Page 44 of Lost and Found

He shakes his head.

“She rode the same bus route as you. It was the first day of school, and she was brand new. She got up to get off and she’d started her period. She was only ten, which is on the early side to start, and she had no warning or anything, so yeah . . . very first day, and she was brand spanking new and had bled through her brand-new shorts. I guess you jumped up and gave her your flannel like it was nothing. You were her hero that day. You don’t remember that at all?”

“Vaguely. Maybe a little,” he says.

She’d fallen for him in an innocent way right then and there, I think. It’d been a moment, just one small kindness, but it was also why she always swore there was more to Silas than what he let everyone else see.

The teenagers start cheering, whistling, and clapping in the distance.

“Look at that,” Silas says.

I scoot farther down the truck bed to get a better angle and gasp when I take in the night sky. Shades of blues and purples, innumerable freckles of stars, and the Milky Way runningthrough the middle like a fissure in the universe, a faint orange glow seeping through.

There.That’s where whatever souls are made of go. Nothing involving pearly gates or wings or malevolent, all-knowing beings. But someplace that defies my understanding, still.

We try to capture it on our phones, but the pictures come up woefully short of the real thing. I shut my eyes and try to sear it into my brain instead. I hate that this night has to end at all. This has been better than any date I’ve been on in years—if not ever, in spite of the crying.

“You ready?” Silas asks. I know he’s asking if I’m ready to go home, but it feels like too big a question. Ready to move into a new chapter of life. Ready to confront the reality of carrying grief for forever. Ready to open myself to new possibilities.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

CHAPTER 15

One Night, Eight Years Ago

Bea

Silas kisses a spot below my jaw before he makes like he’s going to move away, then hitches on a sound and bites me in the juncture of my neck.

“Need a second,” he says into my collarbone, letting his mouth rest there. I tilt my head back against the house and smile up at the starlit sky, bubbles of anticipation popping under my skin. Every time my chest presses into his, my blood fizzes.

“I’ll see if anyone’s still awake,” he says. “I’m guessing you’re not dying to chat it up with my roommates?”

I look down the length of our bodies; at his hoodie pulled off my shoulder and my top pulled precariously off-kilter, to where I clearly damaged his collar in my efforts to get at his neck. Down to the bulge in his jeans.

“I’d say we’re a little too incapacitated for chitchat.” In dire straits, even.

He tracks my eyes’ path and does a lap of his own, slipping his hands around my hips and pulling them against his with a lurid grunt. I feel it like a lick up my neck. “Got it. We’ll sneak in.”

We take a side entrance and tiptoe up the stairs to his room, my hand in his the whole way. He hauls me across his front through the door before ducking inside, shutting it quietlybehind him in one smooth motion. I glance around furtively. Shockingly clean. Downright orderly. A made bed? With throw pillows? I can count on one hand the guys I’ve hooked up with who had both made beds and throw pillows. Let alone a whole bedframe with a headboard.

“What do you think?” comes his low voice, and I think I detect a hint of worry in it. “Up to snuff?”

I find him with his hands trapped behind his back, leaned up against his door, his eyes shadowed in the muted blue light shining through his sheer curtains. I can just make out the bob of his throat.

“Come here,” he says.

But other thoughts are trying to make themselves known, and I need him to drown them out as quickly as possible. I take two steps toward him and pause, unzip his hoodie, and strip off my top so I’m naked from the waist up. He lets out a harsh sound and is on me before I can drop it from my fingertips.

And then he’s pulling off his own shirt, chuckling into my mouth as I reach across to yank it over his head. He swallows down my noises and presses us chest to chest, bands a hard arm beneath my ass and lifts me. In four strides, I’m on my back, and pillows are being flung. He looms above me, big and all-encompassing, breathing hard, unsure where to look.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Beautiful.” The slow, dazed way he says it makes the word drag out of him, like he started withBeaand remembered partway through to finish.

“Another nickname?” I tease. He reaches over and palms a breast, then bends down and puts his mouth to it like he can’t help himself. Sweet, molten joy bursts through me at the touch. He blows out a dark laugh around my nipple before flicking it with his tongue, toying with the tiny barbell there.

“Just a truth,” he says, voice thick.

I keep trying to urge him faster, and he thwarts me every time. I want something frenzied, mindless. Want to be held in the cloud of sensation I’m floating in and fucked stupid. But he shapes his hands over me reverently, clasping at my waist to squeeze, lifting me into an arch off the bed so he can use me to grind himself against. Crude and needy and slow, letting me feel every inch. He looks up his brow at me when his hands reach my jeans, asking permission. I bite my lip to stop myself from saying anything too desperate, and nod. Our stares catch again when he finishes peeling them off, his chain swinging into his mouth. He bites a wicked smile around it.