“She likes me… but she doesn’t want to be with me.”
The words feel stupid the second Oliver says them out loud.
He remembers last night at midnight presses in around him, thick and damp. The forest behind the old cemetery is quiet except for the hum of crickets and the low hiss of candle flames. He carved their names into the bark of the trees again tonight. Like before. Like always. The knife still rests in his hand, resin sticking to the blade.
Her name looks wrong in wood. Too ancient for it.
He told her everything.
That he loved how she never overreacted. How she didn’t fake smiles. How she looked at things like she’d seen them before. How she never laughed at him when he talked about rituals or ghosts or things that linger.
She listened.
And then she told him she couldn’t be with him.
Not “wouldn’t.”
Couldn’t.
Now in the same woods but in the afternoon A twig snaps behind him.
He’s on his feet instantly.
She stands at the edge of the clearing.
For a second, his heart stutters.
She looks… wrong.
Still beautiful. Always beautiful. But thinner. Her collarbones are sharper, her wrists fragile as if they might splinter in his hands. Her skin, usually pale in a porcelain way, now looks stretched too tight over something hollow.
Older. Not in age — in hunger.
“Hey—” His voice softens instantly. “Are you okay?”
He steps toward her carefully, like she might disappear.
“Have you not been eating?”
God, that sounds stupid the second it leaves him.
He’s been with her since the first day she walked into town.
That morning he’d been half-asleep, head pounding from staying up all night performing some ridiculous ritual he found buried in an old occult forum. Candles. Salt. A drop of blood. A whisper about inviting something ancient into the mortal plane.
He didn’t think it worked.
He just wanted to feel less alone.
Instead, he showed up exhausted. Didn’t finish Chad’s homework. Got shoved into a car door in the parking lot after school.
And then—
She was there.
Out of nowhere.
She didn’t scream. Didn’t panic. Didn’t even look angry.
She just looked at Chad.
And Chad stepped back.
Oliver still doesn’t understand why.
From that day on, she sat beside him.
Not with the popular girls who hated her for stealing every gaze in the hallway. Not with the theater kids. Not with anyone.
With him.
She knew obscure folklore he’d only read about at 3 a.m. She corrected the history teacher once — gently — about medieval burial rites. She never ate lunch.
And after she came to town?
The deaths started rising.
Animal attacks on the side of the road. Bodies found drained and untouched. People whispering about curses again like it’s 1893.
The adults don’t say her name.
But they look at her.
Everyone thinks she’s a curse.
Oliver thinks she’s a miracle.
“Here,” he says now, guiding her to the rock he’d been sitting on. His hands hover before finally settling lightly at her elbows. She’s cold tonight. Colder than usual.
He hands her his water bottle. She doesn’t drink.
“What happened?” His voice cracks slightly. “Is this because of what I said?”
Because he confessed.
Because he told her he loved her.
Because he told her he wanted her.
She looks at him in that unreadable way she always does — like she’s measuring something inside him.
She’s thinner.
Too thin.
“Do you need food?” He fumbles for his backpack. “I have crackers. Or I can walk you home. Or we can stop somewhere—”
He stops himself.
She doesn’t eat.
He knows she doesn’t eat.
But tonight she looks like she’s starving.
“Please,” he says, softer now. “Just tell me what you need.”
The urge to cup her face is overwhelming. To press his lips to her forehead. To promise her something he doesn’t understand.
She likes him. He knows she does.
He’s seen the way her eyes soften when he talks about death like it’s romantic instead of terrifying.
But she won’t be with him.
Because she can’t.