Evan's POV
I can't stop touching her.
That's the thing I notice, in the days after the cannery, after the blood and the near miss and the way her voice hauled me back from the edge of the worst thing I am. I can't stop touching her. Three years I spent making myself untouchable, a boy behind glass, careful never to let my skin near anyone's because closeness was danger and danger was how people got broken. And now I've undone all of it for one girl, and my body has decided that the years of famine are over, and I reach for her constantly, helplessly, her hand, the small of her back, a strand of her salt-damp hair, like I'm trying to make up for three years of not being allowed to want anything in a matter of weeks.
She lets me. That's the part that undoes me every time. She doesn't flin
