What Lies in the Woods

This man, I’d thought, is an asshole. So of course I’d gone home with him.

“Come on. Let’s drink. It’ll solve all our problems.”

We knew the world was cruel and dirty and dull, and it was all so brutally unfair that we refused to accept it. There was magic in the world. We only had to find it.

Somewhere between worship and hunger. Though maybe those were the same thing.

His palms ghosted over my shoulders. His lips brushed against my hair, not quite a kiss. It was as if he was afraid that if he actually touched me, I would vanish.

His eyes tracked predictably to my scar, and I could see the question in his eyes. “You should see the other guy,” I said.

Everyone else seemed to know this affable, charismatic man, but for me it had always felt like talking to a plank of wood, whatever the subject. It was like a milder version of Oscar—I didn’t get to see the charm, because I wasn’t worth the trouble of putting on a show.

Every man I’d slept with had been a mistake of one kind or another. The mistake was the point. You couldn’t let someone in without it breaking you, but you could choose the way you broke.

“That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?” Ethan said. “You gather all the evidence you can, use your brain, weigh character and past actions. But the final inch of it—that’s faith. Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”