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the cabin, we peeled off our sunglasses and stopped to gulp from bottles of water.
    “Shade,” I panted. “Thank God for that.”
    “You’re looking a lot less crispy than you were yesterday.” He smiled. “Always a plus.”
    “A spring chicken and a lobster. What a pair, huh.” I leant back against a tree trunk and closed my eyes, fanning myself. “It’s not supposed to get this hot in England. I’ve had cooler afternoons in Spain.”
    “You know something awkward has happened when we’re talking about the weather.”
    “Oh.” I glanced over. “Sorry.”
    “It wasn’t you, Danni.”
    He stepped forward. He was in my space, closer than he should be, undergrowth crunching beneath his hiking shoes. There was a gush of pear-scented breath over my neck before he raised his finger to blot a bead of sweat from my cheekbone. It dragged, hot and damp. Ah, ah.
    I don’t know quite how it happened. That finger drew up to his mouth and he tasted, savored, blinked. When he opened his eyes, I stared right into them, and his pupils swelled inside their silver-gray skins until they brimmed against dark blond lashes. His lips fell from a great height and it just seemed like the thing to do, to catch them with my own…then he was easing my head back by my ponytail, deepening the kiss. He crushed me against him and he was so, so hard against my belly that I yelped on his tongue—his bold, curious tongue.
    I was making out with my not-uncle.
    I was making out with my not-uncle.
    I jerked from his embrace. My chest heaved in desperation for air and for another life, another place, a different time. To be somebody else. Anything.
    “That was all kinds of fucked.” I pressed my hand over my mouth as I leered up at him. “Why…?”
    I didn’t stop to hear his answer. I tore off toward the cabin, almost skidding into patches of nettles and foxgloved heaps of rocks.
    “Danni—!”
    It wasn’t long before he caught up; the cider had loosened many things, but his agility wasn’t one of them. He stomped past me and opened the door, closed it as I entered…but I don’t think he expected me to disappear into the bedroom without as much as a cuss thrown in his direction.
    “Danni.” I felt the other side of the door brace with his weight. “Open up, please. I can explain—”
    “Explain what?” My eyes were wet, my pulse staccato. “That you’re a screwed up pervert? Well? Huh?”
    He sighed. “You kissed me back.”
    “ Nope, I didn’t.” Liar!
    “You did.” He drummed his fingers against the wall.
    “You’re not going to get me out with frickin’ Spooky McTapper.” I sniffed.
    A beat. He stopped drumming.
    Then he laughed incredulously—I could almost see the way those broad shoulders would rove up and down.
    “I’m not trying. Please. Just open the door.”
    “ Even if I did kiss you too…it doesn’t make it any less fucked.”
    Now he leaned back again and the wood groaned with the weight of him.
    “I know it’s weird. You…you don’t feel like my niece. And you’re not, not really.” He paused, gulping. His voice was low and conspiratorial. “I know you feel the same way about me. I’ve noticed you looking. And then when you were looking…you stopped being this obnoxious little girl.”
    I was so glad I couldn’t see him; this was mortifying. “Stop…stop grooming me!”
    “You’re eighteen, for crying out loud.” It sounded a bit like he was convincing himself as much as me. “Look. I won’t tell anyone. You don’t have to tell anyone. Nobody has to know about this, Danni.”
    “Why would we want anyone to know?” I said, cautious.
    “We wouldn’t. I’m just…pointing that out. That what we do here doesn’t matter like that.”
    He wasn’t taking any of it back. This wasn’t his apology. It was another advance.
    My head throbbed. Other bits of me throbbed. And before I knew it, my buttery fingers found their way to the door handle and they eased it open with a creak.