Zoe POV

Noah’s hand is still around my wrist when we clear the alley, and he doesn’t let go as we merge back into the festival crowd, and I don’t pull away, which is a decision I make without fully deciding it.

I feel strange. Not the sharp, immediate strangeness of the last hour—the alley, James’s hands, Noah’s fist—but something slower and less definable, the way a room feels after everyone has left it. I keep looking back at where the alley entrance was, though I ...