So Bree did something she’d never done: She sat up and took what she wanted.
Lock’s lips were still wet with water when she kissed him. He sat there a moment afterward, stunned. His gaze trailed over Bree. Her eyes and her lips and her neck and her lips again. And right when she was certain he’d leap to his feet and tell her she’d ruined everything, he slid a hand behind Bree’s neck and pulled her mouth back to his.
This kiss was nothing like the first. He leaned into it. He led with his chin. He opened his mouth to hers. Bree was suddenly back in the lake, drifting, floating, weightless. Even when his lips left hers, she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her. Because he was kissing her neck now, and her shoulder, and a school of minnows had taken up residence in her stomach. Her hands were everywhere—she couldn’t control them. She touched every inch of skin she’d once cursed for being so distracting. His collarbone, the curve of his chest, the muscle of his arms, one half of the V that disappeared beneath his shorts.
He hummed at that, his lips against her neck. Bree traced the line again, and the hum became a moan. Lock’s hands found the hem of her shirt and peeled it over her head.
This is actually happening, Bree thought. Would it have happened ages ago had she only been bolder? Was that all it took, unapologetic confidence?
His hands on her skin. His mouth against hers. She could barely think straight, and the minnows in her stomach were moving into every last inch of her body: her hips and toes, shoulders and spine.
“We don’t have to do this,” Lock said.
“I want to,” she said.
“You don’t.”
Don’t have to do it, or don’t want it to happen?
Bree didn’t ask.
He’d be gone in three days, and right now they could be together. Maybe that would make it harder to lose him. Maybe it would all hurt that much more when he was Snatched. But in the moment, Bree didn’t care. She was drunk on the taste of him, and the feel of his body pressed against hers, and he saw her now. He saw her and she wanted the moment to never end.
She leaned back in the grass and drew him closer.
SEVEN
POLLEN DANCED ON THE THICK summer air. Crickets sang. Dusk was falling.
Dusk.
“Shoot!” Bree gasped, rolling out of Lock’s arms. They’d fallen asleep, right there in the grass beyond the lake. The heron hadn’t come, or she’d missed it altogether. “I need to check the snares. Keeva’s going to kill me.”
“Do you need help?”
“No, I’ll meet you in town.”
Lock nodded. He seemed almost shy as he found his shirt in the grass, hesitant to make eye contact.
“Lock, are we okay?”
“Yeah. Course,” he said, nodding again. “See you at dinner.”
As soon as he ducked off, Bree hurried to her traps. She hurt. It had hurt during, too, but after . . . Was it supposed to hurt after? She pushed on. Found two of her ten snares full.
She couldn’t get Lock’s expression out of her head. The way he’d stared at her following that first kiss, the way he regarded her after it was all said and done. He was looking at her differently now, but it still wasn’t as she’d imagined. Something was missing, and she didn’t know what. She’d finally done it: demanded he see her. All she’d had to do was reach out and take it. Why did that victory feel like a burden?
And right then she realized her mistake. Because no matter what, she was pretty sure it shouldn’t feel this way—like she’d stolen something. Like she’d won.
Keeva was satisfied with the rabbits and didn’t order Bree to swim toward the setting sun, although Bree almost wished she had. Afraid of returning to the hut after dinner, she lingered along the shore. What would she say to him? Should she act like nothing had changed even though everything had?
She needed her mother. She needed someone to tell her what came next.
Beyond the curve of the island, where the steep rock cliffs met water, a loon call pierced the twilight. Still as stone, Bree listened. The bird wailed again. Its song sounded how she felt—uncertain and lonely. Regretful, even.
She cupped her palms and blew on her thumbs. The whistle she produced was nearly as convincing as the one her father used to make. She had few memories of him—all vague and blurry—but she remembered his loon calls.
“It’s in your hands, B,” he’d explained.
Bree couldn’t recall him saying these exact words, but her mother had told the story so many times, Bree could almost picture the entire evening.
They’d been sitting on the jetty, him just hours from a Snatching, her a still-chubby toddler. He was nothing but a boy, really, but Bree thought him a man; burly, strong. To her he was the size of a giant, with shoulders as wide as Crest and hands that never faltered. He’d pick her up and toss her toward the clouds, never letting her land anywhere but in his arms. Those same hands hauled nets of fish from the ocean and set the nimblest of snares. They combed her hair out of her eyes—hair that was as brilliant and pale as his—and they made the most beautiful loon calls she’d ever heard. So pure and clean you might mistake him for the actual animal.
“Pretend you’re holding the bird. A baby loon. Cup it right in your palms like this, and then fold your thumbs over.”
But she’d been so young, with little coordination and even less patience. The sun had set. Her father put her on his shoulders, and hiked to where her mother stood watching. The woman walked Bree home, and her father drifted back to the shore.
That was the last Bree ever saw of him.
She turned three that winter, and forgot all about loon calls. It wasn’t until several summers later, when she heard Conner blowing into his palms and trying to teach Lock the call, that she remembered. She’d spent every evening of that season teaching herself. She refused to ask Conner or Lock for help. She just sat on the jetty where she used to sit with her father until she managed a wispy whistle, and then a mediocre one, and finally, a convincing—maybe even flawless—call.
Bree sat there now and did the same. The loons sang with her until they didn’t, at which point the sun was gone and the world dark. Bree turned her back on the shore. She hiked to town with a pinching sensation in her stomach. There were a few minnows in there still, only now they made her feel ill instead of alive.
As she stepped into the village clearing, Bree caught sight of Lock on the opposite edge of town. He was walking into the woods. Someone was with him. Ness.
Bree jogged forward a few paces.
“Lock,” she whispered, but not loudly enough for him to hear. Not loudly enough for anyone to hear. They were gone before the first choked sob worked its way into Bree’s throat, before she even truly registered what she was seeing.
She retreated home, collapsed on her bed, and couldn’t unload her tears fast enough.
“Bree?” Heath asked in the dark. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she muttered.
“You’re a liar.”
And an idiot. And one of his girls. I’m one of his girls now.
Heath shivered despite the heat of the evening. “I don’t feel like it’s getting better, Bree—my leg.”
She forced her breathing steady, forbade herself to continue crying. Tears would change nothing, and this was what mattered: Heath. Not the problems she brought upon herself, not the hurt that she reached out and took. Bree rolled from bed.