“No.” I shake my head vehemently—and to my horror, the tears I managed to suppress earlier rise up once more. “I . . . the last time I remember having them was at the restaurant. They could have fallen out at any point. During my shift. While we were hiking. In the tunnel. Th-there’s no way to know, it’s pointless to even look . . .”
“Rika . . .” Henry’s voice is so gentle, my tears spill over.
“Everything’s ruined,” I say, my voice breaking. “I . . . I don’t know what I was thinking. This is playing out just like I thought it would. I can’t find my mother, and now I’ve lost those stupid photos, and . . . and no one is coming for me. It is like a fairy tale. My kind of fairy tales, with the sad endings. Only—”
I can’t say the rest.
Only this time, maybe I didn’t want it to be sad.
My tears are flowing freely now, and I’m too lost and upset to even be embarrassed by it. My kaiju-temper pounds at my rib cage, demanding to be set free so it can fuck up this beautiful park.
I turn on my heel, wrap my arms around myself, and start stomping back to the trail.
Then I feel Henry grab my hand.
“Rika,” he says again, more firmly. He’s behind me, just like he was when he grabbed my hand the first time. I stop in my tracks and am angry to realize that once again, I don’t want to pull away.
He moves in front of me, never letting go of my hand. I look at the ground. I absolutely cannot meet his gaze. It’s too much.
“You can’t give up,” he says. “We can’t give up.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, my head all mixed up and muzzy from the emotions spinning through me and that little bit of electricity that hits right where our palms touch. “This day was a complete disaster, and our whole quest is an overall disaster so far. How can you have so much hope?”
“Look around,” he says, his voice lit with that sense of wonder—the one I found so annoying earlier.
But I do lift my head, because I am suddenly hit by a jolt of longing so deep, so potent. In spite of myself, I desperately want to see what he sees.
I look up and witness the hazy Los Angeles sky turning dreamy orangey-pink, like an artist’s streaked it with paint. The sun setting in the distance, casting whispers of light over the rock formations. The fuzzy shadows, settling in for the night. It looks unearthly, not of the human realm. Wild and weird and magical.
“All this beauty in the world,” Henry says. “How can you not have hope?”
I tear my gaze from the enchanted sky and meet his eyes. He’s smiling at me so openly—in that way that’s so him. I’m too overwhelmed by my tornado of emotions to put up my usual defenses. To tell myself that I don’t like the way his eyes light up with so many things or the perfect imperfection of his mouth or the way he looks at me with such . . . such . . .
I don’t even know what to call it. I’ve never been looked at this way before.
He’s not ready to give up on this thing I want so badly, this thing I need to feel whole. He believes so hard, even when it seems impossible.
I soak in that delicious breeze floating through the air, infused with the scents of green and summer. I look at the pink sky and the enchanted shadows flickering around us.
Something shifts in my chest, and it feels like the world shifts with it. I feel so moved by all this beauty—and this boy who won’t give up.
“Henry,” I whisper, my voice shaky.
He squeezes my hand and leans in closer.
“Yes?” he says.
And suddenly I’m not looking at the pink sky anymore. It all melts away, and I can only see him—that hair I want to brush off his forehead, those eyes I want to stare into forever, that mouth I want to . . .
“I . . . you’re right,” I manage, my words tripping over themselves. “It is beautiful.”
“It is,” he says, his eyes never leaving mine.
He reaches up and smooths my tangle of hair away from my face, his thumb stroking leftover tears from my cheek. I shiver.
“Rika . . .” he murmurs—and it feels like he’s asking me a question.
I answer by leaning in and pressing my lips to his.
They’re soft at first, gentle and warm—then more insistent, his hands sliding into my hair and urging me closer.
All I can feel is how good this is. All I can think is . . . nothing. All I want is to stay frozen in this moment, with this boy.
I want him to keep kissing me forever, kissing me with so much intent as the sun sets behind us, rendering the pink sky velvet black.
TWELVE
Unfortunately, we can’t stay locked in that moment forever because the old zoo area of the park closes promptly at sundown. The rangers shoo us to the exit trail, and we hustle back to Henry’s car without saying more than two words to each other.
I’m happy to have a task to focus on, because otherwise I’d probably be spending way too much time thinking about what just happened, obsessing over it, overanalyzing it until I convince myself it’s a mistake and I have absolutely no interest in Henry Chen that way and I need to turn myself into a monster and bite his head off so he won’t hypnotize me any further.
Instead I am flushed, giddy, almost giggly. I can practically hear the nure-onna snarling at me, telling me we don’t do giggly.
But I can’t deny what I feel, any more than I can deny that I desperately wanted Grace to come find me.
That I secretly hoped for a happy ending this time.
“I can’t believe this is your sweet celebrity ride,” I say, as we get into Henry’s dented old
