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"The ave him a duh look "I know that, but why are we here?" Out in the ht but didn’t say aloud

"Because this is the place I wanted take you" It see to tiptoe around the details of why he’d driven me clear in the heck out into the rew more uneasy "You wanted to take me to the middle of the mountains"

"Yeah," he opened the car door, "but you have to get out of the car and walk a little in order to get to the exact spot I want you to see"

Get Out In The Middle Of The Woods Was he crazy? "Yeah, I’ood idea"

He shot me a quizzical look "What exactly is it you’re afraid of here?"

He of h them However, there was no way I could explain that one to hi around in the snow That’s all"

"Don’t worry, I promise it’ll be worth it" He smiled, this beautiful, hypnotic smile--the same smile that had lured me to follow him out of the library and into his car Before I even realized what I was doing, I was getting out of the car But when the cold air hit my face, it knocked me back to reality You’re out in the mountains Don’t be stupid Get back in the car I shivered, debating if I should do just that

Alex took off toward a narrow path, caped over by leafless trees, and --from the cold or froh the snow after hi sneakers while you’re hiking through the snow is…nothing Absolutely nothing Unless you think your feet getting wet and frozen is a great thing

On a

But the air was still cold, and I was shivering so badly"How far is it exactly?"

"Not too much further," he answered "Why? Are you cold already?"

"No," I lied, trying my best not to let "

"Okay Whatever you say," he said, unconvinced

"Really, I’ the need to defend , but by the way his body was shaking, I was pretty sure he was laughing at e branch of a tree, dangling low to the ground It blocked out the entire path Great Going over it would take a cli around it h at least a few feet of snow My jeans would get soaked

I took it as a sign that we should head back "U the branch over his head like it weighed nothing The thing had to weigh a ton, though--it was gigantic

"Go ahead" Alex gestured with his free hand for o underneath the branch "Ladies first"

Part of me wondered, as I ducked beneath it, if he’d drop it on ht was ridiculous, but hey, after everything that had happened, could you really blah he didn’t drop it on led to get ers were too cold and numb and wouldn’t work properly Plus, my neck was tipped back in this aard position that s even more difficult

"Hold on," Alex said I could feel hiently pulled on He was standing so close tomy hair; it made my head buzz like a beehive full of bees

"There," he said, and my head was freed from the uncomfortable position it had been stuck in

I’d been holding my breath the whole ti in front of my face I quickly scooted out of the way so Alex could slip underneath the branch and let it go

He dusted the snow off of his hands while I smoothed my now damp hair back into place Well, as in with

Alex watched ood?"

I zipped up uess"

"Alright then" He brushed past ain

With every step I took,ourselves farther and farther fro denser For all I knew, any spot could have been "the spot" The spot where I kept dying over and over again in h, because a forest was a forest Everything looked the saht, when the sky was black and the ground was a giant shadow

I’d never been in a forest in real-life before At least not that I could re that, despite the stillness the air held, there was a lot of chaos Yeah, I know, the two are a huge contradiction What Isee out in the bushes and trees that surrounded us Things that I wasn’t sure I really wanted to see

Every tier The branches of the trees canopied aboveit seely, he’d been fairly quiet Too quiet if you askthat way because of the electricity firing between us I couldn’t be certain howon him, but personally, I felt fully awake and alive because of it Every single one offrom head to toe, which helped fade-out souess that was a plus

As I was plucking a piece of a dead pine needle out of my hair, I heard a branch snap froaze ski but branches and snoas about to turn back around when a huge gust of hipped through the air I heard another snap, this time much, much closer Okay Okay It is just an ani