Chapter 14

Brighton's mouth buzzed with that post-kiss feeling, her limbs liquid, her brain jumbled and still slotting the pieces of what had just happened into place.

They'd kissed.

Lola and Bright.

Bright and Lola.

They…Hadn't they?

She blinked the scene back into focus, the woods and the snow, Lola ten feet away from her now, turning in a circle with her hands on her hips.

Like nothing had happened at all.

The snow fell harder around them, a curtain between her and her ex.

"Lola," she said.

"Do you remember which way we came from?" Lola asked, not looking at her.

Brighton blinked again, then finally registered what was happening—no tracks in the snow, trees all around, no clear path or trail.

"Well, do you?" Lola asked, finally stopping her circling to glare at Brighton. To most people, she would've sounded calm, but Brighton heard the tinge of panic in her voice, the slightest tremble.

"Um, well," Brighton said, glancing around too.

"Helpful," Lola said, huffing a sigh.

Brighton gritted her teeth. Lola got bitchy when she was stressed—always had. Granted, it wasn't like she'd been anything but since they'd arrived in Colorado, except for the last few minutes, when she'd felt like the old Lola, soft and sweet, that impenetrable armor she wore for the world dropping away for Brighton, just like it always had.

The kiss…she now understood the phrase It just happened , because that's what kissing Lola just now had felt like—an inevitability, a tug of magnets finally close enough to snap together. One second Lola was reliving that awful day, revealing details Brighton had never known, had been too ashamed to even ask her mother about, and the next, Brighton's hands were on Lola's face, pulling her closer, closer, closer.

And, god, it felt good.

Lola felt good.

But now Charlotte was back in control, Jekyll or Hyde, Brighton wasn't sure which, and all Brighton wanted to do was flip that switch again, have her Lola back in her arms and—

You still love her.

Adele's voice echoed in her ears.

No. Brighton didn't .

She couldn't.

She squeezed her eyes closed, felt the chill in her bones, the snow on her cheeks, let winter shock her back into reality.

Because Lola was gone. Or else she was so hidden, so covered in that armor again, that even Brighton—who could always make Lola laugh or cry or whatever she needed to do—didn't know how to break through. At least not in any lasting way. The woman in front of her was cold, unaffected by what had just happened between them. Charlotte was calling the shots—she'd made that very clear.

It was time Brighton accepted it.

She took a deep breath, buttoned up her coat, ignored the ghost of Lola's fingers skating up her bare back. Then she looked around, studied her surroundings for clues. She'd always been observant, good with tiny details and elements in a scene. Her mother said it was the artist in her, looking at the world closely, creating an interpretation wholly new and unique.

You're a storyteller .

That's what her mother had told her when she was young, when she'd first started playing guitar at eleven years old, teaching herself from the internet and taking to it like a baby bird to the spring air on their first flight. Guitar just made sense to her, the rhythm and strings, the progression from one chord to the next, and songwriting paired perfectly, the poems she'd scribbled down since she could write sliding effortlessly into a medium that fit, that made her words sound like something.

Like a story.

Now, in the middle of the woods in Colorado, her stomach swooped with memory, with seventeen years of music and writing and performing.

Dammit, Brighton, this isn't you .

She shoved Adele's voice out of her head for the second time and focused. Because she could do this at least. She could get Lola— Charlotte— out of the fucking forest.

"Okay," she said, shoving her freezing hands into her coat pockets, then looking at the sky. "Where's the sun?"

Charlotte huffed again. "It's already set. And it's cloudy."

Brighton said nothing, breathing in patience as she scanned the sky through the trees for any hint. Charlotte was right—the sun had set before they'd even embarked on this little adventure, and it was nearly dark.

"This is how horror movies start," Charlotte said, clutching her stomach. "Or end. The girl in the woods. Everyone knows she's a goner."

"She's only a goner because the writers make her out to be an idiot. We're not idiots."

"Okay, thrillers, then. Women just vanish, disappear, and they're not idiots. Women's bodies are not okay in thrillers."

"Lo—Charlotte."

"Bad things happen all the time to non-idiots, and this is the setting. This is where it all goes down." She spun in a circle, her breathing coming even faster now. "Then again, I did take off into the woods without my phone, and then I ki—"

Charlotte cut herself off, shaking her head. She couldn't even say it, but she wiped at her face, as though a tear had dared to escape.

Brighton fought the urge to comfort her again. Charlotte would never accept it now anyway, so Brighton kept scanning the trees, ignoring the fact that she'd displayed plenty of idiocy in the last hour, including leaving her phone on Adele's bed. The sky that had been a white-purple when she ran out the door after Charlotte was now more of an inky eggplant, which made finding any sort of glow from the western-setting sun impossible.

She walked forward a little, then back, then to the side, spanning the perimeter of the area they were in, searching for something, anything. Her chest felt tight, panic rising, but not from being lost. She felt oddly calm about that detail—she just wanted to do this. Wanted to do something right.

Tears were clouding into her throat, a sense of complete hopelessness and loneliness washing over her when she saw it.

A knot on a tree, right at her eye level, that looked a bit like a star, gnarled and swirling like something in a van Gogh painting. It was unique enough that her eye had snagged on it before as she chased her ex deeper into the woods, her brain registering it but then immediately forgetting it when Charlotte stopped and cursed at her.

"Here," she said, putting her hand on the trunk and feeling the knot, which had an odd, five-pointed shape. "I remember this."

Charlotte all but stomped over, glared at the knot in the thickening dark. "Remember what?"

"This knot. I faced it like this"—she moved her body so she was angled straight toward it—"when we were walking into the woods. So if we—"

"Charlotte!"

Brighton turned a perfect one-eighty toward the voice, toward the way she now knew they needed to go. Shapes coalesced in the gloom, moving closer.

"Brighton!"

"Here!" Charlotte yelled, moving toward them. "We're here!"

There were three of them—Adele, Sloane, and…Wes.

Because of course he was here too.

"There you two are," he said, looking overly relieved. He had just met Charlotte, for god's sake. "It's dangerous to be in the woods this close to dark."

"This is how horror movies start," Adele said.

Charlotte didn't even look at Brighton. "I just needed some air. We both did." A graceful inclusion, no glance to the side, no faltering. Charlotte Donovan at her full strength.

"Next time, get some air on our back porch," Sloane said. "There's a mountain view and everything. And take your phone. You scared me to death."

"I'm sorry," Charlotte said. "Thank you for coming to find us. We were totally lost."

Brighton pursed her mouth, said nothing. She just watched as Wes put an arm around her ex and started walking, Sloane on Charlotte's other side.

"You okay, baby girl?" Adele asked. She regarded Brighton carefully, a black knit hat pulled over her braids.

Brighton swallowed. Made sure her voice was steady. Adele knew everything, yes. Brighton was safe with her, no doubt, but if she said anything but yes right now, in the middle of these woods after everything, she'd fall completely apart.

And she wasn't sure she'd get herself back together this time.

So she just nodded, touched the star knot once more before looping her arm with Adele's and walking straight out of the woods.