The Death of Kisses

Anna:

My dad says Charlie Callahan isn’t dangerous.

Traumatized, yes.

Obsessive, maybe.

But not dangerous.

That’s what he tells me after her therapy sessions, like I’m supposed to ignore the way Charlie watches people. The way she smiles without meaning it. The way she looks at me like she’s trying to remember where we met before this life.

The Callahans came to Pineridge carrying the wreckage of whatever had happened in Coldwater. Nobody talks about it directly, but rumors still find their way through town—whispers about courtrooms, violence, and a dead blonde girl named Lilly Wyatt.

I should have stayed away from Charlie.

Instead, I let her inside my house.

Inside my head.

Inside my bed.

And the more I learn about Lilly Wyatt, the more I realize something terrible:

Charlie didn’t come to Pine Ridge to heal.

She came here hungry.

Charlie:

My therapist says obsession is just grief looking for somewhere to live.

He says I project. Romanticize. Fixate.

Maybe.

But Anna laughs like Lilly did before everything ruined her. Tilts her head the same way, too. Soft blonde hair. Soft mouth. Soft enough to make me forget myself for a few terrible seconds.

I know what people in Pine Ridge see when they look at me.

Violence.

Courtrooms.

A girl who came back wrong from Coldwater.

They don’t know Lilly Wyatt still follows me everywhere. In the bathroom mirror. In perfume clinging to sweaters that don’t belong to her anymore. In the space beside me when I wake up, reaching for someone already dead.

Anna thinks she found me by accident.

But grief is a hungry thing.

And I’ve always been good at following beautiful girls home.