She watched me awhile. At one point she grazed my bare arm, made me shiver violently. Then she stood.

“Let’s do an experiment.”

“This isn’t the time. We haven’t finished eating.”

“It can wait. This is exactly the time, Vada. Trust me.”

I sulked as she moved around the cabin, searching. Finally she returned with a pillowcase and placed it in my hands.

“Blindfold me.”

“What happened to romance?”

“Just do it.”

She took her glasses off and I tied a loose knot. My pulse skittered.

This was not the first time I’d tied a blindfold on her.

“Okay,” she said, tilting her head this way and that. “Here are the rules: Lead me to the ocean. You may only speak in colors.”

“What?”

“That’s a pronoun, not a color.”

I gawked.

“I can feel that look.” She reached out, found my elbow. “Come on. You can do this.”

“I don’t even know what you want me to—”

Her hand traveled up to my jaw. She pressed her palm gently against my lips.

Her skin was so soft.

“Take me to the ocean. With your eyes.”

Pajarito loco, I mouthed, and swiveled her toward the door. “Um . . . green?”

She stepped forward, and I followed. I darted ahead and flung the door open.

“Red. Red. Okay, green. Green, green, green . . . red.”

Elle took halting steps onto the log stairs.

Jesus. This was going to end with a hospital visit.

Getting her to ground level nearly killed me. Traffic colors worked, to an extent: green for go, red for stop, yellow for caution. But when we reached the forest floor and the thick tangle of exposed roots that she needed to climb over, I blanked.

“Uh, you need to—”

“Vada.”

“Goddammit. What are you trying to teach me, how to break your neck?”

Her cool glare radiated through the blindfold.

“Fine,” I said. “Be a masochist. Green.”

Her foot caught in the tree roots. I grabbed her before she fell.

How the fuck could I communicate how to climb?

Two squirrels scuttled up a tree, shredding bark. The air was alive with birdsong, trills and whistles and tweets, mutters, musings, a hundred voices spiraling into the sky. A trail of red ants boiled over the leathery tendrils at our feet.

“Red,” I blurted. “Fire-ant red.” What else crawled? “Caterpillar yellow. Spider black.”

Ellis toed the roots, crouched, and picked her way over on hands and knees.

I laughed triumphantly, and she smiled in my direction.

“You’re still insane,” I said.

“You’re corrupting the experiment.”

“Green. Emerald City green.”

The trail was mostly green, with patches of yellow and red where I had to drag branches out of her path. I ran through all the basic greens—kelly, shamrock, clover, grass—but that got boring fast so I mixed it up: watermelon rind, Mountain Dew, zombie skin, envy. The Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day. Then we reached a rock ledge, and I parked her with a cherry red and began hauling branches to make a ramp.

I was in the middle of this when a fox pranced into the path, a limp dove dangling from its jaws.

“Ellis,” I murmured, but if she removed the blindfold she’d probably spook it.

I had to show her.

“Red. Harvest red. A jacket of russet, and sienna, and umber.” She didn’t object to extra words, so I went on, “Soot-black socks. A vest of pure snow. And amber . . . buttons. Old, wise amber that holds the sun, and carries it into the darkness, like tiny lamps.”

“Is it a fox?” she whispered.

The fox arrowed into the underbrush, leaves shimmering with light in its wake.

I smiled and touched her arm. “Verde musgo.”

“What’s that?”

“The color of your eyes.”

I walked her through the woods, taking time now not just to guide but to describe things around us—the arresting scarlet of a tanager, pulsing like a plush heart, and a cache of violets rich as twilight that I plucked and wove into her hair, and the bronze of my skin in the shadows, like a cast sculpture. The trees thinned and we crossed a silty beach and I made Elle sit on an outcropping. Sky and sea fused into blue haze.

“Azúl,” I said, kneeling behind her. “Azúl infinito.”

I untied the blindfold and let it fall.

Ellis squinted at the water, then up at me. Her smile was big and guileless. “My hypothesis was correct.”

“What was it?”

“That you’re still an artist. No one can ever take that from you.”

Something was trembling in my chest, like a cupped leaf full of rain, tipping, starting to spill.

I touched her shoulder. Then I threw my arms around her and didn’t let go because I was pretty sure I was crying. “I get it. You trust me. And I trust you too, Elle.” Yep, that was a sniffle. “More than anyone in the world.”

“Vada—”

“You’ve always been there for me. You’re my prince, my—”

“Vada, I can’t breathe.”

I released. And hugged her again immediately, gentler, and she laughed but I spied tears in her eyes, too.

“Still think I’m crazy?” she said.

“In the very sanest way.”

I pulled back to look at her.

Come clean, I thought. Start small.

“I want you to know everything. I want to be that close again. I’ve been talking to someone online, Elle.”

“Who?”

“He calls himself Blue.”

And I told her all about him.

As I spoke she angled away from me, frowning. Coiled her bangs around a finger and tugged till the violets fell out. That little frown wouldn’t unknit itself.

Finally she said, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Guys have sugar-daddied me before. It’s not that weird.”

“He gave you a ton of money and you told him a ton of personal stuff. Like a paid informant.”

“It’s not like that.”

She scratched a nail on the rock. “What does he know?”

“Not enough to track me down.”

Elle’s frown deepened.

“What?” I said.

“For all you know, it’s Max.”

“It’s not Max. He’s too young. He’s like us.”

“Right, because Max wouldn’t act our age to get info.”

That was not a pleasant line of speculation.

“Why did you tell him about me?”

“You’re my best friend, Elle.”

She kicked her foot irascibly. “I hate that you call me Red.”

“Why?”

“Like I’m the opposite of him.”

And then it clicked: she was jealous.

The epiphany shot a jet of helium into my heart. I leaned into her, and we looked out at the ocean. Water lapped the rocks and left a skim of foam, seaweed and wet lime mixing with Elle’s autumn scent. For a moment I forgot myself, forgot the rules and our history and thought about pushing her flat against the stone. Holding her body down with mine so I could feel her breathe, feel her bones creak, her blood slow. So I could show her how I felt about her. How much she was a part of me.

My love is savage and rapacious. It isn’t content to touch. It wants to be inside, crawl into the marrow, caress each vein until the cells are all mixed up and there is no you and me anymore, no secrets or shadows sliding between our skin. Only this endless devouring of each other. The ouroboros we call us.

Ellis shrugged me off. “Let’s head back.”

I trailed behind, spinning one of the violets between my fingers. She loves me, I thought, plucking a petal. She loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not.

She loves me.

We were drinking wine as the sun fell when we saw it. I almost spit and dropped my glass. Elle jerked back from the keyboard as if it had bitten her.

After hundreds and hundreds of Ryan’s pics, we’d grown complacent. Selfies. Alt takes of photos I’d already seen on his Tumblr. Bad shots, blurry, overexposed, a newbie learning his camera. Even the cutting pics weren’t shocking anymore.

This one was.

Ryan had a baby face, sleepy-eyed and pouty, skin smooth as cream. But it was barely visible beneath the bruises and cuts. One cheek swelled up fat and purple as eggplant. One eye was black, bruised shut. Puffy lips, cut and cracked in a dozen places.