White Space

“Yes.” Her heart was a fist knocking against her ribs. This should be a dream, but it’s not. She thought of his mouth on her neck, his hands in her hair. This is like a dream I’ve been waiting to have my entire life. “I’d like—”

Their rope of linked curtains suddenly jerked hard, once, twice, three times. They jumped and looked at one another, but neither made a move to pull away. Eric gave an answering yank and turned a grin. “They probably think we’re dead.”

“Maybe we better get that gas,” she said.

“In a second. I think …” Eric brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Yeah, I think I definitely need to kiss you now.”

“Yes,” she said, but he was already pulling her mouth to his before she got the word out. His lips were very warm and full and as soft as she’d imagined. They were perfect and so was he. He was everything she had ever wanted or dreamed of. Her skin was electric; her eyes closed as his tongue traced her lips. There was a fluttering in her chest that had nothing to do with fear but was, instead, a sweet ache, a longing; and then she was sighing into his mouth, and they breathed into one another, moving together, her body fitting to his so perfectly that there was no space at all between them and only this moment: in the fog, on the snow, with him.

“God,” he whispered, breaking the kiss, leaning back just far enough to look into her eyes. His cheeks were stained with color. His breathing was ragged. “I’ve wanted that for … God, forever, from the first moment. When I saw you, I felt this sense of …”

“Finding.” She was close enough to see his pulse bounding in his neck. “Of finally finding something.”

“Someone.” His hands framed her face. “This is like one of those stupid books, you know? Teenage insta-love. But this is so different. It’s like I was born for you, for this. When you talk, your voice is already in my head, and I’m thinking the end of the sentence with you. Isn’t that weird?”

“No,” And then her mouth was on his throat, and she tasted the salt of his skin, heard his gasp as her lips moved on his neck, felt the hum of his blood against her tongue. Then he was saying her name and covering her mouth with his, and they were kissing again, drinking in each other.

Don’t ruin this. Emma felt her whole body give something close to a sigh, and then it was just the two of them, cupped in fog as time stilled. If she ever found a way to encase a universe within glass, this was the perfect one, the only world and moment she wished to inhabit. Right here, right now, hang on to him and remember this. Remember how he feels, his taste, his arms, his mouth. Remember this.

Remember him.

3

THERE WAS ENOUGH oil for three torches. As Casey filled the Swiss Miss can and two empty peanut butter jars, Bode and Eric tore the sheet from Lizzie’s bed into strips. “This way,” Eric said, as he knotted and cinched a strip into a belt around Emma’s middle, then slid in the chair-leg club, “our hands are free … No, you take that,” Eric said as Bode held out the Glock. “I have nothing against guns, but I never liked that thing.”

“Whatever works for you, Devil Dog,” Bode said, tucking the pistol into the small of his back. “We still got a problem, though.” Bode slipped a gurgling jar and the gas-filled Swiss Miss can into a pillowcase that he knotted to a belt loop. “There’s no way we’re gonna find enough sheets and blankets to get us through that fog and into the barn.”

“There’s got to be a way,” Casey said, tucking a pair of blunt-edged child’s scissors Bode had used to hack sheets into a hip pocket.

“There is.” Eric looked down at Emma. “Pull us through. Use the cynosure the way you did before.”

“That was different,” she said, running her hands over the beads and glass of Lizzie’s memory quilt. “I was on the other side. I knew where I was and where I wanted you to be. I was pulling you, not throwing us inside a place I’ve never been. I don’t know if it will even work in the same world,” she said, thinking, I can’t believe I just said that. “Lizzie talked me through it.”

“What did you do before?” Eric asked.