“So how would this work? We’d like, plan it? Have supplies? A time limit?”

“Exactly.” Colin’s heart begins pounding in his chest; his veins are infused with a high better than any adrenaline rush. He lays out his plan: he’ll strip down, submerge himself long enough for his pulse to slow and his core temp to drop, and then Jay will pull him out. “We’ll time it right down to the second, and you’ll resuscitate me. We can take some equipment from the campus infirmary. After what happened on the lake, no way is anyone going to risk needing the winter emergency kit. Lucy will stand on the trail where she was before, and we’ll see if it works.”

When he’s done, Colin is shocked to see that Jay doesn’t look all that horrified, even when he says, “See if it works as in see if you don’t die?”

Colin smiles. “Jay, I’m not going to die.”

Jay watches him, and Colin can feel the weight of every second as it passes. He doesn’t want to force Jay into anything, but he can’t lie to him either. “You don’t have to,” he says, hoping Jay can hear the apology in every one of his words. “But I’ll do it without you. I have to.”

Jay doesn’t react, only nods like he’s hearing something he already knew. “You know this will be the wildest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Yeah.”

Jay exhales deeply. “Okay, you crazy asshole. I’m in.”

CHAPTER 25 HER

COMING BACK THIS TIME IS JUST AS MILD. A blink. A tugging on her limbs. Darkness becomes light. But where she was warm and happy, waiting for the boy on the trail, she’s now scorching hot. Colin’s back is pressed to her front once again. And this time she knows she’s been gone, because she feels as if she’s been woken up, and Lucy knows she doesn’t sleep. She vanishes.

“Hi,” she whispers into his back.

He stiffens. “Lucy?” His voice is thick with sleep. “How long?”

His spine relaxes, pressing back into her. “Just two days.” “You okay?”

“No.” His alarm goes off, and he swats the snooze button with his palm before rolling over to face her.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be.”

She pushes his hair back. “I am anyway. I tried not to get so relaxed again.” He kisses her so carefully, as if too much contact will cause her to evaporate. His tongue glances her lip, her tongue, the skin of her neck. His piercing is cold; his skin is hot. His hands pull her closer, shadow up and down her sides and over her curves. “Missed you,” he whispers.

Last time, when she returned from being gone, he looked angry. This time, he seems resigned. She pulls back so she can see his face more clearly. His freckles have faded in the past month, and only now, with a couple of days away, does she notice. His eyes are dimmer in the dark room, but something fierce drums behind them, matching the rhythm of his pulse in his throat.

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly. “I told Jay.” “Told him what?”

“That you’re a Walker.”

She falls silent in the face of such a blunt admission. “I was freaking out and worried I imagined everything. I needed someone else to hear it and believe it.” He laughs dryly. She nods, supposing she can’t be upset with him any more than he can be with her for disappearing. “Okay.” She draws out the word carefully. “How’d he take it?”

He rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling. He’s shirtless. Lucy’s eyes move instinctively to his bare skin, over the smooth lines of his chest, the definition of his stomach and lower. “He didn’t believe me at first. But we didn’t talk about that for long. We talked about me going into the lake again.”

Lucy’s body pricks, each element drawn to the surface, making her feel like a brittle, spiked shell. “Colin.”

“He’s game, Lucy. He said he’ll do it for me.”

“And are you doing it for me?” she asks, hearing the bite in her words and feeling proud that they came out the way she intended. “Because no, thanks.”

“I’m doing it for both of us. I know it will work.” He gives her his trademark slow blink, filled with cocky confidence, but the gesture is wrong. He’s doing this because she would never ask it of him even though he probably sees straight through her to her traitor glee.

“This is a bad time to talk about this,” she says quietly. “I just got back, and I know you were scared when I vanished again. I feel like I can’t say no to this, but I want to.” The lie burns in her throat.

He sits up, facing away from her and bending to put his head in his hands. “We’ll talk about it later, then.”

Later turns out to be in the crowded dining hall, surrounded by four hundred other students. Later turns out to be with Jay. “I told Lucy that you know,” Colin says before taking a giant bite of pizza. Suddenly the drone of hundreds of students feels completely silent.

Jay and Lucy stare at him for a beat before looking at each other. “Yeah,” Jay says. “He told me. Sorry about the . . . being dead.”

Lucy smiles weakly, raises her hands and shakes them. “Ta-da . . .”

With the truth out between the three of them, Jay lets himself look. Really look. It’s not like Lucy has never been inspected; Colin stares at her all the time, examining how she fits together or maybe trying to get his mind to believe what his eyes see and his heart feels. But other than Colin, no one ever looks at her. Not like this. Jay’s attention is unnerving and unrelenting.

“Dude, she’s not made of wax. You’re making her twitchy.”

Jay sits back in his chair, letting it teeter back on two legs. “I can’t tell.”

Colin leans forward. “What?”