Chapter 1: The Forbidden Touch
The third-row seat of the Ford Explorer was a special kind of hell. Gage was pretty sure it was designed for storing gym bags, not actual human beings with limbs. The plastic cover Aunt Tonia had insisted on—‘for the resale value, Georgie!’—crackled under his thighs and stuck to his skin with a persistent, clammy sweat. Up front, his dad was holding court, one hand on the wheel, the other carving shapes in the air as he recounted, for the third time today, his legendary victory in the 1994 company softball tournament.
“So the bases are loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth,” George bellowed over the thumping wipers. The storm had turned the highway into a greasy black mirror, reflecting the sickly neon of passing fast-food signs. “And I’m up. The pitcher, this guy named Doug, he’s sweating bullets…”
Gage tuned him out. His entire world had shrunk to the pressurized capsule of the back row. To the heat radiating from the body pressed against him from shoulder to knee.
Carly.
His cousin. Eighteen, fresh out of high school, and currently an agonizing six inches away that felt like both a canyon and no distance at all. She’d been trying to read a book by the dim glow of her phone light for an hour, one earbud in. The other dangled free, and he could hear the tinny hiss of whatever indie band she was into.
“You good?” he asked, his voice low, nearly swallowed by the thrum of tires on wet asphalt.
She jumped a little, as if she’d been just as hyper-aware of him. “Yeah. Just… hot.”
“Tell me about it.” He shifted, pretending to get more comfortable, and his forearm brushed against hers. A static shock, sharp and bright, jumped between them. Or maybe he imagined it. She didn’t pull away.
She was tying her hair up again, a nervous habit. Her arms lifted, elongating the line of her throat, and the movement pressed her side more firmly into his. He caught the clean, simple scent of her soap under the layers of road-trip stench—french fries and old coffee. She got the topknot secured and let her hands fall into her lap, one landing perilously close to his own.
Aunt Tonia chose that moment to twist around from the passenger seat, her glasses glinting. “You two starving? I’ve got more ham sandwiches. The pickle relish is in the blue cooler.”
“We’re okay, Mom,” Gage said, offering a tight smile.
“You sure, honey? Carly, you look peekish.”
“I’m fine, Aunt Tonia. Thank you.” Carly’s voice was soft, polite. The good one.
Tonia beamed, her cheer a fluorescent light in the close, dark space. “Okay! Just holler.” She turned back around, settling with a contented sigh as George launched into the details of his epic swing.
Silence descended again, thicker now. More deliberate. The Explorer hit a deep puddle, a violent thwump that jolted the entire frame. The inertia threw Gage harder into Carly’s side, his hand splaying out to brace against the window behind her head. For a second, he was caging her in. He felt the quick, hot puff of her breath against his neck.
“Sorry,” he muttered, not moving.
“S’okay.” Her words were barely a whisper. Her amber eyes flicked to his, held for a heartbeat too long, then darted down to his mouth before she looked fixedly at the headrest in front of her.
His heart was doing something funny in his chest. This was crazy. This was his cousin. They’d spent summers splashing in the lake, he’d helped her with her math homework, he’d given her shit for her boyband posters. But that was before this past year. Before she’d… filled out. Before the shy glances had started to carry a weight that didn’t feel familial at all.
The temptation was a live wire in the cramped, dark space. A stupid, reckless idea, fueled by the monotony of the road and the roaring intimacy of the storm. He let his braced arm relax slowly, his hand drifting down from the window. It didn’t retreat to his own space. It came to rest, feather-light, on her leg, just above her knee.
The denim of her jeans was rough under his fingertips. She went perfectly, utterly still. He couldn’t even hear her breathe. Up front, his mother’s head lolled against the window, her breathing deepening into sleep. His dad was singing along now, badly, to some classic rock on the radio.
Gage drew a slow, deliberate circle on the outside of her thigh with his thumb.
He felt the tremor that went through her. Not a recoil. A shudder. Her hand, lying in the space between them, twitched. Then, with a slowness that mirrored his own, she moved it. She didn’t push him away. She placed her palm over the back of his hand, her fingers slotting between his. Her skin was scorching.
She applied the faintest pressure. Not stopping him. Guiding. His hand slid a crucial inch higher on her thigh. The sound she stifled was half gasp, half sigh, lost under Uncle George’s off-key rendition of “Born to Run.”
This was the line, obliterated. The understanding was silent and complete. His head was buzzing, every nerve ending laser-focused on the point of contact under her guiding hand, on the curve of her body pressed along his. He turned his head, his lips a breath from her temple. Her shampoo. Strawberries.
The Explorer’s tires hydroplaned for a terrifying second, a loud shudder vibrating through the chassis. George cursed, gripping the wheel with both hands. “Whoa! Hell of a night!”
The moment broke. Carly’s hand flew off his, coming up to clutch the headrest in front of her, knuckles white. Gage snatched his hand back, the phantom heat of her searing into his palm. They stared straight ahead, two guilty statues, the blood pounding in their ears louder than the rain.
“Everyone alright back there?” George boomed, glancing in the rearview.
“Fine,” Gage croaked.
“Fine,” Carly echoed, her voice thin.
Aunt Tonia snored softly.
The road smoothed out. The crisis passed. But the atmosphere in the plastic-wrapped tomb of the third row had been permanently altered, charged and fragile. Gage chanced a glance at Carly. She was staring out her window, but her reflection in the dark glass showed her biting her swollen lower lip, her chest rising and falling too quickly.
He looked down at his own hand, the one that had just been under hers. He slowly curled his fingers into his palm, holding onto the sensation.
The exit for the next roadside motel, its vacancy sign a blurry promise through the downpour, was coming up in two miles.
The exit for the next roadside motel, its vacancy sign a blurry promise through the downpour, was coming up in two miles.
“You know what,” George announced, squinting at the road. “This is getting Biblical. We’re bagging it. One night off-schedule won’t kill us.”
A dull panic, hot and immediate, flooded Gage’s veins. A motel meant rooms. Doors. Walls. A cessation of the moving, public excuse for their closeness. It would make whatever this was real and stationary.
“We can make it another hour, Dad,” Gage heard himself say.
“Your aunt’s sawing logs, my neck’s in a knot, and I can’t see ten feet in front of the bumper. We’re stopping.” The turn signal began its methodical, inescapable click. Click. Click.
Gage dared to look at Carly. She was watching him, her expression unreadable in the intermittent flashes of a passing truck’s headlights. There was no wide-eyed fear, no sly smile. Just a watchful, waiting intensity that made his stomach clench.
The Explorer swayed onto the exit ramp, the world narrowing to a corridor of worn asphalt and towering pines. The motel was a low, L-shaped sprawl of beige stucco. A flickering sign depicted a grinning cartoon bear holding a fishing pole. WELCOME TO THE SLEEPY BEAR LODGE.
“Cozy,” George snorted, pulling under the awning of the office. The sudden silence after he cut the engine was deafening, filled only with the relentless drumming on the roof. “Be right back.”
He vanished into the brightly lit office, leaving them in the car with the sleeping Tonia. The interior light was too bright, too exposing. Gage and Carly sat frozen, not touching, the space between them now a yawning chasm electric with everything unsaid. The plastic under Gage crackled like gunfire as he shifted.
“One room or two?” Carly whispered, the question hanging in the thick air.
“God, I don’t know.”
George reappeared, jingling keys. “Luck o’ the Irish! Got the last two they had. Connecting rooms.” He laughed, a loud boom that made Tonia stir. “Figured we could open up the door between ‘em. Like a little suite.”
Of course. A connecting door. Another boundary that was both a link and a mockery.
They moved in a damp, bleary-eyed shuffle. George shouldered most of the bags. Tonia, groggy, fumbled with a cooler. Gage and Carly were left with their own backpacks and the heavy, shared silence. Room 14 and Room 15. George pushed open the door to 14, revealing two double beds with garish orange spreads. “Home sweet home. Tonia and I will take this one. You kids take the other. Get settled, I’m gonna raid the ice machine.”
The door to Room 15 swung inward on a sigh of stale, cooled air. It was identical. Two beds. A dark wood dresser. A painting of a generic lake. The door between the rooms, painted the same beige as the walls, stood closed with a simple lock on each side.
Carly walked in first, dropping her backpack on the bed closer to the bathroom. She stood with her back to him, arms wrapped around herself.
Gage let his bag fall to the floor. The click of the main door closing behind him was final. He engaged the deadbolt. The sound was unnaturally loud.
He turned.