by Tara Fuller
“That’s pretty odd, don’t you think?”
He had no idea just how odd this all was. “I guess. Why?”
“I need to ask you something, Emma.” He waited for me to look at him. “Does your mom have a drinking problem? Does she treat you badly?”
“What? No!” I sat up in my chair. “Of course not. What the hell does that have to do with some cracked-out guy attacking me in a theater bathroom?”
Detective Monroe slipped his notepad back into his pocket. “Okay. Just calm down. With the extent of your injuries and the fact that your mother had been drinking, not to mention that we don’t have one witness who saw this woman or the man, I have to ask. I’m just trying to help you.”
Help me? I wanted to laugh. His badge wasn’t going to do me a bit of good. Not against something he probably didn’t even believe in.
“You can help me by leaving us alone.”
I got up, expecting him to stop me, but he didn’t. Instead he sighed and said, “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
…
Parker drove us back to his house from the hospital in silence. After my conversation with the cops, I didn’t really feel like talking to him about any of it. The more people I had to lie to, the more complicated this was going to get. So I went with silence, which was broken up by the occasion cough from me or my mom. We finally pulled into a gravel driveway that led to a sleepy white house set back in the trees. Through the big picture window in front, I could see a few lights on in the house.
“Do you have kids?” I asked.
Parker shook his head and ducked out of the car to open my door. “Nope. It’ll just be us.”
An hour later, after we’d eaten pizza that Parker had ordered, he showed me to the guest room. I almost fainted when I spotted the black and white print of me at Lone Pine Lake hanging from the wall. I traced the shimmer next to me and my heart fluttered painfully at the thought of Finn. I wondered if he’d ever come back.
“I can’t believe you saved this,” I whispered. Parker leaned on the wall next to me and looked at the picture.
“Sorry I wasn’t able to get your books.” He slid a box over to me with the toe of his boot that was full of secondhand paperbacks. “I picked these up today. I think there are even a couple of your dad’s in there. Your mom said you liked to read. Maybe we can rebuild your collection.”
I stared down at the books, images of Dad flashing through my mind, and my vision blurred with tears. “Thank you.”
“Okay, well, I’ll let you get settled. Good night.” Parker turned and left me in the room full of unfamiliar furniture. It smelled like fresh paint. Mom lingered in the doorway, watching me after Parker had gone.
“So how long are we staying here?” I picked up a paperback and pretended to read the blurb on the back. When she didn’t answer I tossed the book back in the box and looked at her. “Earth to Mom!”
She blinked like she’d been somewhere else and smiled.
“Are you still upset about the cops questioning you?” I asked. “I told you everything was fine. I gave them a description of the girl who did this.” A description of a girl they’d never find, considering she was dead.
She shook her head. “I’m upset that there is obviously some person out there intent on hurting you and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. If I hadn’t been drinking, none of this would have happened. You could’ve died.”
“But I didn’t.” I eased down onto the unfamiliar bed and patted the spot beside me.
Mom flashed me a tight smile and took a deep breath, settling down next to me. “Are you okay with this? Staying here? I know I should have asked you.” Mom twisted to face me, waiting for my approval. “We can stay in a hotel if you want.”
I thought about Dad. About his smile and the way he always smelled like pine needles and coffee.
The sound of his laptop soothing me to sleep at night. Parker wasn’t Dad. He wasn’t ever going to be Dad. But maybe if he made her happy, I could try. “Are you happy with him?’ She smiled. “Very.”
Dad would want this. The thought had been in my head all along, but I didn’t want to hear it. I’d been too selfish. I couldn’t be that way anymore. I didn’t want to be that girl. I smiled. “Then I’m okay with this.”
Mom beamed back at me and kissed my cheek. “He doesn’t have a lot of stuff to bake with here, but he did pick up some of those blueberry muffins you like from the bakery in town for breakfast.”
“Tell him thanks for me.”
She smiled and shut my door behind her on the way out. Once she was gone, I sighed and turned to grab the bag of new clothes my mom had picked up for me, but it wasn’t there. Crap. Left them in the car.
I listened to the sound of cold rain beat on the roof like a drum, contemplating sleeping in my clothes rather than brave the rain outside. My need for comfort eventually won and I slid quietly through the house and out the front door.
I grabbed the bag and used it to shield myself from the icy rain and hurried back onto the porch. The rain had melted most of the snow, making a muddy, half-frozen mess of the rustic landscape. I reached for the front door-“Emma?”
My breath caught in my throat and my heart thudded against my ribs. I turned around and found Finn standing in the rain. He didn’t move and neither could I.
“Emma…I…I…” He couldn’t finish. His teeth were chattering.
The sound of his voice sent panic flaring through me to the point of pain. I stumbled off the porch and into the rain, not caring about the ache in my leg or the stinging in my neck, or that the heavy droplets were practically freezing in my hair.
“Finn?” When I got closer enough, I stilled, paralyzed by disbelief. He was soaked. Rain dripped down his face, and his hands were clenched into shaking fists at his sides. I reached out and gasped when my fingers gripped a handful of his soaked T-shirt.
“Oh my God, Finn!” I grabbed him, not understanding, not thinking, only moving. I pulled him into the house behind me and prayed that Mom and Parker would stay in his bedroom as I dragged a strange boy through his living room.
Once we were in the safety of my room, I quietly shut and locked the door behind us, keeping my back pressed to the wood. I couldn’t stop staring at him. Something told me that I should help the half-frozen boy in front of me, but I couldn’t move. Finn couldn’t be wet. He couldn’t be freezing. Not my Finn.
He stared back, convulsions racking his frame, and smiled despite the pain showing in his face. “It hurts.”
I slid away from the door and hesitated before grabbing his hands. They were freezing. I held them, perplexed by their solid fleshy feel. He felt like…me. “What hurts?”
“The cold. Everything.”
I stripped his T-shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor. I wanted to ask how this was possible, but I couldn’t. My hopes were already up, and I couldn’t handle the disappointment that would smother me when he told me it was only temporary. So instead I kept moving, ridding him of his wet clothes. I unzipped his jeans and tugged them down over his hips, leaving him standing wide-eyed in only a pair of boxers.
I left him to start the bath, filling it with hot water, and hesitating to watch the steam roll off the top as I gathered my thoughts. When I came back, Finn grabbed me by the shoulders and ran his gloriously solid hands down my arms. Hands that had every part of me memorized before they’d ever even touched me. “How is this even possible? I don’t understand.”
He reached up to touch my face, his fingers trembling as they cupped my cheeks. “Emma, I’m a-a-a-live,” he finally stuttered, then collapsed at my feet.
Chapter 39
Finn When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a tangle of warm blankets. Emma was sitting on the bed next to me, her long legs folded Indian-style in front of her. She stared down at me, her brows drawn in thought, her blue eyes covered by a layer of unshed tears. Her gaze was focused on my bare stomach, so she didn’t notice me awake. I lay s
till, wondering what she would do next. Her hand slowly stretched out. She ran her fingers along my chest and down to my stomach, sending my newly formed body into overdrive. I tensed, my fingers twitching, wanting to touch her. She jerked her gaze up to my face and pulled her hand away.
“Morning, pretty girl.” My voice sounded gravelly. Every part of me throbbed as if I’d been thrown from a three-story building onto a slab of cold, unforgiving concrete. That might as well have been the case when I woke up in my new body on the slushy ground outside Parker’s unfamiliar house.
She closed her eyes, kept them squeezed shut for several long moments, then opened them again.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you to disappear.” Her voice trembled. “Why haven’t you disappeared yet?”
She looked up, her sapphire eyes holding me captive.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I sat up, groaning with the effort and touched her chin. “Do you hear me? Never again. This is…” I was hesitant to say it. I was still waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me. “This is permanent.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said. The sunlight streaming in through the window turned every wispy blond hair at the side of her face into threads of gold in its pale light.
“I know it doesn’t, but it’s real. I guess the best way to explain it would be to call it a gift.” That wasn’t exactly true. It was an exchange. When this life was done, I belonged to them…forever. But I wasn’t ready to tell her that part. Not yet. Right now, I needed this moment with her to be perfect.
“I don’t want to wake up from this,” she whispered.
“You won’t. Not this time.”
Emma reached out, hesitant at first, and touched my hands. I looked down at them for the first time.
They were full of blood, pulsing with life. The calluses I’d earned with Pop were painfully absent. I really was brand new. She ran her fingers silently over mine, then moved on to the lines of my chest. I inhaled sharply when her fingers reached my neck, grazed over the sensitive hollow of my throat.
“I need… I just need…” God, I needed so much my mind felt like it was in one of those medieval torture devices, being pulled in a thousand different directions, but I settled on her lips. I didn’t even bother to take another breath. I leaned up and kissed her. Emma froze, making me doubt my action for a split second, but then she sighed into my mouth. It was a happy sound. A relieved sound. And in that moment I knew there was nothing more than this. Her smile on my lips. Her breath in my mouth. I wanted to live in this moment forever. I didn’t want to think about tomorrow or the next day. Just here. Just now. Just this.
I pressed my palm into the warm small of her back, and lost myself in this kiss that was so much more than a kiss. This was Emma breathing the life back into me. I never knew it could feel like this, her skin against mine, my breath mixing with hers, our fingers tangled in a palm-to-palm embrace. It was like magic.
“Emma, why is the door locked?”
She broke away, her eyes wide as her mom jiggled the handle. She reached up to touch her lips, swollen from our kiss, and let her gaze wander silently over my half-clothed body. She didn’t have to say it. I rolled off the bed, landed with a thud against the cool carpeted floor, and crawled under the bed.
“What was that?” Rachel knocked again. “Emma, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mom. What do you want?” The bed springs creaked and I watched her bare feet pad across the floor to the door. She opened it a fraction of an inch.
“Why is this door locked?” Rachel stuck her nose through the door but Emma pushed her back out. I listened to them prattle about locked doors and her mother’s work schedule for the week. I was in heaven. Having to worry about my girlfriend’s mom finding me in her bed was the biggest problem I had at the moment. Well, the biggest one I was willing to think about, anyway. I couldn’t stop the stupid grin from spreading across my face.
“The coast is clear,” Emma whispered. I rolled out from under the bed and climbed back on top to join her. We sat quietly until we heard the front door slam a few minutes later. Relief washed over Emma’s face. She bounced up off the bed before I could reach out and touch her again. I flexed my fingers, wondering how they could suddenly feel so empty without her there to fill them.
“Where are you going?”
“To get food. Aren’t you starving?” She pulled a pair of cotton shorts and a sweatshirt out of a duffel bag. When she gingerly pulled her pink silky camisole up over her head, navigating it around the stitches, and tossed it to the floor, something unraveled low in my stomach.
“Um… I can’t blink out anymore. You have to ask me to leave before you do that.” My mouth felt dry and I could feel my heart pounding in places it probably shouldn’t. I should have looked away, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her long, sunlit back.
“I never asked you to leave, Finn. You did that all on your own.”
I swallowed and ran my hand over my mouth as I watched her pull the sweatshirt over her head, then slip out of her bottoms and carefully guide each long leg into her shorts. I had never once watched Emma change, but now that I had, I wouldn’t trade the memory for anything in the world.
“Hungry?” She stopped at the door and blew a chunk of hair out of her eyes.
I laughed nervously, my adrenaline still rushing behind my ears. She had no idea. “Yeah, I think so.”
Emma came back with two steaming cups of coffee with cream and sugar, and a plate full of blueberry muffins. The first bite of blueberry and warm pastry exploded in my mouth, leaving me almost dizzy. I hadn’t tasted food in so long. I had to forcefully stop the moan from forming around the food in my mouth. Emma took a sip of her coffee and smiled, watching the expression on my face.
“What?” I asked wiping the back of my hand across my mouth and swallowing.
“You look like you’re in Heaven.”
Sitting here looking into her eyes, our knees touching and sending a shock wave of warmth up my thighs, I thought I might be. “Who says I’m not?”
I grinned and leaned across the small space between us to brush my lips against hers. And God help me, she tasted better than the muffin in my hand, so I abandoned it to pull her closer. Emma bit her lip and pulled out of my grasp.
“What is it?”
She held my hand in her lap. Ran the tip of her finger over the inside of my palm.
“Is my dad…” Pain flashed across her face.
“What is it? Tell me.”
“Maeve told me my dad went to Hell.” She looked up, eyes glossy. “Is it true? I won’t blame you for lying to me if it is, but—”
“Emma.” I grabbed her hands. “He’s not in Hell. She was just trying to hurt you. I swear to you he’s in Heaven. He’s happy. At peace.”
Emma nodded and her shoulders sagged, but there was still something fragile under the surface.
“What happed in that house, Finn?”
I took a deep breath and sat back. “Why?”
“Because Cash is…something’s wrong. He hasn’t really talked to me since what we did that night, but it’s more than that. I haven’t felt her since the fire, but what if it’s Maeve?”
“It’s not Maeve,” I said.
Emma’s eyes opened wide. “Are you sure?”
I squeezed Emma’s hand and closed my eyes. My retinas burned with the memory of watching the soul ripped out of the girl I loved. Watching Maeve crawl under her skin like it was a coat. I opened my eyes and smiled best I could. “I’m sure. She’s never coming back.”
“That’s great, but Cash…” Emma shook her head. We have to help him. ”
“We will. We’ll fix it, whatever it is.”
“Promise?”
I nodded and crawled up her body, gently pressing her into the mattress. “I promise.”
The mattress springs creaked with the weight of both of our bodies. The blankets shifted and tugged beneath us. I smiled
against Emma’s cheek, wondering how something so small could make me so happy.
“We still have a lot to worry about,” she said, banding her arms around my back to hold me close.
“Like where you’re going to live.”
I nodded, breathing in her scent. “I know.” The warmth of my breath made her shiver, a gentle rippling of heat that worked its way down her spine, then back up through mine like we were one being instead of two. I ran my fingertip up her leg, starting at her knee, then up, up, up, until my fingers gave in and closed over her hip. Emma closed her hand over mine, her eyes burning as blue as the hottest part of a flame.
I wanted to kiss her. Hell, I wanted to do a lot more than kiss her. But I didn’t. Instead I brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes, and ran my fingers next to the stitches on her neck. Rage burned my insides like acid knowing that in spite of everything else, Maeve would always have her mark on Emma.
“You know you don’t have to be with me, right?” she asked softly, her eyes finding my throat instead of my face. Her eyelashes brushed against the tender spot under my chin every time she blinked.
I lifted her chin so she’d look at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t want you to think that you owe me anything, or that you’re obligated to be with me. You have a body now, a second chance at life. What if after a while you don’t want this anymore?”
“Emma…” I swallowed through the emotions thick in my throat—twenty-seven years worth of them overwhelming me all at once. “I came back from the dead for you.” Her eyes fluttered closed and I kissed her eyelids. They felt like satin against my lips. “If that doesn’t prove how much I love you, then nothing will.”
She sighed and her arms tightened around my waist. “I love you, too.”
I kissed her. I’d meant for it to be soft, reserved, and respectful, but once her taste was on my tongue, there wasn’t any going back. Maybe if I’d just finished the stupid breakfast, maybe if I’d let her come to me instead of me crawling on top of her, I could have held it together. But not now. Not when I was in a body that was all mine with the girl I wanted more than my next breath. I slid my palms up her sweatshirt, over her ribs, around to her back. I swallowed the whimper in the back of her throat. I kissed her until I wasn’t sure where the air would come from if I didn’t pull away.