“I wish we didn’t have to leave the fountain,” she says.

We don’t. Not yet anyway. Let them come find us.

“Why do you wear the rosary?” she asks.

I follow her gaze, looking down and seeing the wooden beads peeking out from under my shirt where they’re caught on my collar.

“They get mad when kids wear it like a necklace, you know?” she points out.

A laugh escapes me, and I can’t help it. I swallow. “I know.”

That’s why I do it. They give the girls white ones and the boys wooden ones for first communions. Father Behr was really mad when some of us put them around our necks. When I found out how wrong it was, I started wearing it like that all the time.

There isn’t much I can do to fight back—at home anyway—so I pick dumb things I can get away with.

I pull it off over my head and hold it over hers, slipping it on.

“Now you’re bad, too,” I tell her.

She looks down at it, rubbing the cross between her fingers, the silver over the wood.

“You can have it,” I say.

She can remember me, then.

“Are you mad I’m here?” she asks all of a sudden.

Do I seem mad?

When I don’t answer, she looks up at me.

I shake my head.

“Can I come back again, then?” she presses hopefully.

And I nod.

“Let’s do this,” she says, taking off the rosary and then unclipping the silver jeweled barrette from her hair.

She takes both and sets them up on the little alcove under the upper bowl, hiding them in the niche there.

“Since it’s our secret hiding place,” she tells me with an excited look in her eyes. “It’s like part of us is always here. In our spot.”

I tip my head back against the fountain, looking up at the items that claim our nook, and I smile. She’s nice. I like how she talks to me.

And she likes it here, too.

Winter’s mouth hovered over mine, our lips teasing each other as I pulled the white V-neck over her head and dropped it to the bed.

Her chest rose against mine, and she all but begged my name, “Damon.”

I kissed her slow and soft, her hands torturing me with featherlight touches and her body so warm I was drunk on it.

“Damon,” she breathed, tipping her head back and letting me taunt and nibble her neck.

“Shhh,” I teased in a whisper. “Quiet as a mouse.”

The snow outside turned to water, and the sounds of it rushed my ears as the fountain fell around us again, lulling me and my body into the only girl who ever really knew me. The only woman who needed who I was and who was all I needed.

I didn’t deserve anything I had, but I was doing everything to make sure I’d deserve whatever came. We’d have the family we would make, our friends, and our home, and every fucking night, I’d have her right here, surrounding me and getting lost with me where the rest of the world didn’t exist, and it was just us.

Always just us.

I slid inside of her, and she started rolling her hips, taking me in and out as she tipped her head back, and I squeezed her breast and bit her neck.

The snowy, silent night raged outside, our entire world right here, right now.

I wish we never had to leave the fountain.

We never did.

THE END