CHAPTER FIVE

THE INSTINCTS AWAKEN

The Silver Spoon had run out of cherry syrup. It was a small tragedy, the kind that shouldn't have mattered, but Carly had set her heart on a cherry Coke and the denial sent her into a dramatic sulk that required an immediate walk to clear her palate.

So they found themselves strolling down Main Street in the bronze light of late afternoon, the sidewalk radiating the day's stored heat up through the soles of Anna's sandals.

"You're actually pouting," Anna said, bumping her shoulder against Carly's. "Over soda."

"I'm pouting over injustice," Carly corrected, shoving a stick of gum into her mouth. "They knew summer was coming. They knew I'd be here. This is a failure of infrastructure."

"We could go to Henderson's. They have fountain drinks."

"Fountain drinks are not the same and you know it." Carly chewed aggressively, then looped her arm through Anna's, swinging their joined hands. "Chris, back me up. Tell Anna that a summer without cherry Cokes is no summer at all."

Chris walked on Carly's other side, his hands buried in his jacket pockets despite the warmth. He'd been quiet since they left the diner, his gaze fixed on the middle distance, his jaw tight. Anna had been stealing glances at him, cataloguing the tension in his shoulders, the way he seemed to be listening to something none of them could hear.

"Chris?" Carly prompted.

"Hmm?"

"You're not even listening. You're in your own world." Carly pouted for real this time, releasing Anna's hand to tug on Chris's sleeve. "Come back to earth. The people of Main Street miss you."

"Sorry." His voice was rough, distracted. "Just thinking about the truck. The transmission's making that noise again."

"Well, stop thinking about trucks and think about my emotional devastation."

He smiled at her, one of those slow, gentle smiles that made Anna's chest ache and draped his arm around Carly's shoulders. "I'll buy you a whole case of cherry syrup. We'll keep it at the house. Emergency reserves."

"Now you're talking."

They passed the hardware store, then the bank with its ancient brass doors. Anna walked slightly apart from them, telling herself it was because the sidewalk was narrow, because three people abreast was inconsiderate, not because watching Chris's arm around Carly felt like swallowing glass.

They were crossing the intersection at Elm and Third when it happened.

The sound was violent, a sharp, cracking bang that split the air like a gunshot. A rusted pickup two streets over had backfired, the noise echoing off brick and asphalt with malicious intensity.

Anna flinched. Her heart leaped into her throat. But before her brain could process the sound, before she could even gasp, the world tilted.

She didn't see him move.

One moment she was standing three feet away from him. The next, Chris was in front of her, his body blocking her view of the street, his arm outstretched and pressed against her collarbone, pushing her backward. Hard.

Her shoulder blades hit the brick wall of the pharmacy. Chris's frame caged her in, broad and immovable, his head turned toward the sound, every muscle coiled and ready. His breath came fast and harsh, his lips pulled back in a snarl that exposed teeth that seemed too sharp for a fraction of a second, a trick of the light, it had to be and his eyes...

His eyes were wrong. The amber had flooded with something feral, something that didn't belong in a boy walking his girlfriend home from the diner.

The moment hung, suspended.

Then the echo died. The street returned to itself, a dog barking two blocks away, a screen door slamming, the normal hum of a town breathing through a summer afternoon.

Chris blinked. The wildness drained from his gaze, replaced by confusion, then dawning horror.

"Oh my God," Carly said.

Her voice sounded very small, very far away. Chris dropped his arm from Anna's chest as if she'd burned him. He stumbled back, putting distance between them, his hands shaking.

"Chris?" Carly's face had gone pale beneath her freckles. She looked from Chris to Anna and back again, her expression crumpling into something wounded and bewildered. "What... what was that?"

"I thought..." Chris's voice cracked. He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the strands hard enough to whiten his knuckles. "I thought it was... I don't know. A car backfire. I just reacted."

"You reacted to protect Anna." Carly didn't say it as an accusation, not quite, but the hurt was raw, bleeding at the edges. "I was right there. Right next to you. And you pushed past me to get to her."

"I wasn't thinking. It was instinct."

"Instinct?," Carly repeated. She laughed, a brittle sound. "Okay. Sure. Your instinct was to shove your girlfriend aside and pin your girlfriend's best friend against a wall."

"Carly... come on?..."

"It's fine." Carly held up her hand, her smile too bright, too sharp. "Really. It was just a loud noise. We're all jumpy. I'm going to..." She gestured vaguely down the street. "I'm going to Henderson's. I need gum or air or something."

She walked away before either of them could stop her, her flip-flops slapping against the pavement with angry precision.

Anna pressed her back against the pharmacy wall, her heart still hammering. She could feel the ghost of Chris's arm across her chest, the pressure of his palm, the way his body had curved around hers like a shield. She should have felt embarrassed. She should have felt guilty, was guilty, the sensation already pooling heavy and sick in her stomach.

Instead, she felt safe.

Worse than safe. She felt right. Like some part of her that had been holding its breath since the moment she drove back into town could finally exhale. Chris's proximity had been a cage, yes, but it had also been a fortress, and some traitorous piece of her wanted to step back inside it and never leave.

"Anna." Chris's voice was barely above a whisper. He hadn't moved, his hands still shaking at his sides. "I didn't mean to... I'm sorry. I didn't..."

"It's okay," she lied, it wasn't okay, she wished it lasted longer, his arms around her protectively, his nose grazing against the nape of her neck. 

"It isn't." He looked at her then, really looked at her, and the pain in his eyes was devastating. "None of this is okay. I don't know how to stop it."

"Stop what?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Whatever answer he was wrestling with died unborn.

"Just forget it happened," he said finally, the words flat and defeated. "Please for Carly. Forget it."

He turned and walked after Carly, leaving Anna alone against the wall, her fingers pressed to her collarbone where his hand had been, marking the place where instinct had chosen her.

****** ******

He avoided her after that.

Not obviously, not in a way Carly would notice or comment on. But Anna noticed. She noticed the way Chris stopped coming inside when he picked Carly up, preferring to wait in the truck with the radio on. She noticed how he found reasons to leave rooms when Anna entered them, how his gaze slid past her like she was made of glass, how his laughter dried up when she drew near.

It was maddening. It was a relief. It was the most painful thing she'd ever endured.

Saturday night, someone lit a bonfire at the lake. Half the town seemed to have materialized with coolers and folding chairs, the flames casting dancing shadows across the water. Carly sat on a blanket near the shore, deep in conversation with Jane Keller about nursing school, while Anna hovered at the fringe, sipping a warm soda and pretending to enjoy the party.

Chris stood apart from everyone, leaning against a cottonwood tree at the edge of the firelight.

He looked untouchable there, a silhouette carved from darkness and amber light, his arms crossed, his chin tilted down. The flames caught the angles of his face, the sharp line of his jaw, and Anna found herself staring, unable to look away, unable to stop the magnetic pull that drew her feet toward him before her brain could intervene.

She stopped three feet away, close enough to smell the woodsmoke in his hair.

"You shouldn't be over here," he said without looking at her.

"Why? Are you dangerous? Or you gonna hurt me?"

He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You have no idea."

"Then tell me." Anna stepped closer, emboldened by the dark, by the distance between them and the others. "Tell me what happened on Main Street. Tell me why you look at me like you're starving and I'm the thing that could kill you. Tell me why I can't sleep at night without smelling pine trees and..."

"Anna." He pushed off the tree, turning toward her, and the firelight revealed his expression, ravaged, desperate, a man walking the edge of a cliff. "You need to stay away from me. Do you understand? I'm trying to protect you."

"From what?"

"From me. From this." He gestured between them, his hand cutting through the air like he wanted to sever whatever invisible thread kept pulling them together. "I can't control it when you're near. I think I can, and then I see you, and something else takes over. Something that doesn't care about Carly or loyalty or...." He stopped, his chest heaving. "You don't know what you're doing to me."

"I'm not doing anything," Anna whispered. But her heart raced, and the air between them felt charged, humid with things unsaid.

"That's the worst part." His voice dropped to a growl, and the sound did something to her insides, twisted them tight. "You're just standing there. Existing. And it's enough to.."

"Chris!" Carly's voice cut through the dark, cheerful and oblivious. "Come help me flip the burgers! I'm destroying them!"

Chris closed his eyes. When he opened them, the wildness was banked, hidden behind a wall of careful control.

"We're not having this conversation," he said.

"Chris..."

"Go back to the fire, Anna. Please."

He didn't wait for her answer. He walked away, toward Carly and the smoke and the easy affection that should have been his refuge. Anna watched him go, hugging her arms around herself, feeling the chill of his absence like a physical wound.

****** ******

She drove home with the windows down, letting the wind tear at her hair, trying to outrun the thoughts that chased her.

It didn't work.

Every interaction replayed itself in merciless detail. The way his pupils dilated when she entered a room. The way his nostrils flared when the wind carried her scent toward him. The protective stance, the snarl, the trembling hands. The please he'd said at the end not a command, but a prayer, ripped from somewhere raw and desperate.

She wasn't imagining it. Whatever this was, it was mutual.

The knowledge should have exhilarated her. Instead, it filled her with a sick, creeping dread.

She pulled into her driveway and sat in the dark, gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles ached. The porch light was on, but the house was quiet. She didn't want to go inside. She didn't want to face her parents' knowing looks or her own reflection in the bathroom mirror.

You're falling for your best friend's boyfriend.

The thought landed like a stone in still water. Anna pressed her forehead against the wheel, squeezing her eyes shut.

No. Not falling. Fallen.

She thought of Carly's face in that moment after the backfire, confused, hurt, watching the boy she loved choose someone else without even thinking. She thought of thirteen years of friendship, of sleepovers and shared secrets and the blood oath they'd made in fourth grade with a sterilized safety pin. Best friends forever, no matter what.

She was breaking it. She was breaking everything.

The porch door creaked. Anna looked up to see her father standing on the steps, a mug in his hands, steam rising in the cool night air. He didn't call out to her. He just stood there, waiting, patient as the earth itself.

Anna got out of the car. Her legs felt unsteady, her body too heavy for her bones.

"Bad night?" Pete asked as she climbed the steps.

"Something like that."

He held out the mug, hot chocolate, she realized, thick and sweet, the way he'd made it when she was small and the world was simpler. She wrapped her hands around the ceramic, letting the warmth seep into her palms.

"Dad?"

"Mm?"

"Did you ever... want something you knew you shouldn't? Something that would hurt people you loved?"

The question hung between them, fragile and dangerous. Pete was quiet for so long that Anna thought he wouldn't answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, heavy with memory.

"Yeah, Anna-bug. I did."

She looked up at him, but his face was turned toward the dark fields, toward the moon rising fat and full above the wheat.

"What did you do?" she asked.

Pete took a sip from his own mug, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"Learned that some things aren't a matter of choice," he said quietly. "And that the things that choose us are usually the things that hurt the most."

He didn't elaborate. He squeezed her shoulder once, his hand warm and calloused, and went back inside, leaving Anna alone with the crickets and the wind and the terrible, unshakeable feeling that her father understood far more than he'd said.

She stayed on the porch until the cocoa went cold, her mind turning in exhausted circles. Chris's face. Carly's confusion. The weight of her father's hand. The pull in her chest that felt less like a crush and more like gravity, less like choice and more like law.

Falling, she thought. I've already fallen.

And somewhere, in t

he dark at the edge of town, she wondered if Chris was staring at the same moon, fighting the same losing battle, feeling the same inevitable slide toward a collision that would destroy them all.