Jack pulled my face toward his, and despite the voice of reason in my head warning me that someone or something would come out of the trees, creep up on us in the dark, I didn't stop him. I didn't want to stop him.

Instead, I leaned into the kiss. Pressed my body against his until I became less aware of the looming wilderness and more aware of the strange alchemy going on inside me—the feeling of falling and flying at the same time, a lightness expanding in my chest until I could barely breathe.

Talking really was overrated. Any miscommunication, words unsaid in the silent chasms between us vanished as we collided. My arms wrapped around his midsection. His hands tangled in my hair. Just being so close to him was dizzying.

I had to give it to him... Jack had moves. His social skills might need work, but this? 10/10.

He let out a groan, and I realized I'd accidentally touched his injured arm.

I pulled away. How long had that lasted? Ten, twenty seconds? It felt a lot longer than that. Somehow a lot shorter, too. Though the darkness was the same, my eyes flickered open, willing the distance between us to disappear again.

Any cheap thrill from before would never do it for me again.

I cleared my throat. "We should. Um. Take another look at your arm."

He turned on the light on his phone. It illuminated us like a spot light as we stared at each other, wide-eyed and stunned. Talk about a wake up call. The reality of our circumstances—hell, the reality of what we'd just done in the dark—dawned upon us and the whole forest at that. Same trees. Same snow melting into slush. Same silence. Same corner of the universe carved out just for us.

"What are you doing?" I murmured. "You should try to conserve the battery."

Translation: Please turn off that light so you don't see how flustered I am right now.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out. A necklace. With a small, golden rock hanging from the chain.

"This is citrine or... yellow quartz," he began. "It's amethyst but heated up, so the purple turns yellow. Which makes it not real citrine. I've been looking for real citrine for my collection, but I haven't found any yet. It's the stone of prosperity and money and success. I thought... you would like it because of that."

"You're... giving it to me?"

He nodded. I stared at him, the shadows of his face harsh in the dim light.

"That's the most thoughtful birthday gift ever," I said quietly. "And all I gave you was a lame rose."

"...I think I left it in the car."

"Don't worry. I'll get you a whole bouquet of roses once we're finally out of here."

My head spun. Since when was my life this surreal? I forgot about the cold as I floated up and away in a sea of emotions. The silly smile on my face, the warmth swelling in my chest... Old Romy would've pushed it away into the void of her heart, but stuck-in-the-wilderness-with-her-crush Romy couldn't bring herself to push it away. Not when said crush looked at her the way he did, shy and hesitant.

"Well," I said. "Are you going to put the necklace around me now?"

I turned. Shivered as his cold fingers touched the back of my neck.

"There's something else," he said as he pulled away.

From his pocket, he took out a folded paper, soggy with snow. The ink bled, and as he tried to unfold the creases, it came apart in his hands.

He frowned. "Es ist ruiniert."

"What is it?"

"I wrote you a letter."

"A letter?"

"About... meine Gefühle."

"Listen, I'd like to learn German sometime for you, especially if it means you'll talk to me more often, but I have no clue what that word means."

"My feelings," he clarified, shyer this time.

And now that letter was nothing but mush.

The guilt came back in the strongest wave yet, crashing into me. He agreed to my stupid plan in the first place so he could give me this. The letter. The necklace.

And I nearly watched him fall to his death.

Talk about heartless.

"How do you not hate me?" I whispered.

"I like you more than I'm mad at you," he said.

Which must've meant... a lot.

A shiver went through me. And not just because of the cold.

"What did you write about in the letter?"

"What I showed you."

"What, with the kiss?"

Silence. His eyes widened; he turned off the flashlight, and I laughed.

"Are you saying that all your wrote in the letter could be summed up with that kiss?" I asked.

"...some of it."

"Only some? Damn, what more do you have to do?"

He let out a small gasp.

It became too much to handle; I couldn't bear another second of this back and forth, and I laughed and threw my arms around him, the force of my body flung against his making him stagger back a bit. He froze, his arms motionless at his side.

You're incredible, I wanted to say, I kind of actually adore you? I wanted to say. I heard his breathy laugh and felt his arms, raising slowly to hug me back.

He held me tighter than I held him. "Danke, Blume girl."

❀     ❀     ❀

"I don't think talking is the problem anymore," Jack mused. "I think I've been this way so long I don't know how to be anything else."

"That makes sense," I said, dozing off against the tree trunk, more than happy to listen to his—for once sober—ramblings.

"Everyone wants me to change and... grow out of this. It makes me upset. Because I'd like to get better. But I don't want to have to change for anyone to accept me."

"I do always call you a stubborn brat for a reason," I teased, and my heart jumped to my throat when I felt his lips close to my ear. He whispered something under his breath—probably some insult in German—and I felt my body do this weird jittery thing as I playfully pushed him away.

"Okay, I'll stop flirting now," I said, laughing, and took a moment to collect my thoughts. "So what you're saying is... you want to change, but you're having a hard time letting go of your identity."

He suddenly grabbed my legs and placed them on top of his. "Yes."

"I mean..." Get a hold of yourself, Romy, I thought. "I'm scared. too."

"You are?"

"You think I didn't like the whole sociopath thing? Of course I liked it. Even though my psychologist now says that the others were kind of unprofessional for diagnosing me with that right off the bat. Anyway, it, um, enabled my unhealthy behaviors, according to my psychologist. It was like a shield. But I guess a shield isn't enough."

"Enough for what?" he asked.

"Living to the fullest, I guess? That's all I've really wanted."

"What would be enough?"

You, my delirious brain thought, but there was no way I'd say that out loud. What was I thinking? Of course just he couldn't be enough. I wasn't like Eli thinking a grand romance would solve all my problems. Not like I believed that what Jack and I had was some grand romance... but what did it matter anyway?

I settled on a non-answer: "I'm not sure yet."

Jack drummed his fingers against my thigh. "You don't want to be like that girl?"

"Who, Penelope? A.k.a. Sociopath #2? Hell no. Maybe before, yeah. I thought the three of us—me and her and Anika—were beyond feeling anything. That was our coping mechanism. Our way to feel powerful. In different ways. I like to feel independent from everyone. Penelope likes to control people. Anika likes to feel as if she's this stoic mystic who's beyond humanity. But other than being heartless there had to be something more linking us together, right?"

"The devil?" Jack suggested.

I burst out laughing, but my limbs felt even number in the cold, and I inched closer to Jack. "Oh, right. That was all bullshit honestly. At least to me. It seemed like Anika and Penelope's way to keep themselves entertained in juvie. But they took it pretty serious. And now... I can't tell if Anika didn't care enough about Penelope to stick around after she got out. Or if she cared too much. Invested too much time and got in a mess because of it. And now Penelope seems sad. Lonely but without the words for it. Like she doesn't realize her 'sociopathic tendencies' are what's pushing everyone away. Even me."

"What about you and Anika?" Jack asked. "Do you care about her?"

"Maybe. She's troubled for sure. I don't really know about Penelope's past because she tells different stories every time, but Anika's been through some really dark shit. I guess I always wanted her to find the answers she was searching for."

"Answers?"

"Answers to the big things. Life. Justice. Power. God."

"I have no idea about any of that."

"Me either. Is your family religious?"

"No," he said. "And I like not believing in anything. I like thinking... all the beauty on earth is here because of chance. Because of chemical processes... not God. I love learning about that. I think there's enough to discover in science there's no time for the other stuff."

"That's really well thought out, actually," I said. "I'm sure there's a lot about flowers I haven't learned yet."

Silence. And still... hours and hours until daylight. I would rather be talking to Jack somewhere warm... with a fireplace and a cup of Greta's hot tea. But would he even talk to me then? Did his words have a time limit?

"I appreciate what you did," Jack muttered. "You... helped me out. You reminded me to breathe."

"Oh, you mean like an hour ago? Yeah. I read some articles about panic attacks a while back."

"You did?"

"I... remember that time in the race? When I didn't know how to help you, and Eli did? I guess I felt jealous. He actually made me feel... bad about it."

"And you researched."

"Yeah. In case it happened again."

"That's very... that's..."

"It's just common sense."

"No. You... care."

I leaned in to kiss what I believed was his cheek, but in the dark I missed and instead got a mouth full of his hair.

"Sorry," I said. "But, um. That's kind of what I've been trying to tell you the whole night."

Jack pulled me closer to him. So close, in fact, that I ended up sitting between his legs as his arms wrapped around my waist from behind. I felt his chin on my shoulder, and the overload of unexpected affection made my heart malfunction almost more than it had with the kiss.

"I wanted it to be true," he said, no longer whispering. "The things I spoke about. I wanted to believe you were like everyone before. Everyone gets tired of dealing with me. It would be easier if you were the same."

With my back pressed against him, I felt the vibrations of his voice through his chest—a soft, low buzz that made every minute in the cold so unbelievably worth it. I could fall asleep like this. To be honest, if we were meant to die here, I wouldn't mind if someone found our bodies like this. Was that morbid? Cheesy? Maybe. But Jack was so... comforting. Way better than a fireplace. Way better than a load of a million dollars in cash.

I almost forgot what he'd said entirely. After taking yet another moment to collect myself, I asked, "Why would it be easier?"

"Because I wouldn't have to think about how much I care. I care too much. I feel too much. It's easier when people give up on me. I don't know what to do when they don't."

"Jack..."

I feel too much.

Those words echoed in my head, and right now, I could actually relate.

Was that his strength? Feeling too much, his mutism a glaring symbol of his vulnerability? His silence paradoxically made him impossible to ignore, as if without words he still managed to scream out, I'm not okay.

For how long had he hoped someone would try to reach him? How long had he spent pushing people away so they couldn't?

Penelope said he was my Anika. My dual opposite. But now Anika was gone. And if I screwed up again, the same would happen to me.

And I wouldn't reach him no matter how hard I tried. 

❀     ❀     ❀

A/N: Okayy so one reason I didn't upload this chapter earlier today is because I spent way too much time making Apple Memojis for our lovely cast of characters. I'll share them here so we can all relish in how adorable they turned out (and so you can get a better idea of how I envision them!) (please let me know what you think 🤩 ) 

here they are in the following order ->

✿ romy pereira, jack michel, penelope dupont, anika clark, eli fuentes, and seth borovkov ✿

✿ Old A/N from circa 2015! ✿

I LOVE THIS CHAPTER. I was actually giddy writing this lol. I'm so happy right now, they're hugging and he made her a rock necklace and omfg they are so cute I can't handle it TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS. I'm soooooo happy I can't believe it. I love Jack so much! Writing this story actually feels easy now, and before writing the romantic parts was causing me so much angst and conflict, but now it feels very natural and I'm so happy. I'm so glad that I centered their relationship around friendship instead of romance (idek what romance is tbh), and I hope that you appreciate it, because their friendship is so nice and cute but also confusing and I love it. I'm hella happy for this story and I'm 10000% happy that you all like it and your comments are all amazing and man I just love everything

Also, out of curiosity: Jack has had three relationships in the past. He hadn't talked to any of them. They all dumped him. How do you think his past relationships were like? Do you think he ever fell in love before? Why do you think they dumped him? Tell me what you think, I'm really really curious!

Thank you all so much for reading and commenting and all that stuff, be sure to vote, add to your reading lists, etc etc. Anyway thanks I LOVE YOU I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE AN EXCELLENT, MARVELOUS EXISTENCE. (the next chapter will 200% be updated soon)

(This chapter is dedicated to AlwaysAbbyyy for your insightful comments! Thank you!)