ex

ke and dried herbs dragge

it wouldn't smell this earthy-it

he ceiling, dark with age and soot. I was lying on a narrow

izziness slammed into me, pushing

a voic

g fireplace. He looked to be in his early twenties, with dark, messy hair and eyes that seemed far

d. My voice sounded li

hesitant. "I found you on t

an oversized flannel shirt that wasn'

to me. The cliff. The ocean.

men. The swell was gone

flames held the answers. "There was blood," he sa

the sentence. H

ed onto my side, burying my face in the scratchy pillow to muffle the scream building

ith empty words. He just sat the

iles from the nearest town. Aaron had been hiking when he fell and hit his head.

aunting a shack in t

dy healed, my heart hardened. I stopped crying for Gavyn. I sto

h his hands, often staring blankly at the walls as if trying t

abin, the wind howling like a dying animal. Aaron hudd

im and wrapped the blanket ar

voice gaining a steadiness I

s. "I don't know who I am," he said, his

fore I thought them through, but as soon as

otective heat rise in my chest. Gavyn had treated me

nymore. And I wouldn't l

im the next morning, the sun

sked, blinkin

away in accounts they don't know about. We can star

trusting

d an old, rusted knife in the kitche

he main road, leaving the ocean and my pa

p died on

omeone else entirely. And she was read