“Hold my hand?” he asks.

She coils her long fingers around his, both cool and warm, solid but retreating. He can feel points of contact against his skin, but never in the same place for very long. When he squeezes, a current runs through his fingers, making his muscles relax. She’s like a constellation, alive against his hand.

When he looks up, her eyes are closed, her teeth biting down on her lower lip.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Does this hurt you?”

Her eyes open, and hunger and joy swirl green and auburn inside. “Have you ever been in a pool and you hop out and jump right into a hot tub?”

He laughs. He knows exactly the feeling she means, flushing hot and amazing, but also such an intense change it feels like every nerve ending is firing. “Yeah. And how it settles into soothing hot instead of that intense oh-my-god-yes hot.”

She nods. “I keep waiting for the settling.” Her eyes fall closed again. “It never comes. When you’re touching me, it’s like the first moment of submersion, always. It’s a relief so overwhelming it almost takes my breath away.”

Colin’s heart beats heavily inside his chest. Tentatively, she reaches up and brushes a trembling finger along the ring in his lip. “Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

“The metal must be cold,” she whispers, and he feels himself leaning toward her. “What does it feel like?”

“For me or for you?” he asks, grinning.

CHAPTER 11 HER

"FOR ME," SHE ANSWERS, REACHING TO PRESS A fingertip against the cool metal.

“Wrap your hand around the pipes,” the teacher said. “The cold and the warm together feel scorching.” Lucy released the pipes with a surprised hiss, looking up at the teacher in shock.

“Some skin receptors sense cold, some heat. Both are sent to the brain, but the brain hears these mixed signals as powerful heat. It’s a form of perception we call paradoxical warmth.”

Lucy gasps at the perfect memory and the intensity of the touch, pulling her finger back in surprise.

Colin’s lip ring was cold from the wind and his skin was warm with blood, and like the pipes, the feeling of his lip pressed to her fingertip was scorching. And although she understands the science behind the pipes experiment, there can’t be any explanation in the world for what happened between them just now. For the brief contact—a few seconds—the air incinerated.

Colin swallows, his eyes never leaving her mouth. He blinks a few times. Is he going to kiss her? Her skin warms at the thought, and the closer he leans, the more flooded she becomes with a strange, intoxicating relief. It overwhelms her like a head rush.

Lucy knows now that she’s been kissed before—even that she’s not innocent—but it felt nothing like this. Memories of those monochromatic touches pale next to the vibrancy of Colin’s skin. But this reaction turns sour in her thoughts, unsettling her. If the simple touch of his lip on her fingertip felt so intense, what would it feel like to actually kiss him? She’s afraid she’d be unable to process so much sensation. And so she turns back to the trail, eyes closed for a moment as she savors the feel of the cold metal ring, the heat of his breath as he exhaled against her fingertip.

She’s taken a few steps before she hears Colin move to catch up with her. If he’s surprised by her reaction, he doesn’t show it, and they continue to walk in silence. Every few steps, Colin’s hand brushes against hers. Eventually, he gives up pretense and wraps his fingers around hers again. So carefully, just like the first time.

He bends to meet her eyes. “Still okay?” he asks adorably, somehow managing to look both confident and completely unsure of himself. She can only nod, overwhelmed by his simple touch. His skin feels hot and alive, as if with each of his heartbeats she can sense the surge of blood in his veins.

He smiles widely. “So, if you can’t ever leave campus, where do you live?”

Lucy takes him to her little home and is impressed when he doesn’t look shocked to find her living in an abandoned shed beside the school. She lights the small gas lamp in the corner before stretching out her arms, almost touching the wall on either side. “This is home sweet home.”

He folds his long frame on an old crate and she sits on another and tells him everything she remembers. The fragmented pieces from her human life are random and meaningless, but he listens like each piece is a part of a larger, greater story. When she starts to tell him everything she remembers since waking on the trail, she sees a shadow flicker on his face for a brief moment, as if he’s sad that the story of her first life adds up to so little. But her memories from this life are so numerous in comparison, she treats them like gems. He watches and listens as he leans back against the dilapidated wall of the shed.

She tells him about sitting outside the school and watching students in their everyday routine and how she didn’t feel even a single moment of envy; she simply felt as if she was waiting. She tells him that she didn’t feel the need to find her parents even though they might still be alive and how that lack of compulsion worries her somehow. Wouldn’t a girl want to join her peers? Wouldn’t she go straight to her family?

She brings him up to the present moment with a simple, “I told you I died. You freaked. I wandered around and forced myself to stay away from the school and then . . . you came and found me. The end.”

He laughs. “I had no idea you could talk so much.” “I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone else.”

His smile fades, and he looks around, like he’s seeing the

shed for the first time since he arrived. “Don’t you want to be in a more comfortable place?” he asks. “It’s kind of weird that you’re alone out here.”

“I like it. It feels like mine now, and it’s clean and quiet and no one has ever come over here.”