Текст книги "Sublime"

Автор книги: Christina Lauren

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Curling into him, she apologizes too.

“I want to actually touch you next time,” he says into the sweetness of her neck.

She presses her face into his shoulder, her second apology coming out only as air.

He does what she asks and stays away from the lake and the misty trails and the ice. It feels like the snow swallows him too. A heavy weight settles into his bones, like blocks of cement anchoring his feet to the ground. But his insides rage. Colin and Lucy go to school, he works when he’s scheduled, and they spend long nights cocooned in his blankets and wrapped around each other so close that he can’t tell where he ends and she begins. But it’s not the same.

He tells her she’s more than he ever hoped for. He tells her that he’s in love.

He asks her to never leave.

But she does.

When he opens his eyes in the blue-gray light of dawn, the air is unmoving. There’s no soft hum next to him, no phantom weight pressed against his chest. He sits up slowly, runs his hand through his hair, and stands, dressing in the first clean clothes that he finds. He doesn’t look back at the empty bed.

Eight hours of school stretch in front him, and he wonders how he’ll make it through, carrying around the restless need to look for her, wrapped up in the knowledge that it’s useless. He can’t even think about how long she might be gone this time. Days? Weeks? Longer? Thinking of her is like pressing on a bruise: fascination, sick pleasure, and lingering pain.

On the walk to work, he remembers what he said as they fell asleep. Stay. He thinks he felt her slipping through his fingers even then, felt her grow lighter in his arms as she arched against his body like a feather caught in a breeze.

He’s done everything she’s asked, but it wasn’t enough. Colin talks Jay into skipping school the next day. They throw the bikes in the back of his truck and head out to the lake, hiking their way to where a few daring sledders have packed down the snow.

For a few hours, he’s almost able to forget. They ride through the cold until he’s sweating beneath layers of clothing, pushing himself harder than he has in ages. They tackle the trails, jump off ramps, and each wipe out at least a dozen times on an impromptu ramp they cut into the snow.

Colin is balancing on the back of the bench near the lake when Jay finally asks the question Colin knows has been gnawing at him.

“She’s gone again, isn’t she?”

Colin’s tires land with a soft crunch, and he looks up at Jay, squinting against the brightness of the sky. “Yeah.”

“Shit. Dude, do you think she’s off using somewhere?”

“She isn’t into drugs.” Colin glares at Jay before looking down and flicking a leaf off his handlebar. The hills are silent, but the wind howls around them, catching the snow and spinning it before letting it fall back to the ground. “I think I need to tell you something.”

Jay kicks the snow from his boots and waits.

“So, Lucy . . . Man, I don’t even know how to say this.” Colin laughs at the absurdity of this and feels a wave of sympathy for Lucy in hindsight, for his reaction the night she told him the truth. But, God, he needs to tell someone. He’s not sure he can go another day shouldering the weight of her absence alone. “She’s dead,” he says simply, after all.

Jay’s legs buckle, and he catches the back of the bench before slipping. “What the hell? How are you just telling me—”

“No! Not like that. I mean, she’s always been dead, Jay. Well, not always. But at least as long as I’ve known her.”

Eyes narrowed, Jay’s expression pinches into irritation. “That’s not funny.”

Colin doesn’t answer; he only stares down at the slush as it seeps into the sides of his shoes. “You know she’s different.”

“Yeah, different. Like with the boots and badass take on the frumpy uniform and how she doesn’t look at anyone but you. Not dead.”

“I know it sounds crazy—”

“You think?” Long moments of silence stretch between them before Jay adds, “You’re serious about this.” Colin meets his eyes, gaze unwavering, and nods. “So she’s what? Like . . . a Walker?”

“Yeah, essentially.”

“But I’ve helped her with her coat. I’ve . . .” Jay trails off, blinking.

“We don’t understand everything. She met another ghost here at school, and he’s convinced they’re, like, guardian spirits or something.”

“Okay?” Jay scratches his neck, looking completely confused.

“So, just stay with me here, okay?”

Jay nods, and Colin breaks a brittle twig from the tree beside him, poking deep holes in the snow near his rear tire.

“When I fell into the lake that day, I think I had some sort of out-of-body experience. I was standing behind you, watching you freak out. Then, I don’t even know why, but I walked away, down the trail. Like, I wasn’t even worried or scared. Lucy was running down the trail, and I yelled for her to stop. She thought I got out of the lake somehow. I mean, she could see me, even though my body was with you, on the ice. And, Jay, I could feel her.” Colin can’t tell if Jay believes any of this because his face doesn’t register any reaction. But Colin pushes on. “Before I went in, and now . . . I can’t really touch her. I can, but it overwhelms her. And when she touches me, it’s never enough.” Colin can feel the heat in his cheeks; he and Jay don’t talk specifics. “Sorry, I know this is TMI, but I need to get it out.”

“It’s cool. I mean, I sort of owe you one. I’m pretty sure you were awake that one time Kelsey stayed over and—”

“I was,” Colin says, waving away the awkward memory. “Lucy’s touch makes me crazy because it’s always almost enough to feel good, but then it stops short.” Grabbing the back of his neck, he winces. “I mean, we can’t . . . like, no way could we be together like that. And it’s not even about that. It’s her and the way everything looked when I went in . . . Seriously, Jay, it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

Jay blinks away, out toward the span of trees hiding the lake from their view. “This sounds crazy.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, I’m legitimately worried that you have brain damage.”

“I don’t. I’m not crazy, Jay.”

Jay looks back at him then. Colin can tell when his best friend believes him because his face falls, and he looks defeated, as if insanity or brain damage would be a far easier solution. Colin laughs, because he’s had the same reaction.

“This is funny?” Jay asks, confusion bleeding into defensiveness.

“No, not even a little. It’s that I know exactly what you’re thinking. I wish I was crazy.”

“I don’t have a lot of experience with crazy people. I haven’t ruled it out yet.”

“Well, then, let me get everything out.” He pauses, glancing up at Jay before dropping his gaze to the stick he’s stabbed deep into the snow. “I think we could do it again.”

“Do what again?” Jay asks slowly, enunciating every syllable.

“Go into the lake.” Before Jay can get a word in, Colin barrels on. “I started researching hypothermia, and it takes a long time for the brain to shut down entirely. I mean, in between being cold and being dead, there’s a lot of room.”

“You are crazy.”

“No, Jay, listen. I understand it. Metabolism slows. The body shuts down to preserve energy. But the mind is still active, and in that time, I’m somehow able to be like her. Before Lucy disappeared, I promised I wouldn’t talk about it anymore, but staying out of the lake didn’t keep her here.”

Jay groans and rubs his face, and it’s at this moment that Colin knows his best friend is going to help him. “So we do this now, or when she gets back?”

“When she gets back. I don’t know if I can find her now. I don’t know where she is.”

“Are you sure about this? I mean, this isn’t riding on chains and boards over the quarry, Colin. The day you went into the lake was fucking scary. I thought you died.”

“I’m here and fine.” Colin tells him about Liz’s cousin, how he fell through the ice and stayed out for four hours. How he’s alive and walking around. He tells Jay about the forums, how the people there see hypothermia as the ultimate extreme sport. “You’re the only one I’d trust.”

“So how would this work? We’d like, plan it? Have supplies? A time limit?”

“Exactly.” Colin’s heart begins pounding in his chest; his veins are infused with a high better than any adrenaline rush. He lays out his plan: he’ll strip down, submerge himself long enough for his pulse to slow and his core temp to drop, and then Jay will pull him out. “We’ll time it right down to the second, and you’ll resuscitate me. We can take some equipment from the campus infirmary. After what happened on the lake, no way is anyone going to risk needing the winter emergency kit. Lucy will stand on the trail where she was before, and we’ll see if it works.”

When he’s done, Colin is shocked to see that Jay doesn’t look all that horrified, even when he says, “See if it works as in see if you don’t die?”

Colin smiles. “Jay, I’m not going to die.”

Jay watches him, and Colin can feel the weight of every second as it passes. He doesn’t want to force Jay into anything, but he can’t lie to him either. “You don’t have to,” he says, hoping Jay can hear the apology in every one of his words. “But I’ll do it without you. I have to.”

Jay doesn’t react, only nods like he’s hearing something he already knew. “You know this will be the wildest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Yeah.”

Jay exhales deeply. “Okay, you crazy asshole. I’m in.”

CHAPTER 25 HER

COMING BACK THIS TIME IS JUST AS MILD. A blink. A tugging on her limbs. Darkness becomes light. But where she was warm and happy, waiting for the boy on the trail, she’s now scorching hot. Colin’s back is pressed to her front once again. And this time she knows she’s been gone, because she feels as if she’s been woken up, and Lucy knows she doesn’t sleep. She vanishes.

“Hi,” she whispers into his back.

He stiffens. “Lucy?” His voice is thick with sleep. “How long?”

His spine relaxes, pressing back into her. “Just two days.” “You okay?”

“No.” His alarm goes off, and he swats the snooze button with his palm before rolling over to face her.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be.”

She pushes his hair back. “I am anyway. I tried not to get so relaxed again.” He kisses her so carefully, as if too much contact will cause her to evaporate. His tongue glances her lip, her tongue, the skin of her neck. His piercing is cold; his skin is hot. His hands pull her closer, shadow up and down her sides and over her curves. “Missed you,” he whispers.

Last time, when she returned from being gone, he looked angry. This time, he seems resigned. She pulls back so she can see his face more clearly. His freckles have faded in the past month, and only now, with a couple of days away, does she notice. His eyes are dimmer in the dark room, but something fierce drums behind them, matching the rhythm of his pulse in his throat.

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly. “I told Jay.” “Told him what?”

“That you’re a Walker.”

She falls silent in the face of such a blunt admission. “I was freaking out and worried I imagined everything. I needed someone else to hear it and believe it.” He laughs dryly. She nods, supposing she can’t be upset with him any more than he can be with her for disappearing. “Okay.” She draws out the word carefully. “How’d he take it?”

He rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling. He’s shirtless. Lucy’s eyes move instinctively to his bare skin, over the smooth lines of his chest, the definition of his stomach and lower. “He didn’t believe me at first. But we didn’t talk about that for long. We talked about me going into the lake again.”

Lucy’s body pricks, each element drawn to the surface, making her feel like a brittle, spiked shell. “Colin.”

“He’s game, Lucy. He said he’ll do it for me.”

“And are you doing it for me?” she asks, hearing the bite in her words and feeling proud that they came out the way she intended. “Because no, thanks.”

“I’m doing it for both of us. I know it will work.” He gives her his trademark slow blink, filled with cocky confidence, but the gesture is wrong. He’s doing this because she would never ask it of him even though he probably sees straight through her to her traitor glee.

“This is a bad time to talk about this,” she says quietly. “I just got back, and I know you were scared when I vanished again. I feel like I can’t say no to this, but I want to.” The lie burns in her throat.

He sits up, facing away from her and bending to put his head in his hands. “We’ll talk about it later, then.”

Later turns out to be in the crowded dining hall, surrounded by four hundred other students. Later turns out to be with Jay. “I told Lucy that you know,” Colin says before taking a giant bite of pizza. Suddenly the drone of hundreds of students feels completely silent.

Jay and Lucy stare at him for a beat before looking at each other. “Yeah,” Jay says. “He told me. Sorry about the . . . being dead.”

Lucy smiles weakly, raises her hands and shakes them. “Ta-da . . .”

With the truth out between the three of them, Jay lets himself look. Really look. It’s not like Lucy has never been inspected; Colin stares at her all the time, examining how she fits together or maybe trying to get his mind to believe what his eyes see and his heart feels. But other than Colin, no one ever looks at her. Not like this. Jay’s attention is unnerving and unrelenting.

“Dude, she’s not made of wax. You’re making her twitchy.”

Jay sits back in his chair, letting it teeter back on two legs. “I can’t tell.”

Colin leans forward. “What?”

“I mean, unless you look closely, she just looks like a chick.”

“She is a chick,” Lucy says, annoyed at the conversation that’s happening as if she’s not sitting right here.

“I mean, yeah, your skin is supersmooth, and you look kind of . . .” He waves his hands vaguely. “Glassy. But you look like a chick.”

She scowls. “Maybe we can talk about this somewhere other than the middle of the cafeteria during lunch.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, no one looks at you,” Jay says, slapping his chair down with a loud clap and reaching for his apple. “So no one is watching us, either.”

She exhales and looks away, out the window to where snow is falling in fluffy handfuls from the silver-blue sky. She listens to the sound of the boys digging into their lunches for several minutes before Jay speaks.

“Colin says you’re not up for the lake again.”

Her head snaps to Colin, and she narrows her eyes.

“I think he’s right,” Jay continues, leaning forward and catching her gaze. “I think it’s like an extreme sport. He’s healthy and young; my obsessive hunter father has ensured that I know CPR. The infirmary is full of supplies. And I got Colin back last time without any anything.”

“Which was lucky for everyone,” she counters. “Were you this enthusiastic when he suggested it to you yesterday?”

“Nah,” Jay says, grinning. “I thought all those hits to the skull had finally done him in. But I’ve come around.”

Lucy shakes her head at this strange display of trust and loyalty. “Why are you invested in this?”

Jay takes a bite of apple and shrugs. “Colin’s lost a lot of people. I like the idea that he’ll chase you down and keep you from getting away.”

Lucy looks at Colin, who is watching her with a painfully vulnerable, hopeful expression. He squints, analyzing her eyes, and then smiles. She doesn’t know what color they are or what he’s seen, but somehow he already knows she’s going to say yes.

She’d pushed for a warmer day, but January in Boundary County has few of those to offer. With blankets, defibrillator paddles, and a duffel bag of pilfered equipment in Jay’s backpack, the three of them head out to the lake.

Jay talks nonstop as they walk. Lucy can’t tell if it’s nervous energy or how he is when heading out to do any activity motivated by complete insanity. She and Colin hum in agreement or dissent whenever it seems called for, but she can tell Colin isn’t listening either. His fingers are wrapped carefully around hers, and she grips them as tightly as she can manage. She can feel his skin squeeze between her fingers and meets his surprised eyes.

They crunch through the snow to the giant open gash in the ice and unload everything, the air humming with the strangely loud silence that comes in a moment perched on the edge of adventure.

While she waits, she takes a moment to look around. It’s easy to see why the lake’s gotten such a paranormal reputation. In the blue-gray light of the winter afternoon, it’s downright eerie, and ribbons of fog seem to cling to its surface. It isn’t hard to imagine ghosts walking aimlessly along the shore, or even a madman dragging a young girl to her death. Lucy stares at the icicles looping from the box elders, heavy and gaudy with splinters of sunshine slanting through. She looks at her tree towering above the two benches at the edge of the lake. She doesn’t think she’s ever taken the time to look at it before, but now that she does, a shiver runs through her that has nothing to do with the January wind tugging at the ends of her frozen hair. The branches arch upward, each spindly twig like fingers hoping to pluck a ghost from the sky. Jay blows loudly into his hands and she turns toward him, grateful for the distraction.

Lucy isn’t sure what she expected —maybe Colin walking around the site of the cracked ice, inspecting, maybe psyching himself up to the act—but whatever it was, she certainly did not expect him to strip down to his boxers within minutes of the supplies being set up and jump feetfirst through the original crack in the ice into the frigid water.

She barely has time to be gripped with panic, to feel every part of her shift to the middle and clench where her heart used to beat. His head dips underwater and he surfaces, gasping and cursing, his arms grabbing wildly for the tether they’ve attached to his wrist.

“Cold! Oh my God, it’s cold!”

Jay bounces at the edge of the entry point, jittery and unsure. “You done? You want out?”

“No, no, no, no!” Colin yells. “Just . . . shit it’s cold.” He shivers violently.

“Colin!” Lucy calls. Her chest grows with the sensation of hot, rushing water filling her empty heart. The heady sensation is disorienting, completely at odds with the panic her brain tells her to feel. “Get out!”

I’m done.

This is insanity.

I don’t want this.

She reaches for him, but Jay bats her hands away. “I got this. Lucy, this is what he wants to do.”

Teeth chattering, Colin nods and then dunks under the freezing water again, determined to soak his hair.

“This is wrong,” Lucy whispers. “Jay, this is going to kill him.”

“It won’t,” he says, voice steady. How can he be so sure when everything inside Lucy is colliding?

“I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay,” Colin whispers over and over again. “I’m okay.”

After what feels like an eternity filled with the sound of water lapping against ice, of Colin’s huffing breaths, of Jay muttering reassurances over and over, “You can do this; you got this; you can hang, buddy, come on. A few more minutes and you get to touch your girl. You can do this,” Colin shudders once, and then his eyes roll back as he turns and bobs in the water.

Jumping into action, Jay reaches for Colin’s arm and pulls him out, dragging him on his side to a foil blanket spread out on the ice. He checks the time and then watches him lying there, unmoving.

“Revive him!” she screams, slapping his shoulder, hard. “Why aren’t you reviving him?” She looks at her hand, at the flush of blood she can almost see pumping beneath her skin. Something hums in her ears—a heartbeat.

“Just give him a minute,” Jay says with a level of calm she can’t comprehend. “We’ve checked this all out. He’s good for a while.”

Colin’s semilifeless body is blue and mostly naked, laid out on the foil blanket. He looks skinnier than she remembers; his muscles spasm sharply. As soon as Colin has coughed all of the water he inhaled out on the foil, Jay sits back and just watches him shiver.

Jay seems calm. He’s totally onboard with this insanity, no nerves, no hesitation.

Just as she’s on the verge of screaming her panic into the dull gray sky, she hears, “Luce. Turn around.”

She swivels toward Colin’s voice and her heart melts.

CHAPTER 26 HIM

LUCY LAUNCHES HERSELF AT HIM, HEAVY AND warm and full; her lips find his neck, his jaw, his mouth. He could consume this girl, he thinks. He could bury himself in her and never come up for air. With her neck exposed and her smile so big it reflects the sky above, Colin realizes he’d expected they would run off into the powdery snow and strip and just get down to it. But when she raises her head and looks at him, her eyes full of relief and excitement and fear and desire, the only thing he wants is to be here, like this. The world around him is so bright and full of detail, he finds it hard to even blink. It’s exactly like he remembers.

She’s taking his lead, her fingers wrapped around his arms, waiting for him to decide where he wants to go. All he knows is he doesn’t want to watch Jay when he starts resuscitating him. Colin tugs her arm and leads her to a bench a few hundred feet down the trail.

Colin remembers his tenth-grade photography class and how exposure is measured in lux seconds—brightness over time. The sweet spot was always that point where everything was visible, but before the light bled through, erasing the details. Here, in this world, it seems that the amount of light that can exist is limitless, and all it does is show him more. More color, more detail. Each rare leaf has a tiny skeleton, visible from even ten feet away. The clouds are gone. The sky is blue, yes, but also green and yellow and even red. When he inhales, he thinks he can feel each molecule colliding inside his lungs.

They sit. They smile. This is the strangest thing that has ever happened in this universe; he’s convinced of it. His body could be dying on the lake and whatever it is that makes him live—his spirit or soul—is beyond elated to just be here.

Lucy wraps a blanket around his shoulders. She climbs into his lap, facing him, wrapping them up so only their heads peek out the top.

“I’m not cold,” he says.

“I know. But it’s weird to see you like this, without a blanket.” She smiles, bending to kiss his jaw. He lets his head fall back, feeling.

Her hands slip up his front, solid solid solid touches. His skin rises to meet her fingertips. She talks softly as she kisses around his neck, his face, his ears. “You okay?” He nods. This place is the most intense thing he’s ever seen, and Lucy feels better than anything, than everything, even than warm water running down cold skin or the first bloom of sugar on his tongue. Better than fast sex or a faster downhill ride.

“You’re humming.” She laughs.

“I’m in heaven.”

She stills, fingers paused, splayed across his ribs. “You’re not.”

“I didn’t mean that. Settle down, Trigger. I meant meta phorically.”

She leans back and watches him.

“You think I’m insane, don’t you? You think this is insane,” he says, suddenly made uneasy by the intensity in her swirling gray-green eyes.

“Yes,” she says, leaning back in. She sucks his ear. Tugs at his hair. “No.” She moves closer, squirming over him.

“There’s very little about us that isn’t absurd.”

“Most of it’s not absurd,” he says, for some reason prickling at this. “We aren’t absurd. It’s that . . .” He searches for the right ending and gives up, laughing. “You’re dead and I’m kind of in between right now.”

“Oh, that,” she says into his neck. “Not absurd at all.” His hands find waist, ribs, breasts. They grow wild and impatient, itching to feel every inch.

Although part of him realizes that Lucy simply feels like girl—soft curves and skin that responds to his fingers and her half-word exhales—most of him thinks that Lucy feels like no other girl ever. She’s softer; her sounds are the best sounds. He grabs her hips, squeezes. An embarrassing groan escapes his lips at the shape of her.

But it makes her smile. “You like to squeeze.”

“What?” He lifts his head, trying to understand her meaning through her eyes. They’re honey, hungry brown. “In the picture with your ex-girlfriend?”

“The picture with Trinity from the winter formal?” She nods. “You’re gripping her hips. You’re gripping them like you knew them.”

He grins down at her. “That is such a chick thing to notice.

‘Like I knew them.’ What does that even mean?”

“Like you gripped them a lot.”

“Let’s not talk about my ex-girlfriend right now, please.” “I’m serious. Do you miss being with a girl you can grip?” “No.”

She’s skeptical.

“I want that with you, it’s true. But I don’t want sex so much that it’s worth getting it elsewhere.”

She fights a smile, though Colin doesn’t know why. “Let that smile out,” he tells her. “I’m so crazy about you and your hips that I can’t grip.”

Lucy gives him a smile that could power a small town. “You’re so hot,” he whispers.

To prove him wrong, she grabs a small handful of snow off the back of the bench and presses it to her chest. It stays there, crystalline and twinkling in the unearthly blue light.

Slowly, her skin takes it in. He imagines their bodies like this must be such scavengers, needing to steal anything solid to take form. Now his girl is made of snow and beauty. “Tell me a story,” she says.

He stares at the giant sky for a beat before an image pops into his head. “My parents used to have this huge king-size bed. At the foot of it was a wood chest my grandma had sent from Tibet or Thailand or something. I was jumping on the bed and slipped and cracked my collarbone on the edge of the chest.”

Lucy winces over him, a full-body-impact wince, and it makes him laugh because what on her could break? “So my mom rushed me to the emergency room, and I got put in the world’s most awkward cast. I was almost six and we called it the Rack. That was right before they died.” He’s run out of words. It’s not a very telling story or even that long. It was only the first of several times he’s broken a collarbone. He fiddles with the ends of her hair, tying it in knots and watching it unravel.

“Do you miss your parents?”

“Sometimes. I only sort of remember them. Sometimes I wish I knew enough to miss them more.” It feels right, somehow, that they would have the hardest conversations here when they can reassure each other with actual contact. “What do you remember?”

He can understand why Lucy seems fascinated with the possibility that a part of Colin’s life is as fragmented as the entirety of hers. Colin has particles of memories of his parents, supported by pictures and stories from Dot and Joe. “I don’t remember much. Most of it’s been filled in for me. Dad was kind of dorky. I’m sure he would be the kind of dad that embarrasses the hell out of me now.” He laughs. “But he was fun and would play on the floor. Carry me on his shoulders. Tell me way too many details about the animals at the zoo. That kind of dad. My mom was careful. Well, they both were, especially after Caroline died. And at least until she lost it, Mom was quiet and liked to read and write and overthought everything. Never wanted me to run or hurt myself. Dot says that’s why I’m so crazy now. She says I’m like them but turned inside out. I keep my careful bits on the inside. She says it’s why I’m so easy to be around but so hard to know.”

Lucy is tracing something on his chest. A spiral or letters, or a shape. Finally he realizes she’s drawing a heart. Not a heart like a valentine, but a heart. It calls his attention to his lack of pulse, of the hollow organless sensation he gets when he realizes he’s not corporeal. Suddenly he feels like his chest is sinking inward, like a crumpling empty paper bag. He stills both of her hands between his.

“Did they have a good marriage?” she asks.

“I think so. I mean, they died when I was six, so . . .” He looks out at the crystal-blue lake in the distance. “Caroline died right after we moved here. I’m sure that didn’t help their marriage.”

Colin stares at a spot over her shoulder. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. I wasn’t very old, but I know my mom drank a little before we lost my sister. It got a lot worse after. And no one blamed her, I mean her nine-year-old kid got hit by a delivery truck. I’m pretty sure everyone understood why she went off the deep end. But what if she wasn’t crazy? What if she really did see Caroline? Is it possible she was really there?”

“It’s possible,” Lucy says. “I’m here.”

“I’ll never know, will I?”

“I don’t know. But you’ll see them again.”

He pauses, looking up to where she’s hovering above him.

“You think so?”

She studies him for a beat, searching his expression.

“Yeah, I do.”

He kisses her for that. For being so convinced his family will find each other. For knowing it’s what he needed to hear even if he didn’t know it.

Her kisses are small and sweet, little sucking lollipop kisses on his lower lip, nibbling kisses, finally the aching deeper kisses he wants.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says. She’s glad he’s here. Not that she’s back there, in his human world of flesh and bone. He finds that he feels the same.

Every word sounds so much more intimate when it’s accompanied by the sensation of flesh under fingers. Colin has never felt this close to anyone, not even in the infatuation stage, when he becomes a mindless walking erection. This feeling here is almost too intense, when he kisses her, this need to get beneath her skin with fingertips and lips and each hungry part of him.

Conversation falls away, and his touches grow desperate because he can feel a strange rhythmic pressure on his chest and knows it’s Jay, behind them, back at the lake, reviving Colin’s body. He’s warming from the inside out.

Colin rolls Lucy off the bench and onto the trail and starts to touch lower and lower, feeling her hip bones and hidden skin, beneath silky fabric, to where she melts into smooth, wet girl. Her hands dig down and wrap around him, constricting in this insane, perfect way, and in a flash he worries that they’ve wasted all this time talking, but then he looks down at her and she’s grinning the happiest, goofiest smile, and it grows wider and wider even as he starts to dissolve out of her hands.