I can feel my lip curling—I’m well aware of that particular characteristic of Moroz. I have to force my face smooth, as if this is new information, impersonal to me.
“You’ve never seen a more devoted father, though,” Nix says. “He spent every minute with me after my mother died. I was only three years old. I don’t actually remember her. I tell him that I do, but the image I have of her face . . . it’s just what I’ve seen in photographs. I don’t remember her voice, or what she was like. I rely on him to tell me.”
I swallow hard. I know for myself how quickly those details fade, even when you’re much older, even when you think you could never forget . . .
“He took me everywhere with him,” Nix says. “He showed me how to run, climb, shoot, fight. He never treated me as inferior because I was a girl. I was always his heir, always expected to grow to be just like him. And that . . .” she sighs. “Is a blessing and a curse. Because of course I’m not exactly like him. One person can never be just like another.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding, shaken and confused.
Every time I talk to Nix, I feel like she’s relating the exact thoughts swirling around in my brain. She’s voicing my own deepest fears and insecurities, reflected back through the open mirror of her face.
I, too, am supposed to be just like my father.
And I want to be. I want it desperately.
I just don’t know if I am.
“You don’t think we’re destined to be like our parents?” I ask her. “Almost every culture has an idiom that says it’s inevitable. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’; ‘a fish’s child knows how to swim’; ‘like river, like water . . .’ ”
“Who says that last one?” Nix asks me.
“It’s Catalan. Zoe told me—Cat’s sister.”
“I like it.” Nix smiles. “But no river is the same, and no body of water.”
We’ve reached the edge of the forest that separates the fields and vineyards on the north end of the island from the village on the south. You can follow the road through, or you can diverge onto the many paths that lead through the trees, down into the river bottoms.
“Do you want to run for a while?” Nix asks me.
“Okay,” I say.
I’m still wearing my gym clothes and a beat-to-shit pair of Ares’ old sneakers. I could get new shoes, but it’s been helpful these four years to wear his clothes whenever possible, to read his books, and carry his school bag. A continual reminder of the role I’m supposed to play, so I don’t accidentally slip into being myself.
Nix likewise sports the plain white t-shirt and gray sweatshorts the school provides, the white knee socks only coming halfway up her long shins.
“Come on then,” she says, throwing a teasing smile back over her shoulder. “Try and keep up.”
Runaway — AURORA
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She sprints off along a side trail, her thighs flashing under the hem of her shorts, her coarse, wild hair streaming behind her.
It’s cooler in the shade of the trees, and darker. Nix is fleet as a deer. I can only keep sight of her from the brilliant red of her hair and the white flag of her shirt.
I can’t tell if we’re running or racing—if she wants me to catch her, or she’s trying to get away.
I sprint full-out, wondering if this is a test. Wondering if her heart is hammering as hard as mine as my pounding feet chase after her.
My sneakers churn up the scent of pine needles and dark earth. As I follow her trail, I can smell Nix as well. A perfume of salt water, clean sweat, and the warm red scent of her hair—like fox fur, wild strawberries, sandstone . . .
Nix leaps over fallen logs, darts around the pine trees. Her laughter echoes through the woods.
She’s a white stag. Catching her will win me some prize: a wish granted, a door to another world . . .
I hear a rushing sound—we’re coming to the river.
I run faster, sure that Nix will stop up ahead. I don’t want her to stop, I want to overtake her.
I sprint forward, the taste of iron in my mouth, almost close enough to grab a handful of her hair . . .
She halts so abruptly that I almost skid into her.
“We’re here!” she pants.
Her face is red, her shirt drenched in sweat, as is mine.
We’ve come to a waterfall.
The ground drops away ahead of us, the river plunging ten or twelve feet down a broken rock face to a cool, green pool below.
“How did you know this was here?” I ask her, my breath wheezing in my lungs. I don’t think I’ve ever sprinted so far.
“I found it the first week,” Nix says. “Haven’t you been here?”
I shake my head. I’m embarrassed to admit that Nix may have explored more of the island in her first month than I have in three years.
“Come on!” she says. “We can wash off.”
Without waiting for a response, she pulls her shirt over her head.
The bra beneath is transparent with sweat. I can clearly see her nipples, stiff with exercise, and the full outline of her breasts. Her stomach is flat and hard. When she strips off her shorts with equal nonchalance, I see that her panties have ridden up in the cleft of her pussy lips. She turns, revealing a firm, round ass the color of milk.
It takes me way too long to look away.
My heart is still thundering like we’re in full sprint.
My cock swells inside my shorts. I mentally order it to stop, because Nix will see, and also there is no fucking WAY I’m going to get a hard-on for anybody with the last name Moroz.
This unexpected surge of arousal reminds me exactly who she is, and what I’m supposed to be doing.
I can’t be attracted to her. That’s fucking insane.
I haven’t been attracted to anyone for a long time. Every time I saw a beautiful girl at Kingmakers, I stuffed that emotion deep down inside me. Lying to my friends is hard enough. I knew I couldn’t possibly keep up the facade in a romantic relationship.
It’s been so long since I allowed myself to feel arousal that I almost thought I’d extinguished it. I thought I might be as asexual as everyone believes me to be.
And now, in an instant, lust comes roaring back.
Nix is a wild thing, a force of nature.
I feel like an animal that wants to bite and claw and fuck. I want to chase her down, throw her against those rocks, and mount her.
Nix is already scrambling down the rocks. Every move she makes is incredibly erotic, stripped of her clothes. Those mile-long legs, that firm, dewy flesh, the hint of ribs when she turns and the flex of her ass when she drops down to the pool . . .
She pops up out of the water again, droplets sparkling in the thick twists of her hair.
“Come on!” she shouts up to me. “It’s not even cold!”
I take several deep breaths, trying to get control of myself.
Then I strip off my clothes, leaving them next to Nix’s.
The rocks are slippery with moss. I half-climb, half-slide down, dropping into the pool before Nix can notice the bulge in my boxer shorts.
As soon as I’m in, Nix leaps on me, dunking my head.
We wrestle under the water, my thighs slipping between hers.