The bonfire had been Gwen's idea.

Everything that summer had been Gwen's idea, which was how Regan Sinclair usually ended up in situations she hadn't planned for and couldn't quite bring herself to regret. Tonight, that situation was standing at the edge of the McCabe property holding a Solo cup she wasn't drinking from, watching sparks drift up into a Montana sky so thick with stars it hardly looked real.

She should have been home. She should have been going through her gear, checking her bag, mentally preparing for the fact that in seven days she'd be loading into a van bound for the University of Washington and the beginning of everything she'd worked for since she was nine years old, swinging a bat in her parents' backyard.

Instead, she was here.

"You've been staring at that fire like it personally offended you."

She knew the voice before she turned. She'd been not noticing Gavin McCabe all summer, which was its own kind of noticing. The careful, deliberate kind that left a person exhausted by the end of every day.

He was leaning against the fence post a few feet away, arms crossed, watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read in the firelight. He was broad through the shoulders in a way that felt recent, like he'd grown into himself sometime in the last year and wasn't fully used to it yet. Dark hair, jaw going a little rough. His sister's eyes, except not at all like his sister's eyes.

"I'm thinking," she said.

"About the fire?"

"About leaving." She hadn't meant to say that. She took a sip from the cup and wrinkled her nose. It was lukewarm, vaguely fruity, and terrible.

He was quiet for a moment. That was one of the things she'd learned about Gavin McCabe during the three years of being his sister's best friend. He didn't fill the silence just to fill it. It should have made her more comfortable. It didn't.

"When do you go?" he asked.

"A week."

"Big deal. Scholarship and everything." He said it simply, not like a compliment designed to get something, just like a fact he knew because Gwen talked and he listened. "Softball, right? Outfield?"

"Center." She turned to fully look at him then, which was a mistake she'd been successfully avoiding all night. Up close, the firelight did unkind things to her resolve. "You follow softball?"

The corner of his mouth pulled. "I follow my sister, and my sister talks about you constantly." He paused and gave a little shrug. "Has for years."

There was something in the word years that landed differently than it should have. Regan felt it settle somewhere in her sternum.

"You should've said something," she said, and immediately wondered why she'd said that, of all things.

But Gavin just looked at her, steady and unhurried, like the seven days between now and everything-changing didn't exist. "I'm saying something now."

The bonfire popped and sent up a fresh shower of sparks, making her jump. Somewhere behind them, Gwen was laughing at something, the sound bright and familiar and entirely too far away.

Regan looked at him for a long moment, at the way he was watching her, careful and wanting and trying not to show either, and thought about the nine-year-old girl with the bat, and the scholarship, and the van leaving in seven days.

Then she thought: one week. That's no time at all.

"Walk with me?" she said.

He didn't hesitate to push off the fence post and step toward her.

They ended up on the dock at the edge of the lake, sitting close enough that their shoulders touched, the bonfire reduced to a warm glow in the distance. They talked about nothing important and everything that was coming. Her college plans, his ideas for after graduation, Gwen's latest drama, the particular way Sapphire Creek looked in summer, like it was trying to convince you there was nowhere better on earth to be.

At some point the talking slowed, the way it does when words start feeling like the wrong tool for the job.

She was mid-sentence about something she'd already forgotten when she noticed he'd stopped looking at the water and started looking at her. Not casually. Not the way people looked at each other during conversation. The focused, unhurried kind of looking that made her stomach drop straight to the dock boards beneath her.

"Gavin—"

"I know," he said quietly. Like he already knew every reasonable argument she was about to make and had made them all himself. Like he was going to kiss her anyway.

He did.

It was soft at first. A question, careful and patient, giving her every chance to change her mind. She answered it by leaning in, her hand finding the front of his shirt, fingers curling into the fabric, and that was all either of them needed.

The patience didn't last.

His hand came up to cup her jaw, tilting her face the way he wanted it, and the quiet, reasonable part of her brain that had been managing this attraction all summer simply gave up and went home. He kissed her like he'd been thinking about it, like he knew exactly what he wanted and had been too decent to take it until she'd asked him to walk with her. Like he had seven days written somewhere in the back of his mind and intended to make every one of them count.

She pulled back just enough to breathe.

"You've been thinking about doing that for a while," she said. It wasn't a question.

His thumb traced her cheekbone, slow and deliberate, and the look in his eyes when he answered her was more honest than she was prepared for. "Longer than I'm going to admit right now."

She laughed, breathless, and closed the distance again.

They stayed on that dock for a long time. Long enough that the bonfire behind them had burned down to embers and the voices from the yard had faded, and it was just the two of them and the black mirror of the lake and a Montana sky doing its level best to be unforgettable. His jacket ended up around her shoulders. Her fingers ended up threaded through his. He learned the sound of her laugh from two inches away, and she learned that Gavin McCabe kissed the way he existed. Steady and intent, completely present, like there was nowhere else he'd rather be.

Which was, she would think later, the most dangerous thing about him.

She could have handled want. She was leaving in seven days; want was manageable. Want you could pack up and take with you and set down once you got where you were going.

It was the ease of him that she couldn't shake. The way being next to him felt uncomplicated and right in a way that nothing about her life felt — not the pressure of the scholarship, not her parents' expectations, not the careful, ambitious plan she'd been executing since the fourth grade. Just the dock, and the water, and his shoulder warm under her cheek when she finally leaned against him, and his exhale, quiet and satisfied, like she'd just done him a tremendous favor.

When Gwen's voice finally carried across the yard, "Regan! Seriously, where are you?" they both went still.

Reality, right on schedule.

Regan sat up. Gavin let her. She handed him his jacket back and he took it, and for a moment they just looked at each other in the dark, and she could feel the seven days sitting between them like a held breath.

"I have to go," she said.

"I know."

She stood, and he stood with her because of course he did, and when she turned to head back up toward the yard he caught her hand, just for a second, his long, strong fingers wrapping around hers, and tugged her back.

He kissed her once more. Shorter this time. Softer. The kind of kiss that wasn't an ending so much as a remember this.

"Go get 'em, Sinclair," he said, and let her go.

She didn't look back.

She almost did, three or four times, but she kept her eyes forward and her chin up all the way across the yard, through Gwen's suspicious squinting, and into the passenger seat of Gwen's car.