

“I got a stupid pie, too,” I offer.

I grab the pie from the car, definitely not thinking dirty thoughts. I didn’t get it cut or anything, so it’s just that: a whole pie. In a pie tin. With two forks.

We sit on the hood of the rental car. The sun is lowering in the sky, the woods around us turning golden and blue, the river still loud static below us.

“No plates?” Trent teases. “How uncivilized.”

I just laugh.

“Two thirds of my meals today are pie,” I say, and stab my fork into the middle, pulling out a big, gloppy bite of apple-rhubarb. “No one’s calling me Martha Stewart.”

We eat for a little while in silence. I’ve got a thousand questions about his brother, about what the hell really happened, but I know that Trent doesn’t know the answers either. If he did he probably wouldn’t be here, shouting at the river and throwing things and eating pie straight from the tin like a barbarian.

I know it’s not perfect. I know that shouting and throwing things and eating comfort food doesn’t really help, but I know less about how to have a brother than I know about astrophysics. Rocks and pie is what I’ve got.

“He wanted to be a cop when he was a little kid,” Trent suddenly volunteers.

I pause, fork halfway to my mouth. A glop of apple falls off.

“Eli did?”

Trent nods, fork in mouth. He’s staring straight ahead, not looking at me, and I look at him from the corner of my eye as I chew and swallow. Something about this ties my heart into a knot, tugs at both ends and doesn’t let go.

“Yeah. He even went as one for Halloween once. My mom used to have a picture somewhere. No idea where it is now.”

“I wanted to be a social worker when I was really young,” I say.

“I thought you hated them.”

“I did, later,” I say, twirling the fork in my hand. “Eli turned out to hate cops, right?”

He stabs the pie, shoveling out a forkful.

“Point taken,” he says.

“Before I really learned how the system worked, I thought the social workers were the ones in charge of where we all went. So I wanted to be in charge of where I got to live.”

“And then you learned about middle management and your dreams died a horrible death?” he deadpans, his voice low.

“Basically,” I say. “But if cops were the only people your dad was ever afraid of, I get why your brother might want to be one when he grew up.”

“And instead he fucking stabbed someone in prison,” Trent says, but he doesn’t sound angry any more. He sounds exhausted and resigned.

“Dreams don’t always work out,” I say.

We put our forks back on the pie, and Trent sticks it on top of the car before leaning back against the windshield, both arms behind his head. I lean back, too, and he watches me carefully.

“Your back okay like this?”

“I’m fine,” I say. “The cool glass is kind of nice, actually. You good?”

“I ate too much pie.”

“No such thing.”

Trent doesn’t respond for a long moment, and the two of us just stare up at the sky, reclining together on the hood and windshield of the car, and it’s nice. It’s really nice, much nicer than this terrible-hey-your-brother-almost-killed-someone moment should be.

And God help me, but I like it. I like being alone with him. I like sharing these moments with him that I know no one else shares with him. I like the quiet between us right now, the intimate silence that happens because neither of us needs to say anything.

“I always wonder what I did wrong,” he finally says, quietly.

“You didn’t,” I say, turning to face him.

He looks over at me, and his eyes roam my face for a moment before he looks back at the darkening purple sky.

“What if I did?” he asks, his voice soft. “What if the old man started again after I left? What if Eli tried to fight back too, only it didn’t go so well?”

“You’d know.”

“Would I?”

He swallows, takes a deep breath.

“He never talks about it. And my mom — I mean, Mom barely talks. If something happened I’d never know.”

There it is again, the feeling like my heart’s being squeezed to bursting. Like I want to rain destruction on everyone in Trent’s life for making him — the best person I know, my closest friend, the guy who stayed in Tallwood to take care of me, who fucking saved my life — feel bad that he left a war zone the second he turned eighteen.

“Sometimes I feel like I took all the luck,” he says. He’s not looking at me, he’s looking up at the stars, his voice coming from somewhere far away. “Like I took all the good stuff before he could get to it, and now he’s stuck.”

God, I know exactly — fucking exactly — how he feels. I prop myself on one elbow and look at him. My back doesn’t like it, but that’s just too bad.

“Trent,” I say.

He turns his head and looks at me, his warm brown eyes meeting mine. The knot in my heart tightens again.

“For the last fucking time, it’s not your damn fault,” I say, and one side of his mouth hitches up into a half-smile. “You survived how you could, and that’s what matters, because if you hadn’t where the fuck would Eli be now?”

“Supermax instead of regular max security prison?” Trent says dryly.

“Damn straight,” I say. “He’s got you to thank for not being in that Silence of the Lambs getup with the plexiglass room and the face mask.”

There’s another long pause.

“You do know Eli didn’t cannibalize anyone.”

I stop short, frowning, and just look at Trent. He lifts his eyebrows.

“That was why he had the face mask.”

“Who?”

“The guy in Silence of the Lambs.”

“That was there so he wouldn’t eat people?”

Trent’s eyes crinkle around the corners, a sure sign that he’s about to laugh at me.

“I haven’t actually seen the movie,” I say quickly.

“Really?” he says, just a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

I flip him off, and he laughs. I settle back against the windshield, the glass cool through my shirt and bandages.

“It wasn’t you, Trent,” I finally say. “You didn’t make Eli do any of this and you don’t have the power to save him.”

There’s a long pause, silence stretching out warm and familiar between us before he finally speaks again.

“I know,” he says quietly. “I just wish you were wrong.”

We sit there, on the hood of the rental car, for a long time, just being together in this silence, listening to the water below, watching night fall over the sky above.

I don’t know what this is. I don’t know the word for what Trent and I are, because friends doesn’t quite seem right, but we’re not lovers. He knows everything about me, knows me better than any other human on Earth, but we’ve never even kissed.

After a while, Trent points at a line of stars in the sky, barely visible.

“Is that Orion’s belt?” he asks.

I tilt my head and draw my knees in until my feet are flat on the hood.

“I think that’s the big dipper,” I say.

“It’s definitely not,” Trent says.

“Ursula?”

“What the hell is Ursula?”

“It’s a constellation,” I say, like it’s obvious.

“You’re bullshitting me.”

“Prove it.”

I tilt my head over at Trent. He’s still looking up but the telltale crinkles are there around his eyes, the ones that mean he’s laughing at me, and I smile.

I don’t know how long we’re there for. We talk stars and trees and rivers and rocks; cars and old blues songs and autotune.

We talk places we went as kids, places we wish we could remember better. We talk about the first albums we ever really loved, something we’ve talked about a million times before, and I make him defend Nirvana yet again, because he loves them to pieces and I think they’re only okay.

And then, at last, we go quiet again. The moon’s moved and the shadows are different than when it first got dark. The air’s gone chilly, and even though there are goosebumps up and down my arms, I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here, in this secret place where we’re alone and there’s pie, just a little longer.

“We should head back,” Trent says after a while, though he doesn’t move.

I stretch my arms over my head, careful of the way my back moves against the glass of the windshield.

“I guess,” I say.

“We’ve got another phone meeting with Gavin at nine,” Trent points out.

I make a face.

“Do all people who get sober get annoying, or just him?”

“You do know that people do things at nine in the morning all the time, right?”

“Not people who routinely get off work when the sun’s coming up,” I point out.

He slides off the car, walks around the front, and holds out one hand. I look at it skeptically — it’s just the hood of the car, I’m fine — but I take it anyway, strong and warm and dry, and hop down.

“Jesus, Darce, you’re an ice cube,” he says. “Why didn’t you say something?”

He folds his hand around mine, practically engulfing it.

“I’m not that cold,” I protest, even as I shiver in the cool air. I didn’t realize how cold I was until I touched him.

“Bullshit,” he mutters.

Trent slides his hands up my arms to my shoulders, then pulls my body softly against his. The man’s practically a furnace, heat blasting through his shirt. I shiver again, despite myself, because now that my front half is warm I’m realizing how cold I actually am.

“If anything else happens to you, Gavin might murder me,” he says, his voice rumbling through my frame, rubbing my upper arms like he’s trying to create friction.

It’s nothing, I tell myself. You’re cold and he’s nice. It’s nothing.

But God, it feels like something, and it’s terrifying. It feels like I can’t stop, standing here against him. I want this but I don’t; I want to hang out with Trent on cars in the wilderness and I don’t want more because the thought of changing what we already have, of leaving it behind, fucking terrifies me.

“So you’re warming me up to save your own skin,” I tease.

“If that’s what I say, will it work?”

“It’s in the sixties out here at least,” I point out. “I’m not gonna get hypothermia.”

I’m protesting, but I lean my head against him, nestling myself in the hollow of his throat despite the voice in my head saying don’t, don’t, don’t.

Trent doesn’t answer. He just holds me by the shoulders while I lean against him, careful of my back. Slowly, I put my arms around him, because otherwise they’re just hanging at my sides.

His chin’s resting on the top of my head. I can feel his stubble through my hair, and his hands keep moving like he wants to put his arms around me, but he doesn’t want to hurt my back.

“Thanks for this,” he finally murmurs.

“I wish I knew how to really help,” I say.

“You did.”

I finally pull back, looking up at him, my arms still around his waist.

“I thought this was dumb,” I tease.

“Throwing rocks as anger management is pretty dumb,” he says. “It’s also exactly what I needed.”

I pull back slightly and Trent looks down at me, an expression in his warm, deep brown eyes that I can’t quite read, though it makes my heart beat faster. He’s got one big hand cupping my shoulder, the other drifting down my side to my hip, careful of my bandages.

I’m still pressed against him, still warm and safe as I’ve ever been even though I feel like I’m in the very center of a tornado. The eye of a hurricane. Like it’s calm with deadly weather rushing around us, inescapable, the hum always moving closer.

Slowly, Trent slides his fingers along my shoulder, then my neck, his calloused fingertips sending shivers over my skin.

I think my heart might explode, a combination of terror and excitement coursing through my veins, but I close my eyes. Now his fingers are in my hair, his thumb dragging along my cheekbone.

This isn’t what friends do.

It’s something else, and it’s fucking dangerous.

It feels like my nerves are catching fire and popping out of my skin, my whole body wild and alive like I’ve never felt it before as Trent bends down so slowly that it almost feels like time has stopped.

“Darcy,” he whispers.

His face is an inch from mine. Maybe less, his thumb still stroking my cheekbone, my eyes closed and head tilted back.

I want this. I might want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

I want it and I’m fucking terrified that I want it, a warning siren screeching through my brain that this is it, this is how you change everything and lose him.

I take a deep, shaky breath and Trent tilts his head, pausing, his lips a centimeter from mine.

“Don’t,” I whisper.