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breath again, they asked me how many beats right as Wilder pulled his mask off. When my gaze met his, I wanted nothing more than to feel those beats. I didn’t, but like a fool I did try.
    I was afraid Wilder was back in town to force me to try again. I didn’t want it to get ugly between us. I’d had enough permanent goodbyes in my life, and I had vowed not to add to that list if I could help it. I knew it would only take one word from me to cause Mason and Gavin to ask him to leave again. No doubt, Gavin shared Mason’s lack of trust when it came to Wilder. That hurt me, too. Wilder didn’t deserve to be an outsider, and that is exactly what I made him out to be.
    “I heard he met someone. Not sure how solid that is,” Mason said under his breath as his hands danced across my back, reminding me of how awesome his touch had always felt. It was never forceful, and it seemed to hum to the music that was in him, the music he loved to play.
    Without warning, my breath turned to fog. He leaned me back once more, pulling my chin up so my eyes were inches from his, which made my heart race.
    “What?” I said in a foggy gasp.
    “I just wanted to watch them change,” he whispered as his fingertips delicately traced my jawline.
    My eyes were like Cadence’s, a pale green, but when my curse surfaced they turned deep blue, the color of ice.
    “One day, someone is going to push past this cold, and when they do you will see that it was nothing more than a wall keeping you from being happy.”
    “I am happy. I have the pleasure of calling the four most amazing people I have ever met my best friends.”
    “And three of them are your exes,” he said with a smirk.
    “That makes me a bad person, doesn’t it? Keeping all of you in my life?”
    “‘Keeping? Good luck kicking us out.”
    He held out my arm so it would catch the dim light of the room. Along my shoulder and a few spots down my arm were bruises.
    “What did you do?” he said with a gasp, sitting me up so he could see my other arm.
    “I don’t know. Maybe climbing the bookcase,” I muttered.
    “You may walk into things or stumble now and again, but you never bruise. Not like this.”
    That was an inside joke. Every dare he gave me in the great outdoors, I matched and usually not gracefully. But I would never show a mark on my body. He would joke that that was a good thing, that someone might take him as a violent boyfriend if we came out of the woods with all the bruises I should have had.
    “It was a wicked dream. I’ve never fought that hard for anything,” I said under my breath. “God, I’m so selfish. I couldn’t lose you and stay sane.”
    “No one is going anywhere,” he promised.
    “That is what my mom said the last time I had a night terror. She was wrong. I wish she was right, but she was wrong. I’m terrified. Rasure is going to do something to me—she is going to make sure I’m utterly alone.”
    “I’m not scared of her. Neither is Gavin. You’re fine. We’re not going anywhere.”
    “How fair is that to you? The both of you? You have your own lives to live. I shouldn’t be so dependent on you.”
    He reached for my head and moved it from side to side.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Trying to see if you bumped your head during that climb.”
    I elbowed him. Even though he was teasing me, there was truth behind his words. I’d always told them I was independent, that I didn’t need anyone, and now I was saying the opposite. I was facing one of my many demons and being honest with myself.
    He laid me down along the couch and tucked himself against me. His eyes tenderly smiled at me. “We were each other’s first,” he whispered as his hand clenched my side. “I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that in distant, random daydreams, the thought of us being each other’s last has not crossed my mind, but I’m not a fool either. I know what we had was fleeting, and in its wake I found one of the best friends I could ask for. I