‘Now, line up the sight,’ he murmured, his breath whispering against my ear.

I could see the deer through the rifle, the crosshairs of the barrel wavering with every breath I took.

‘Easy,’ he breathed against me. ‘Now get your weight behind it.’

His hands dropped to my hips. He moved them, shifting my stance, then lingering, slipping around to the front of my body. My jacket and jumper had risen up, just an inch by the waistband of my jeans. I could feel the touch of his hand, a tiny sliver of ice against my stomach.

Desire curled, tighter.

‘You only get two shots.’ Oliver’s voice was still low in my ear.

‘Not one?’ I turned my head, so our lips were almost touching. When he spoke, I felt his words whispered, as much as I heard them.

‘Two.’ Oliver corrected me. ‘One to wound her, the second, to down her, once she tries to run. So think about it,’ he breathed. ‘Where will she go when she hears the first shot? Which way will she bolt?’

I forced myself to turn back to the deer, trying to see it the way he did, to get inside her mind. She’d skittered left, back at the lake when she’d seen the bird landing. And now, foraging in the undergrowth, I could see her head lift, tilting to check her right-hand side when she thought she heard a sound.

‘Left.’ I whispered. ‘She favours her left.’

‘Good. So when you aim, aim where you think she’ll be, not where she is. Cut her off before she has a chance to run.’

Oliver moved my hands more firmly on the trigger. I felt the resistance of the metal beneath my forefinger and it hit me for the first time just what I was about to do.

The weapon in my hand could kill.

The rounds in the chamber would damage and destroy.

That deer was a living thing, and I was about to take all that away.

‘Oliver,’ I whispered, suddenly scared.

‘This is how it was always meant to be,’ Oliver murmured quietly. ‘Man and beast. Remember?’

‘Still . . . ’ I couldn’t move, torn between his certainty and the sight of the deer, so oblivious to her fate.

‘Ask yourself.’ Oliver’s lips brushed my ear. I shuddered as his hands slid higher, until his palm was resting on the bare skin of my stomach, burning under his touch. I couldn’t move, flooded with the sensation of him against me, holding me in place. ‘Are you hesitating because you want to, or because you think you should?’

His question rattled in my mind.

‘What would you do if nobody was watching?’ Oliver continued. ‘If nobody would ever know?’

My breath caught.

Who was I when nobody was looking? Without judgment, without expectations. Without somebody to please. That was why he’d brought me, I realized; that was why Oliver had put the gun in my hands and pointed me here. To see who I was, away from it all.

To know the real me.

I raised the rifle.

Oliver’s breath quickened. I felt his body tense with expectation. I lined up the sight, carefully, carefully, holding my breath until the crosshairs were perfectly aligned on her chest.

The deer looked up, straight towards me. Our eyes met.

I fired.

The recoil shocked through me, but Oliver was holding me tight. The deer stumbled, hit, then bolted left, just the way I knew she would. I fired again.

She went down.

Victory coursed through me. Oliver released me, whooping. ‘You got her!’

I reeled back, gasping. The gun was heavy, too heavy in my hands, and I quickly threw it down.

I’d done it. I’d killed her.

Oliver grabbed his pack and took off, loping through the trees until he reached the body. I stumbled after him, my heart pounding. Just a few seconds, just one split-second choice, and now I couldn’t take it back.

When I reached them, the deer was writhing on the ground. Blood was blossoming, a dark stain on the snow.

I stared, hypnotized.

I’d done this.

‘She’s in too much pain.’ Oliver was on his knees beside her. ‘You need to finish it.’

‘What? How?’ I asked. I glanced back at our makeshift camp where I’d left the gun, but Oliver opened his pack and brought out a knife. Ethan’s knife, I recognized, the one I’d sliced through the air just an hour ago, admiring the weight of it.

I hadn’t thought for a moment about its real purpose.

Oliver unsheathed it and held it out to me, the blade glinting in the setting sun.

I looked from the blade to the deer and back again. ‘I can’t.’

An impatient look skittered across his face. ‘Finish what you started,’ he told me, but I couldn’t do it, not with the deer wheezing and kicking limply on the ground. There had been space between us with the gun; I’d pulled the trigger, it had gone down. Neat and simple. Remote. But this, this was bloody and gruesome and real.

‘No, please.’ I swallowed. ‘Just put her out of her misery, Oliver, please!’

Oliver turned back to the deer. He took hold of her jaw from behind, pulling her head back against him, and then drew the knife across her throat in one swift stroke.

Blood spurted from the wound. I watched it flow, red streams in the snow. Then the deer’s motions faded; the kicking stopped, the breathing stilled. I watched life slowly drain from her body, until Oliver slowly placed her head back on the ground, and she was silent.

Dead.

I exhaled the breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding. It was over.

He straightened up. ‘Congratulations,’ Oliver smiled. ‘Twenty pounds of meat, a nice hide.’ He circled her, assessing. ‘You bagged a good one.’

I shivered, turning away. He was talking so impersonally, as if moments ago this hadn’t been a living, breathing being.

A life I took, for no reason except to know that I could.

‘Don’t.’ Oliver’s voice was sharp.

‘Don’t what?’ I asked.

‘Don’t quit on me now and go spiralling back into your little “what have I done?” pity party,’ Oliver replied. He took my arm in a firm grip, pulling me back around to look at the body, at all the blood.

‘Don’t,’ I murmured weakly, but Oliver held firm.

‘You can’t play that innocent act with me now, I was there, remember?’ His eyes drilled into me. ‘I watched you take the shot. I felt your heart race as you pulled the trigger. It was your choice. You did this. So own it. There’s nothing wrong with it.’

Nothing wrong.