“I love you,” he says quietly, slowly blinking up to the sky.

She breaks into a grin so wide it takes her several seconds to respond. “I love you back.”

He picks up her hand and massages her fingers. “I thought I knew what love was before.”

“I didn’t.” She leans down, kisses the back of his hand.

Colin looks over at her, his eyes as hungry as she feels when she pushes him onto his back in the snow.

“Cold?” she asks, moving over him.

He shakes his head, hands running up her sides, lifting her shirt up and off in a single movement. “Not even a little.”

Her hair falls in a curtain around them, and he pushes it back, kissing her like she’s a normal girl he can grip and feel and not worry about breaking.

Lucy wonders if time moves down here at all because before she knows it her clothes are gone and Colin is smiling down at her, snowflakes in his hair and clinging to his lashes, disappearing into the skin of his bare shoulders. He bites his lip as he moves above her, fingers memorizing every inch and finding where they come together.

Frost gathers on their skin and disappears as quickly. Light explodes behind her eyes, and Colin holds her shaking hands with his. He says her name against her mouth, that he loves her, that even having all of her will never be enough. He groans into her neck, and when they still, his heart silent against her chest, she can hear the sound of feathery snow falling around them.

“How’s it possible to feel like I want to be here with you but I shouldn’t be?” he asks. They’re on the trail again, hand in hand as they make their way toward the front of the school. Lucy tried to say no—to distract him—but there wasn’t any conviction behind her words.

“I don’t know,” she says, “but it’s how I feel bringing you here too. It feels selfish.”

“Lucy?” he says, and she watches a cloud of anxiety pass through his eyes. “I think this is what we’ve been missing. Don’t you?”

She looks up, watches how fast the sun seems to move across the snowy sky. She can feel it with every step: the need to keep going, to escape.

They stop with the iron gate in front of them, its hulking mass like a scar blooming out of the pristine snow. Lucy notices Colin rubbing the spot over his sternum. “Jay’s bringing me back. My chest hurts,” he says. “We don’t have much time, Luce.”

He reaches for her then, pulling her to him with a smile that doesn’t completely fill his eyes. His mouth is soft but insistent, wet and warm.

She turns, a sense of longing filling her chest like a warm bath, a tug behind her ribs pushing her toward whatever is on the other side of the fence.

The same feeling of anticipation coats her skin, and she reaches out to lift the latch. The old gate groans, the hinges squeak, and Lucy steps back as it swings open.

She twists her fingers with his, and as if acting on instinct, steps through first.

She hears the gasp before she’s even turned around. He’s smiling. Tear tracks line his face, and he’s looking at her as if she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Your hair,” he says. She looks down. It’s brown, every shade of brown at once. “And your eyes.” He’s laughing now, disbelief etched in every part of his face. “They’re green.”

“Come here,” she says, and pulls him forward.

She’s on the old trail again. Her feet dig easily into the snowy earth, but she almost trips on a bank of snow when she catches sight of Jay, curled in half and throwing up the contents of his stomach several feet away from where Colin’s body lies.

Colin’s lips are blue, and when she gets closer, she can see that his eyes are open, but hollow and staring straight up at the heavy gray sky. His chest rises and falls in shallow pants, but when he hears her feet crunching across the ice, he turns his head to her and tries to smile. His breathing grows more ragged; his eyes roll closed.

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” Jay screams, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and stumbling to Colin, shoving Lucy out of the way. “I just got him back, Lucy. Stay away from him!”

Jay’s eyes are squeezed shut. He refuses to look at her. “What happened, Jay? Why is he so bad?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he mumbles. “It’s not working.” Still, he keeps his eyes down, frantically shoving hand warmers under the blankets and against Colin’s cold skin.

Dread trickles along her arms. “Are you afraid of me?” “When he comes back, you look fucking terrifying,” he says, voice shaking in the cold. He points without looking. “Grab that bag; it has gloves.”

She walks to the bag numbly, Jay’s words echoing over and over. He’s said it before: When he comes back, you look terrifying.

It’s the same reaction Joe had when he fell through his porch. He told Colin she looked like a demon. Lucy feels the high of her time with Colin underwater begin to evaporate.

“Here,” she says, carefully handing Jay the gloves. “What can I do? Is he going to be okay?” Her voice is so flat, sounds so indifferent. She squeezes her eyes shut, unable to get rid of the image of Colin in front of her, smiling up into the sun right before he slipped away.

“He’s been under for more than an hour, Lucy! He’s nonresponsive with a pulse of thirty. Thirty! His normal resting pulse is sixty-four. Do you even know what that means? He might die!”

“Just let me closer; he’ll be better when I’m there.” She’s so sure of it that at first she doesn’t register that when she puts her hand on his arm, the small monitor at his side lets out a steady, flat beep.

“Lucy!” Jay gasps, pulling at her arm and staring where his hand wraps firmly around her flesh. “Go away. Go away. Go away,” he whispers over and over. She realizes she was completely wrong when she assumed a silent Jay is a panicked Jay. This Jay is panicked, and he’s unable to stop whispering to himself. He’s a rubber band pulled taut, about to snap.