Page 25 of Falling for the Recluse

I smother the urge to scoff, not wanting my shitty attitude to crush that hopeful look in her eyes. Instead, I kiss her, letting her warmth and softness burn away the cold.

“If this is where you want to stay, then I’ll be with you for as long as I can,” she whispers, pressing closer to me. “You’ve opened up a part of me that I didn’t even know existed. You’re the only one I want to let inside.”

I’m the only one getting inside. If another bastard even tries to get close to her, I’ll rip him apart with my bare hands.

Except she’ll leave one day—sooner than I can bear—and I won’t be able to protect her from all the crap the world will throw at her. The thought makes me insane. I’ll ripeverythingapart to keep her safe.

“Whoa.” She draws away, searching my face. “You went dark again.”

I force myself back to her and swallow hard. “I want you to have everything you need. Everything you want. I’d move the damn universe to give it all to you.”

“I know you would.” She rubs her hand over my chest. “But what I want most of all isyou.”

Letting out my breath, I look past her out the window again. Miles and miles of pristine, frozen ice.

Not far from here, the ice shelf attaching the Doomsday glacier to land is shattering and breaking apart. Within a few years, the shelf will collapse, sending the Florida-sized glacier into the ocean.

The glacier’s plunge will raise sea levels, change coastlines, create countless environmental issues, and affect other glaciers. It will cause fracturing, melting, and weakening.

We won’t know the repercussions until it happens. We never do.

But there’s no stopping it. When a massive, unimaginable weight is about to crash down and change everything, there’s not a goddamn thing anyone can do about it.

I tighten my arm around Josie’s waist. A flame flickers in the reflection of the window.

“I was eleven.” My voice sounds like it’s coming from far away. An echo.

She goes very still.

“My parents were killed in a house fire.” I wait for the barrage of trauma—the acrid smell of smoke, the heat of the flames, the terrifying crashes of falling beams and exploding windows—and the memories come, but they’re dimmed somehow. Like I’m looking at them through a foggy pane of glass.

“Oh, Gavin.” Josie presses her hand to my chest. “I’m so sorry.”

Tension laces my shoulders. “It happened at night. We were all asleep. My father woke first. The smoke was black. Suffocating. But he came into my room and grabbed me, got me out through the front door. Then he ran back in to get my mother. Neither of them made it out.”

She stares at me, her eyes wide and filling with tears. I brush my knuckles against her cheek.

“The investigators said it was an accident.” I swallow the stone lodged in my throat. “A candle had been left burning in the kitchen. The flame caught on a napkin, and…well. The smoke alarm by the front door didn’t work. And by the time the upstairs smoke alarm went off, there was no stopping it.”

I feel her gaze penetrate deeper. I force myself to look into her eyes. Blue, like the ocean, the forget-me-not, the sky, blueberries.

“Gavin?” A tremble runs through her voice.

“It wasn’t an accident.” My arm flexes against her waist. “It was my fault.”

ChapterThirteen

JOSIE

His wordsalmost don’t make sense. I shake my head.

“I don’t…I don’t understand.”

He shifts his gaze to the window as if he can see something on the ice.

“My parents had both gone to bed.” His voice is low and flat. “I was up late reading a book about this kid who solves mysteries with physics and science. The book had a bunch of science experiments in the back that you could do at home. One of them was called the Swinging Candle. You suspend a candle on a stick between two glasses and light the wick at both ends. As the candle melts and the wax drips, the candle swings like a seesaw. It sounded cool, so I went downstairs to the kitchen to try it.”

“Gavin, you don’t have to—”

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