Page 212 of Wild Card 13

“He was lurking.”

“He was tying his skate.” Lucy shook her head, smiling into her glass.

The room settled around the memory. The frozen lake outside this house. The old lake behind someone else’s dock. Two teenagers with numb fingers and bad judgment. Naomi standing by the shore calling us both reckless. Me trying to impress Lucy and nearly destroying a child. Lucy laughing so hard she had to hold on to my arm.

Then, because memory never knew when to stop, I rememberedwarming her hands afterward. Her mittens soaked from snow, my palms around her fingers, her nose pink, her smile tucked into the collar of my hoodie.

I remembered wanting to kiss her then.

I remembered doing it.

Lucy’s smile faded slowly.

She remembered too.

I saw the moment her body caught up to the same place mine had gone. Her breathing changed first. A little shallower. Her eyes lowered to the glass in her hand. One curl slipped forward, and she did not push it back.

“Sorry,” I said quietly.

Her gaze came back to mine. “For what?”

I did not know how to answer without breaking every rule the night needed.

For the memory.

For what happened after the memories.

For having this house and this couch and this fire and still not knowing how to make any of it safe enough for you.

She set her glass down beside mine. Still half full. One drink, barely touched.

The small mercy of that almost ruined me.

She had not come here for bourbon.

She had come here because some part of her wanted to sit beside me in the quiet and remember that we had once known how to be easy.

I turned toward her more fully.

Lucy did not move away.

My pulse shifted.

The firelight caught in her glasses. Behind the lenses, her eyes were softer than they had any right to be. Sadder too. Tired and bright and cautious in a way that made me want to put my hands over every sharp edge in the world before it could reach her.

I sat there like I had finally learned one thing. “Lucy.”

Her name came out low.

She looked at me, and the air between us thinned.

I could have made a joke. Could have stepped sideways. Could have given both of us a way out that looked like humor and felt likecowardice. I was so tired of being a coward around the only thing that mattered. “Can I kiss you?” I asked.

For one suspended second, nothing moved.

Not the fire. Not the lake. Not Dottie sleeping at the far end of the couch. Not Lucy’s hand resting open against the cushion between us.

Her eyes searched mine like she was looking for the catch. The trick. The boy who used to fill silence before it could ask him for honesty.