Hollow

1

Kat

1871

There's something at my window.

I hold my breath, my eyes darting across the dark room. I had been in a deep sleep, and the noise brought me out of the depths.

A tapping sound.

At first, I think it's a tree branch at the window, moving in the wind, but the elm outside doesn't reach this far.

Then I hear it again.

Something small strikes the pane.

A stone or pebble.

Brom, I think, getting to my feet. I look around for my dressing gown. When I was younger and he came visiting, I would have just gone to the window, but now that I'm eighteen, my mother has drilled a sense of modesty into me.

I slip on my dressing gown and hurry to the window, looking out onto the yard. Brom is lurking in the shadows beneath the elm, its leaves shadowing his face from the half-moon. Beyond him and the fields is the Hudson River, which laps softly at the edge of our property, reflecting the moonlight.

I push up the window, a chill sweeping into the room, bringing with it the first smells of autumn, fallen leaves and damp earth, and the fading smolder of a bonfire. And something else. Something dark and strange that puts a shiver down my neck.

"Brom? What are you doing?" I whisper harshly, sticking my head out the window. I hadn't seen Brom for a few days, which wasn't unusual lately. This past year, he's been around less and less. Where he goes and what he does and who he does it with is a mystery to me, despite there being less than a thousand people here in the town of Sleepy Hollow.

"I wanted to talk to you," he says, his voice low and gruff.

A tiny thrill runs through me that I do my best to ignore. We were the best of friends when we were younger-spending every moment playing together, sharing secrets, creating dreams-and to have this distance now as we've gotten older has felt a lot like rejection. I know that we've been betrothed to each other by our parents since I was born, but I often wonder if Brom really has any intention of marrying me when I turn eighteen or if he'll rebel against his parents and choose someone else.

For the first time in my life, that thought strikes a pang of jealousy in me.

"It's the middle of the night," I point out.

He gives the faintest of shrugs, but his silhouette is tense, like an animal ready to run.

Or to strike.

"Can we go somewhere private?"

I nod. "Let me grab my shoes."

I pull out of the window, tying my dressing gown tighter around me, then swipe my slippers out from under the bed, hoping he doesn't plan on going far. I put them on and go back to the window, sliding the rest of it up. I'm not the thinnest nor the most graceful person, so getting through the window is a bit of a struggle, but luckily, Brom comes forward just in time to help me down.

My skin tingles where his strong, warm hands wrap around my waist, my dressing gown feeling too bare and thin under his grip. I want to apologize for weighing so much more than I used to-I can't remember the last time he helped me sneak out through the window like this-but I don't want to bring it to his attention. My body has gone through so many changes these past few years, and it's now more apparent than ever that we are no longer the children we used to be. The more I think about it, the more it overwhelms me, like I'm barreling toward adulthood faster than I can breathe.

But despite my weight, he easily places me down on the ground, my slippers sinking slightly into the dew-damp earth. We're so close here that I suck in my breath, suddenly feeling too shy to meet his gaze. How odd it is that someone can go from feeling like your friend to feeling like a stranger, and so quickly.

"The barn?" he murmurs, and I finally meet his eyes. They've always been dark, the deepest shade of brown, but in the shadows, they are coal black and brimming with an intensity that I can't read.

I nod, and he grabs my hand, taking it in his, leading me silently along the side of the house and across the back meadow, the grass now short and stiff from a dry August. We don't have a working farm anymore, not since my father passed, so we lease out the fields to neighboring farmers to use. The red barn that sits among leafy oaks remains neglected, though the two of us used to use it all the time as a secret clubhouse of sorts, a place where we could escape our families.

"Is everything all right?" I ask him quietly as we approach the barn. I don't think I've ever come here in the middle of the night, and the half-opened doors remind me of a jaw about to shut. I suppress a shudder, not liking where my thoughts are going.

He doesn't say anything, but he gives my hand a squeeze, his skin damp now and not as warm as it first was.

Brom has always been a moody boy. I think that's why we've gotten along so well. I'm prone to similar tempers, so I know when he needs space and time to work through things. Often, we'll just sit together in silence, enjoying each other's company but letting each other be lost in our own thoughts.

Tonight feels different though. There's something unsettled and tense about him, more so than normal, and the early September air feels thick and electric.

Change is coming.

For a moment, I close my eyes, my body wanting to become one with the cool breeze, to join with the natural world and uncover its secrets, but I remember what I had promised my father. My inner witch is to stay buried.

But I'd already broken that promise years ago.

Brom walks to the barn, his strides long, and pauses at the door, poking his head in. With his near-black hair, he disappears into the dark chasm of the building. Then he nudges one door open with his shoulder, making it creak like rattling bones.

He pulls me inside. It's pitch-black for a moment until my eyes adjust. There are several holes in the roof, gaping wounds that show the night sky, and moonlight filters through, illuminating old bales of hay and rusted tools piled in corners. The smell of hay brings me back to when I used to help trample it down for my father, and tears threaten the corners of my eyes. I blink them away in surprise. How sneaky grief can be.

Brom leads me over to the hayloft ladder. "Think this will still hold me?" he asks over his shoulder as he drops my hand and places both of his on the sides of the ladder, one boot bouncing lightly on the bottom rung, testing it.

"I'm fairly certain the last time we were up there, we were both half the size," I point out.

Brom was a stocky kid growing up, and now that he's eighteen, an adult, he's tall and broad-shouldered, equipped with muscle that wasn't there before, suiting his nickname of Brom Bones. I've been trying hard not to notice these manly changes in him, but perhaps I haven't been trying hard enough.

"I'll go first," he says, seemingly satisfied with the condition of the ladder, and goes up slowly. The wood groans under his weight but doesn't break.

He reaches the top and pulls himself up onto the loft, then turns around and offers his hand, beckoning me to come. "Come on, Daffy," he says, using the nickname he had given me when I was young. Daffodil.

I take in a deep breath and follow him. My dressing gown is long, and I have to bunch it in my hand, and my slippers feel thin against the rungs, but I manage to climb just like I once did.

He grabs my hand and pulls me the rest of the way until the scattered hay is digging into my knees and I'm flipping over onto my seat. I give the loft a cursory glance. The hole in the roof above is large and ragged, and the moon illuminates what we used to call our secret meeting place: the bales we used to sit on, an apple crate stacked with molding books, a chipped tea set that is probably home to creepy crawlies. Somewhere in these ruins of our childhood is a deck of tarot cards from when I used to practice on Brom. That was the promise I had broken to my father. I don't show my meager magic around my mother or anyone else in town, but I have shown it to Brom. I can't keep anything from him, even though it often feels like he's keeping everything from me.

We sit in silence for a few moments, the both of us looking around and taking it all in. It feels like our past and present have melded, but the future is more unknown than ever.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" I ask him after a couple of minutes pass by. Somewhere in the depths of the barn below, I hear a flutter of wings.

He doesn't say anything to that. I know he's heard me, so I just let him wait and decide.

Finally, he says, "I've done a bad thing."

His voice is so low and strained I can barely hear it, but that doesn't stop my pulse from quickening.

"What do you mean?" I ask. Even with the moonlight, his face remains shadowy and hard to read.

"I can't explain," he says.

"You can't, or you don't want to?"

Silence.

"You can tell me anything, you know that, Brom," I tell him. I want to reach out for his hand, but I'm afraid to. Not until I know what the bad thing is. "Did you kill someone?" I whisper.

He gives me a sharp look, his thick brows arching. "No," he says defensively. "Why was that your first thought?"

To be honest, I don't know. I've never thought of Brom as someone murderous or cruel, but he is quick-tempered and hotheaded, prone to impulses and flights of fancy, and I suppose if he accidentally killed someone because he overreacted or couldn't get a handle on his emotions, I wouldn't be too shocked.

"I've just never seen you so upset," I admit.

He swallows, the sound audible in the barn. "I didn't kill anyone."

"Then what did you do?" I inch close to him, the hay sticking to my gown as I move. "Tell me, Brom."

"I . . . ," he begins, his voice hoarse.

He stares at his splayed hands for a moment, then looks at me, and now I can read him. Now I see the change that's come over his face.

He's tormented and torn, and inside of all that, there's desire. Red-hot, potent desire that I've never seen him wear before, never seen on anyone in my sheltered little life.

It makes my breath hitch in my throat, excitement flutter in my chest.

"I don't know how to deal with my feelings for you," he finally says.

Oh. Oh!

"Feelings?" I repeat, so scared to let that flutter in my chest turn into full-blown wings and fly away toward hope. Even though I have tried to ignore the changes between us and I've pretended that I still see him as just a friend, it turns out I've secretly hoped that one day we could be more, become what we were always promised to each other.

I don't know what else to say, and it doesn't matter.

Because Brom leans over and grabs my face in his hands, and he kisses me.

He's kissed me before, a shy peck on the lips when we were young and sitting under Hollow Creek Bridge, but this is completely different. This is warm and soft and strong all at once, the press of his lips, the wetness of his tongue. It shocks me, lightning that jolts down my spine, this sudden intimacy and intrusion. I don't know what to do-I don't know how to kiss him back, but it doesn't seem to matter.

He's taken the lead, and I'm following.

His kiss deepens, coaxing me, and he slides his tongue against mine, showing me what he wants. I oblige, already feeling like I'm being swept away, taken to places I've never been before, and drowning in him. I kiss him the best I can until I feel my entire body grow warm and tense, like I'm hungry for the first time.

But there's no hiding his hunger for me.

He moves so that I'm falling back into the hay and his body is on top of mine, and it's all such a blur. His mouth goes to my neck, kissing and licking and sucking along my skin, the weight of him taking my breath away. I don't know where this is going, but even though it scares me, I'm willing to go along because this is our destiny, isn't it? The two of us together, married, until death do us part-that's what we were always supposed to be. The act of our bodies coming together is inevitable.

We don't talk as this is happening, as his hands go to my dressing gown and touch my breasts until they ache, as another hand slips up between my legs. I'm nervous, and I know I could say no, but this is Brom, and I trust him more than anything. Even though I'm worried I won't be good enough for him, even though I'm afraid of how much it will hurt, I want him.

I want him.

And all I've wanted is for him to want me.

He fumbles for his pants, undoing them, and then I feel him on my thigh, and I'm shocked at how warm he is, how he's both solid and soft against my skin. My cheeks flush at the intimacy of it all, at this new side of him, my body heating up from the inside.

"Daffodil," he whispers to me, his voice thick with want.

Then he's kissing me again, parting my legs farther, and we both take in a sharp breath as he pushes himself inside me. Hot, sharp pain bursts between my thighs, white sparks exploding behind my eyes as I pinch them shut and try to breathe. I don't dare cry out because I don't want him to stop. I know he would if he knew I was in pain, and I want him to keep going.