Dark twigs curled possessively around Gavin’s back, their edges slipping beneath the hem of his shirt, into the sleeves and around his shoulders, spiraling down his biceps. Even still, he kissed along her neck, nibbled gently on her ear. “Delilah, please don’t stop.”
Delilah dug her feet into the soft earth and tried to push out from beneath him. Swallowing a scream, she felt the thick twist of branches around her skin, pinching her. When she started to struggle in earnest, they unwound from her wrists with a slow slither. Gavin sat up more slowly, impatiently pushing the branches out from under his shirt. They slipped away, slinking as if chastened.
He knew, she thought with horror. All this time he knew the tree was moving, was crowding into his space and claiming him, and he didn’t even care.
“Why didn’t you move?” she gasped, hearing the building hysteria in her voice. “How could you stand it?”
“It’s not like I have a choice,” he said, in a bleak and unfamiliar voice. “This park, House, the school—it doesn’t matter where we try to be alone together. House will always be there. It will always see me.”
“That’s what you meant about it possessing inanimate objects. Anytime you leave the house, it can come with you, or—” Her breath caught, words tumbling out too fast. “Or in roots or power lines. You really think the house is always watching.”
He didn’t say anything, and Delilah looked away then, unable to stomach the anger and defeat on his face. She knew it wasn’t directed at her, but even so the power of it felt despairing.
He scrubbed his face with his hands, then straightened his shirt. “We’ll just have to accept that we can’t really be alone.”
The thought depressed her. She loved her time with Gavin just talking, but when she felt the way she did that day, she wanted more than just conversation. She wanted the weight of his hands on her sometimes too. “Why does the house hate me?”
“It doesn’t hate you.” He sounded tired. “It thinks you’re a threat.”
“You’re not allowed to have a girlfriend?”
He looked up at her and swallowed a laugh, his face releasing the laconic grin once more. “I’m sure House isn’t too familiar with a need for romance.”
“How can you go home? Isn’t it creepy? The way it doesn’t want you to leave lately?”
Gavin shrugged, looking down the trail for a beat before bending to help her up from where she sat. “How can you go home to your parents?” he deflected. “Isn’t it depressing?”
Delilah scowled. “Not the same.”
“You’re right, it’s not. House holds me too close. Your parents barely hold you at all. They’d send you away again if they had the money, and you know it.”
She fell silent—wounded by this truth—and Gavin shifted on his feet in front of her, his regret settling like a fog between them. “I didn’t mean that, Lilah,” he said.
Delilah looked up and his eyes seemed to darken. She loved what he’d just called her; no one had ever called her something so oddly intimate before. “I know.”
“I know this is hard, but. . . I think everyone just needs time to get used to it. It’s so new for all of us—including you,” he reminded her. “There are some things you can’t say. You can’t expect me to walk away someday from the only family I’ve ever known.”
That seemed to be the end of it. They walked silently, hand in hand, and when they reached the corner that would take them to Delilah’s house if they turned left and Gavin’s if they turned right, Delilah pulled him right.
“I’m walking you back,” she said in answer to the skeptical rise of his brow. “That’s got to earn me some bonus points, right? Returning you home?”