HEN SHE SAID that she is a total freak and that she’s staying here. After everything I came up with, everything I could think of, she said she’s staying here.”

My voice seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet night air, and I lowered it. Next to me, Fang leaned back against a huge boulder that was still warm from the day’s sun. After my unsuccessful emo-weep-apalooza in Nudge’s room, Fang and I had flown out into the desert, to a bare place where we could see anything coming from miles away.

Fang frowned and rubbed his forehead. “She’s confused,” he said. “She’s just a kid.”

“You know we have to go,” I said. “What if she really won’t come with us?”

The moon lit the contours of his face. His eyes were the same color as the sky—just as deep, just as dark.

“How can we force her?”

He’d said “we,” which made me feel better. But the hard truth was that we couldn’t force Nudge. “Even if we made her come,” I admitted, “she’d just hold it against us. She’d be mad.”

Fang nodded slowly. “You have to want to be with someone, or it doesn’t work. You have to choose.”

I searched his face, wondering if we were still talking about Nudge. “Uh, yeah,” I said awkwardly. I was just about to say something really important about Nudge, and it flew right out of my mind. “Um, and she…” I tried, but my voice trailed off as I got lost in the intensity of Fang’s expression.

He leaned closer. When had he gotten so much bigger than me? Four years ago he’d been a skinny beanpole! Now he was—

“I chooseyou, ” he said very softly, “Max.”

Then his hard, rough hand tenderly cupped my chin, and suddenly his mouth was on mine, and every synapse in my brain shorted out.

We had kissed a couple of times before, but this was different. This time, I squelched my immediate, overwhelming desire to run away screaming. I closed my eyes and put my arms around him despite my fear. Then somehow we slid sideways so we were lying in the cool sand. I was holding him fiercely, and he was kissing me fiercely, and it was… just so, so intenselygood . There aren’t any words to describe how good it was. Once I got past my usual, gut-wrenching terror, there was a long, sweet slide into mindlessness, when all I felt was Fang, and all I heard was his breathing, and all I could think was, “Oh, God, I want to do thisall the time .”

Gradually our kisses became less hungry and more comforting. Our arms relaxed as we held each other in the cool desert air. Our breathing calmed, and my thoughts began to sort of connect to each other

again in comprehensible chunks. I started my inevitable hysterical freak-out, but I tried to do it very quietly inside my head, because this had been so special, and I didn’t want to ruin it. Like I usually did.

I slanted my gaze up to him, and Fang was… smiling. He was lying on his back, holding me against him, and he was looking up at the night sky, with the katrillion stars that you see only when you’re in the middle of nowhere. Then you see stars that you never even knew existed. He was smiling, and his face looked softer and less closed.

I was instantly full of sharp, witty jibes, and it took every ounce of Maximum self-control not to say them. To just lie there and feel vulnerable, and think about everything that had just happened between us, and wonder how it had changed things, and wonder when I had started to love him so much, so painfully, and feel how terrified I was and how elated, and how every cell of my body felt so alive.

It was pretty much the worst thing that could ever happen to a girl.

I highly recommend it.

When Fang asked if it was time to get back, I thought hazily,Back to what?

This is my brain:O

This is my brain after making out with Fang:o

It’s very sad.

Then a couple neurons fired in unison, and I remembered.Oh, back to the entire rest of my family, including Nudge who wants to get her wings cut off.

We hit the sky, and I flew powerfully, wincing only a little at the recently patched section. It was good, it was solid, but it needed a few more days.

“Whoa,” said Fang, and I saw it too. I checked the stars—it was about 2 a.m.

Our newest safe house, alone in the desert, was ablaze with lights. Every window, every doorway.

Never a good sign.