Cold Kiss

all.
    The skin under his eyes looks bruised, and he’s lost all the color in his face. I start to trace the curve of one cheekbone with my finger, but pull it back like I’ve been burned when I remember why we’re here, who it is sitting there at the base of that tree. Everything is beginning to feel like it’s shifting, moments sliding into one another like watercolors.
    “He was still sort of freaked out when I found him,” Gabriel whispers. “I don’t know how long he’d already been here, though.”
    I nod, and rock back on my heels before I stand up. It makes me sick to be scared of facing Danny, when he used to be the safest, best thing in my life. The warm place I could crawl into, the strong hand that was always there to hold mine, the steady pulse in my blood.
    The one person I never imagined hurting.
    It’s broad daylight, and even if it would be more than weird for Danny’s mom or Ryan to show up right now, I have to get him out of here. Which means I have to talk to him, look right at the confusion and horror on his face, the familiar, gentle-eyed face that used to do nothing but smile at me. As much as I want to sit here, suspended in the quiet of this chilly, brittle morning, I can’t put it off any longer. And it turns out I don’t have to.
    When I turn my head toward that awful tree, Danny is staring straight at me.
    “There was a crash .”
    Danny keeps saying it, and I don’t know which one of us he’s trying to convince. I’m the one pressed up against the tree now, his hands huge and frighteningly immovable on my shoulders.
    Out of the corner of my eye, Gabriel is pacing beside the shed, his hands shaped into useless fists. I told him to stay where he was when I ran toward Danny, who was on his feet and coming toward me faster than I would have thought possible.
    I want Danny to deal with me, not Gabriel. And I don’t want Gabriel to have to deal with any of this, even if it’s a lot too late for that.
    “There was.” The words sound strangled, but I can’t think of anything else to say. There was a crash, and I was so stupid, so unbelievably, insanely stupid to think I could pretend there wasn’t.
    “A crash, Wren.” He shakes me, and I nearly feel Gabriel, just yards away, vibrating with the urge to move. “A car crash.”
    “I know,” I whisper, and turn my face up to him, trying to get him to see me. He’s looking right at me, but if I didn’t know it was crazy, impossible, I would think he was seeing only the way the road spun out from beneath them, and the broad trunk of the tree looming.
    “Wren.” He swallows, shakes his head, and for a moment his hands ease up. His eyes are awful, too dark, so glassy they don’t seem real. “Wren, did I die ?”
    Oh God.
    I wriggle out from under his fingers and wrap my arms around his waist, hanging on.
    Hiding my face against his chest.
    And really? Just plain hiding.
    “Wren.” He’s not even holding me—his arms are flung out to his sides as I cling to him, as if he can’t bear to touch me now.
    It hurts, so much. The sound of his voice, the trembling stiffness in every muscle, so different from the usual cool marble feel of him.
    But I can’t move. If I let go, what then?
    I still don’t believe he’ll hurt me, not physically. But when I let go, I’ll have to look at him again, and truly face what I’ve done.
    Face the fact that he was better off wherever he was before I crept into that cemetery, broken open, pouring all my selfish needs onto his grave.
    He had to be. I don’t know what I believe about God or heaven or even hell, but if there is a heaven, I know Danny was there. He was nothing but good, a teenage boy who kissed his mom before he left for school in the morning and drew funny pictures for his girlfriend’s little sister, just to make her laugh.
    A boy who gave his girlfriend everything he had, freely. Slow-curving grins in the halls between class, long hand-in-hand walks on windy afternoons, a voice in the dark when something hurt, ridiculous, awesome dreams about rock stardom and comic-book superheroes. His kisses, his hands, his long legs, a whole new world to map out, together.
    And what did I give him? A half-life in the loft of a musty garage, and a girl who didn’t even think about who it might hurt before she reached out and grabbed what she wanted.
    “Wren.” He insinuates his fingers between his body and my arms, peeling me away from him with a grunt. “Did I die? Did I?”
    I