Chapter 48. Since the Clover

Tessa’s POV

The silence lasts forever. Or three seconds. I can’t tell.

Then the forest breathes again. Somewhere below, a wolf whines. Another one howls, short and uncertain, like a question. Pine needles shift under a hundred paws. And the night comes back, but different. Louder. Sharper. Every sound has edges.

I can hear everything.

It’s too much. It’s like walking out of a dark room into noon. My head rings with it, and my new body doesn’t know which sound to turn toward first, so it turns toward all of them, and then toward him.

The creek at the bottom of the ravine, a quarter mile away. A family on the outer trail, whispering, Did you feel that? Did you feel that? An owl. Wyatt’s heart, slamming in his chest so hard and fast it sounds like a drum line.

And under all of it, something new.

A thread. Thin and bright and humming, running straight from the center of my chest to the center of his. I can feel it. Like a cello str