I don’t think my imagination would have the bandwidth, while I was spurting blood like a fountain, to generate realistic details like the small tear in his sleeve, the smear of dirt on his arm, the nick on his jaw from shaving. When my arm accidentally brushes his, I don’t think I imagine how his hand clenches. If I were making this up, the least I could do as a gift to myself would be to design a Wesley who smiled at me. And carried a military-grade flashlight.

We still haven’t spoken when we emerge from the woods, the tide of trees pushing us out and dumping us right on the cabin’s porch. The television is on, subdued voices bumping up against the door. He swings it open. There’s a plate on the coffee table with a meal only half-eaten, handle-end of the fork lying in sauce as though dropped in a hurry.

I open my mouth to say Thank you for finding me, for leading me back, but Wesley doesn’t grant me the opportunity. He yanks the cord for the pull-down ladder and climbs up to his bedroom. Only when I’m directly behind him do I notice the back of his shirt, which reads koehler landscaping, fabric darker from saturation. His nape glistens. It’s cool enough outside that the tip of my nose is numb and my teeth are chattering, but Wesley, not even wearing a jacket, is drenched in sweat.

* * *

• • • • • • •

THAT NIGHT I DREAM in black and white. I open the cabin’s front door to find that all the trees are gone, only gently sloping hills and prairie smoke flowers everywhere, everywhere, as far as the eye can see. They slant over and under one another in the breeze, each monochrome tuft a happy wave hello. The manor soars larger than life, laced up with climbing roses rather than creeper vines. There’s a wrought-iron archway in front—falling stars hotel—and beneath, in vivid color, Wesley waits for me with an unreadable expression, hand outstretched.

I sit up straight in bed.

Chapter 7

I KNOW WHAT WE SHOULD do with Falling Stars.”

“Animal sanctuary,” Wesley replies mechanically, sipping his coffee. I’ve sneak-attacked him in the kitchen at seven a.m., an hour before I usually get out of bed. I don’t want to think he intentionally gets up an hour before I do to avoid bumping into me, but my skeptical side has its third eye narrowed.

He observes the donuts curiously, which I baked in the midst of a planning frenzy at four in the morning specifically for the purpose of buttering him up. He reaches for the plate.

I open my mouth and a single word pops on my tongue like a bubble. “Hotel.”

He retracts his hand. I watch his guard rise like defenses around a castle. I am full of similes when I haven’t had much sleep.

“You know?” I’m already botching this. “I want to make the house a hotel again, like it was in that newspaper you found.”

“I didn’t find that newspaper, you did.”

I’m trying to make this his idea, so that he’ll be more receptive to it. It requires logic gymnastics. I stack my fingers together on the tabletop like my imaginary businesslady BFF. “Falling Stars Hotel, two point oh. It’s the perfect idea.”

“A hotel,” he repeats.

“Yes.”

Our stares lock, and it’s unsettling how much his attention weighs when he decides to pin me with it instead of looking right past me like he generally does. He has long eyelashes, brown at the root and fair at the tips. The freckles on his cheeks, the gold locks of hair curling every which way above thick, stern eyebrows—the effects of each detail pool into an exceedingly distracting portrait that will derail me if I don’t fight hard against the current.

“No,” he says, devoid of emotion. Wesley does not need or care to be liked at all; I doubt my opinion could touch him. Those who care less always have the upper hand.

I’ve only ever wanted to be liked, and I’ve only ever wanted to be liked by absolutely everybody I come in contact with, however temporarily and inconsequentially. It’s my most dominant and simultaneously weakening driving force, which leads to my toning down various wants and needs in order to make myself digestible, easy to get along with. The essence of Maybell Parrish is painfully sensitive, and if you touched it, it would retract and try to surrender. For better or worse (and I’ve certainly tried to be anyone but myself), I am a wobbly white flag.

No. Just like that.

My natural reaction is to say okay and pack myself up nice and small and out of the way, too unobtrusive to be a bother ever again. But even though my idea is only a few hours old, it is burning up in me like a fire demon. I want it. Nobody can make it happen for me but myself.

I lean forward, matching his determination. It surprises us both. “Yes.”

“You’re suggesting that instead of living in the house myself, I let a bunch of strangers sleep in it. There is no possible way you can convince me to agree to that.”

“Let me try.”

He welcomes the dare, gesturing for me to go right ahead. I’m abruptly jittery—he doesn’t realize how much voltage it took for me to push back and I’m crackling now with an excess of electrical energy my body isn’t used to supplying; I have to grip the seat of my chair to keep from jumping out if it. I can play it cool.

The sales pitch I’ve spent the morning rehearsing is dust in the wind. My mind is a wide white void.

“I really, really, really want it,” I plead, throat scratchy.

I watch my flow of power redirect in midair. Wesley leans back in his chair, crossing his impressive, tanned arms, siphoning it off. My brain blinks. Forearms.

Shh, I scold myself. Not now.

“Do you know what kind of an undertaking this would be?” he inquires placidly.

I have found myself in a job interview without warning. The most important interview of my life. I am wearing a Sonny & Cher shirt with a broken zipper and there’s a streak of flour in my hair. I should have an overhead projector beaming pie charts onto the wall and more than five hours of sleep on deck.