Mossbound

The first time I kissed my stepsister, I had her pressed against the bark of a redwood, one hand tangled in her wild chestnut hair, the other flat against the small of her back.

She tasted like rain and something metallic. Copper. Maybe fear. Maybe want.

I pulled back, just an inch, and her moss-green eyes were wide open. Not surprised. Watching. The way she watches everything, cataloging it like another specimen in that endless mental collection of hers. Her lips were parted, wet, and there was a pine needle caught in her hair near her temple.

“Liam,” she said. Not a question. A statement. Like she was confirming a hypothesis.

“Mia.” I matched her tone.

She didn't move away. That was the thing about Mia. She never did what you expected. I'd spent eighteen years watching her, this quiet girl who appeared in my life when my dad married her mom, and she'd always been a locked room. I'd rattled the handle a thousand times. Never got in.

But now she was here, in the forest she loved more than any person, and I'd found her. I always found her.

“You followed me,” she said.

“You knew I would.”

She didn't deny it. Her fingers came up, touched her bottom lip, and came away with a smear of blood. I'd been too rough. The thought should have made me apologize. It didn't.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I'm tired of pretending I don't want this.”

She looked at me for a long moment. The forest was doing its thing around us, that weird hush that always fell when she was deep in it. Birds stopped singing. The wind died. Even the creek seemed to hold its breath. I'd noticed it years ago, the way the woods bent toward her like she was their center of gravity. I never said anything. She never explained.

“Want what, exactly?” Her voice was low, steady. She was testing me.

I stepped closer. My chest brushed hers. She smelled like damp earth and crushed leaves and something floral I couldn't name. Her hands stayed at her sides. She didn't push me away. She didn't pull me in.

“You,” I said. “All of it. The part of you that talks to trees and the part that stays up all night reading about fungal networks. The part that disappears for days and the part that leaves me notes under my pillow so I know you're alive.”

Something flickered in her eyes. A crack in the composure.

“You're my stepbrother,” she said, but it came out weak. A formality. A line she'd rehearsed.

“And you're standing in a forest that shouldn't exist, talking to plants that listen back, and you want to lecture me about social norms?”

She laughed. A short, sharp sound, like a twig snapping. It was the first real laugh I'd heard from her in months.

“Fair point.”

Her hand came up, finally. She touched my jaw. Her fingers were cold, calloused from digging in dirt, from climbing rocks, from all the things she did that I couldn't follow her into. I leaned into her palm like a dog begging for affection. Pathetic. I didn't care.

“This is a bad idea,” she said.

“The worst.”

“I'm not good at people, Liam. I'm good at roots and spores and the way rot feeds new growth. I'm good at things that don't talk back unless they're ready to kill you.”

“I know.”

“I'll hurt you.”

“Probably.”

She searched my face, looking for something. I let her find it. Whatever it was, it made her jaw tighten and her breath catch. She pulled me in by the collar of my jacket and kissed me again.

This time it was different. Slower. Deliberate. Her tongue traced my bottom lip where she'd drawn blood, and the sting made me hiss. She smiled against my mouth. That smug little smile she got when she identified a rare orchid or solved a puzzle no one else could crack.

I grabbed her hips, pulled her hard against me, and she made a sound. A small one. A sound I wanted to hear again.

Her hands moved down my chest, fingers hooking into the belt loops of my jeans. She tugged me closer, and I stumbled into her, and we both hit the redwood hard enough to shake loose a shower of needles. They fell around us like slow, green snow.

“I've thought about this,” she said, her mouth against my throat. “In my cabin. At night. When I couldn't sleep.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I'd imagine what it would feel like to stop pretending you're just my brother. To let myself want something messy and human.”

“And what did you decide?”

She pulled back. Her eyes were wet, but she wasn't crying. Not quite. “That I'm scared of what I'd become if I let myself have this. The forest needs me to be clear-headed. Detached. If I let you in, I don't know if I can keep the door half-closed.”

“Who said anything about half?”

She stared at me. The wind picked up, rustling her hair, carrying the scent of pine and wet stone. Somewhere deeper in the woods, something called out. A bird, maybe. Or not.

“Come with me,” she said.

“Where?”

“I'll show you.”

She took my hand. Her grip was firm, sure. She led me off the trail, through underbrush that scratched at my arms, over roots that tried to trip me. I didn't ask where we were going. I didn't care.

The forest thickened. The light dimmed. The air grew heavy and warm, like breathing through a wet blanket. And then we stopped.

A clearing. In the center, a tree unlike any I'd ever seen. Its bark was silver, smooth as bone, and its leaves glowed faintly, pulsing with a soft blue light like a slow heartbeat.

Mia turned to face me. Her eyes reflected the glow, turning her into something not quite human.

“This is why I can't love you halfway,” she said. “Because if you come into this world, you come all the way. And once you're in, there's no going back.”

She let go of my hand. Waited.

The tree pulsed. The forest held its breath.

And I had a choice to make.