Chapter 121

Kaia

I didn’t turn around.

I couldn’t. My body had decided before I did. My back was flat against the cold stone, and my hands were flat beside me, and every muscle from my neck to my heels had locked so hard I could feel my pulse in my teeth.

He came round in front of me anyway. He didn’t hurry. He never had.

Five years had been kind to him. That was the first thing I thought, and I hated myself for thinking it. He was broader through the shoulders than he had been at twenty, and the boy’s softness had gone out of his face and left it sharper, more finished. The fair hair was cut close now. The smile was exactly the same. Easy, warm, a little crooked, the kind of smile that made people feel they had been let in on a joke.

It had worked on me once. For one whole summer, it had worked.

“Kaia Finnegan,” he said softly. “Look at you.”

I didn’t say anything.

He looked. He took his time about it, from my hair to the hem of my mother’