Page 47 of The Girl and the Cobra

“He’s—” Again, he stops himself, almost like he’s afraid to tell me the truth. When I give him a pout, he crumbles immediately. “I guess the easiest way to describe it is that the dark parts of me recognize the dark parts in him.”

My brows furrow, and I whisper, “Like a killer?”

“Maybe. Or maybe just a cold, clinical psychopath who likes being in control. Fixing things since he can’t fix himself. I don’t know, but this field trip, as he put it, is probably only a test.”

I bite my bottom lip. “A test for you or a test for me?”

But just like that, Tristan checked out of the conversation the moment I started to bite my lip. His gaze falls to my mouth, and my question goes unheard and unanswered, because the next thing I know he’s cupping my face and lowering his lips to mine.

The moment our lips meet, everything fades away and a low fire burns bright inside my body. He falls back, and I go with him, my body on top of his. His arms are like steel, holding me against him, an inescapable prison I can’t ever slip from.

I want so badly to tell him I’m ready—because I am. Because I want to. Because isn’t that what being alive is about? Trying new things, pushing yourself, going after what you want? A life without joy, without desire, is hardly a life at all; something I learned here, in this house.

I died the day Jordan shot up our school, and then somehow, slowly but surely, Tristan brought me back to life.

Losing myself in him becomes easier and easier with each passing day. In all my life, I never knew it could feel like this—I never once understood people who acted like being in a relationship was their whole personality. Though I never had friends myself, I watched as other students around me would hook up and date, and in doing so they sometimes dropped their friend group, putting their whole focus onto the shiny, new relationship.

Never, ever understood… not until now. Now, I totally get it. I would give everything up to be with Tristan—and I’m one hundred percent aware of how strange it is to feel this strongly for a man who, by all accounts, should be locked up in prison.

I’m out of my mind. I have to be. And yet, at the same time, I’ve never been more confident, more sure.

In the end, I don’t tell Tristan that I’m ready. When it’s time, I’m sure it’ll feel right. Maybe things will progress naturally or neither of us will be able to settle for making out. Maybe we’ll both just know.

Once my lips get sore, I pull myself off of Tristan, and he lets me go, propping himself up with my pillows as he watches me go. I resume what I was doing before the make-out detour: choosing my outfit for tomorrow night. Dr. Wolf didn’t say where we would go, just to dress nicely.

Doesn’t narrow it down, I know.

After mixing and matching every possible combination of my tops and bottoms, I settle for a simple getup: light blue jeans with a heavy sweater. I’ll wear some ankle boots beneath the jeans. With the weather getting quite cold at night, I assume it’s only a matter of time before it starts to snow.

Yuck. As someone who came from a sunny, warm area whose weather never had snow and only occasionally had hail, I cannot emphasize theyuckenough.

Dad calls the house around seven, right before he’s due to go to bed. We talk for a while. He tells me he’s going to go out with his new work buddies tomorrow night, to get himself out of thehouse—which is a perfect segue for me to tell him about our little field trip tomorrow.

I sit on the couch in the giant living room, sprawled out beneath a blanket. The TV on the opposite wall plays a superhero movie with its volume low. Tristan was with me before my dad called, but he makes himself scarce while I’m on the phone to give me a little privacy.

“It’s good you’re getting out of the house,” I tell him. “Speaking of—Dr. Wolf is taking Tristan and me somewhere tomorrow, too. He didn’t say where.”

“Oh? That’s—” I can tell by the pause my dad doesn’t know whether to say it’s exciting or not. He settles for going in a different direction: “You and Tristan, huh? I suppose if Dr. Wolf thinks it’s good for you, then it must be. He’s got the fancy degree, not me.”

All I can do is roll my eyes. If my dad had his way, I’d still be living with him, miserable twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week—and that’s not to blame him or anything; he’s just… my dad. There’s only so much a dad can do, especially when the root of the problem is the other half of the family who are no longer with us.

“If it ends up being too much for you, please don’t hold it in,” my dad goes on. “Tell Dr. Wolf, and I’m sure he won’t push you.” I hear him cough; he doesn’t sound sick, so I take it to mean there’s something else he wants to talk about, a subject that might be a little awkward.

Because I know my dad, I sigh and say, “What?”

“Tristan.” The moment he says his name, my heart skips a beat out of habit. Even though the man is nowhere in sight, he still has a hold on me. “It sounds like you two are spending an awful lot of time together now. Should I be worried?”

“Worried about what?”

“That you two are spending a lot of time together,” my dad quickly repeats what he said before. “Don’t forget Tristan is there because he’s in some desperate need of mental help—”

“Dad,” I cut in, “trust me, I know all about it. I know more about what Tristan did than you do.” And then, before I can say anything else, I stop myself. My dad is only trying to protect me; he wants to make sure I’m safe. It must bother him, knowing I’m in a house with another person like Tristan.

If only he knew…

I speak gentler this time, “He’d never hurt me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I know you believe that, but if there’s one thing the past six months have taught me, it’s that you can never really know what’s going on in someone else’s head. Wanting to believe the best in someone… it’s nothing more than a projection of your feelings onto them, not a sign of what they’re really thinking.”

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