Lies You Never Told Me(58)

“Elyse?”

His voice comes from my left. I spin toward the sound and the light lands on his face. His glasses are flecked with rain, his hair covered by a warm knit cap. Without thinking I run straight at him.

My foot slips, and I fall to my knees. The flashlight goes spinning off into the bushes. My hands splay out in the mud, burning with pain. I can’t see anything in the sudden dark. A strangled whimper escapes from my throat before I can stop it.

Then his arms are around me, and he’s helping me to my feet. He snaps on a lantern hanging from his backpack, and its light sways and dances around us. I press my face into his chest and try to control my breathing.

“They caught us,” I say, my voice muffled in his sweater. “Aiden, they caught us.”

His body tenses. He puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me away so he can look down at me. “What do you mean?”

I gulp at the cold air. I’m still shivering. My knees sting from the fall; I can feel the mud caked to my jeans.

“Brynn saw us kissing in the theater Sunday night. She told my mom.”

He takes a step away from me. I stagger a little without his support.

“Shit.” I can’t see his face; the lantern sways just behind him and leaves his expression in shadow. “That’s why she quit. I thought you guys had just had a fight or something.”

I walk over to the wreckage of the little cottage. In the dark it looks even spookier than during the day, a haunted husk of a building. I sit on the steps. They’re slick in the rain.

“This is bad.” He’s pacing, his outline tense against the violet clouds. “We shouldn’t even be meeting here.”

My whole body snaps backward at that. I didn’t necessarily expect a welcome with arms outstretched, but his tone is strange and sharp.

“Has she called the cops yet?” He’s rummaging in his pocket, pulling something out. In the flutter of the lantern I see the burner he’s been using to text me. He wrenches it in half.

Fear creeps up the back of my neck. The police have only been a vague, distant threat since Aiden and I got together. I’ve been more concerned with keeping my friends from finding out. But now all I can see are images of swirling police lights. I get a vision of Aiden in cuffs and it makes me want to fall to my knees.

“No. She says she won’t, as long as I stay away from you. But Aiden, I . . . I can’t stay away from you.” I want to hear him say it back: that I’m worth the risk, that he can’t stand the idea of being apart from me. The naked fear in his voice is scaring me more than the threat of the cops. I think of the feel of sand whipping out from under my feet that day in Cannon Beach. The sense that the world wasn’t as solid as I thought.

He stops in his pacing and turns his face toward me. I still can’t see his features.

“This is a felony, Elyse. If we get caught I’ll be on the sex offender registry for the rest of my life.”

“I’m sorry.” Tears sting my eyes. What am I apologizing for—getting caught? Coming here now? Being with him in the first place? “I don’t know what to do.”

The lantern finally stops bouncing around. He’s taken it off his backpack and sets it down on a flat rock. Finally I can see his face—his brow furrowed, his mouth twisting unhappily. He sits next to me on the steps, but he doesn’t put an arm around me.

“I don’t either,” he says. The hardness has left his voice. Now he just sounds exhausted. “So do you think your mom will keep her word?”

I hesitate, then nod. “She doesn’t like the cops. She wouldn’t talk to them unless she really felt like she had to.”

“What about your friend?” he asks. “Brynn—will she tell anyone else?”

That I’m less sure of.

“I think she might be done with me,” I say finally. “We talked at school today. She was pretty mad. I think she’ll leave us alone.”

“Think, or know?”

I hug my sweater closer around me. “I can’t be sure.”

He puts his face in his hands. “Fuck.”

We sit like that for a few minutes. I’m still trembling, but now it’s as much fear as cold. I don’t know how I expected him to react—but the distance he’s keeping between us makes me feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before.

“We should never have started this,” he finally whispers. He looks up and sees my face. All at once his expression softens. “You’re cold.”

He takes off his fleece jacket and tucks it around my shoulders. The gesture is too much. A sob escapes my throat. I can’t hold it back anymore. I break down.

“It can’t end like this,” I choke out.

He pulls me close. I nestle against him, his neck warm against my cheek. His fingers curl around the back of my head.

“They’ll always be watching now, though,” he says. “We’ll never be alone. Not really.”

I think about the cabin in the Gorge, tucked away among the trees, quiet and secret and ours. I know we can’t live there forever, not really.

But couldn’t we go somewhere else?

“Aiden,” I breathe. “Let’s leave.”

He’s silent for a minute. I feel the rise and fall of his breath beneath his shoulders.