Noah had seen me scarred and broken, dirty and limp, covered in blood and wearing someone else’s smile. He didn’t cringe or flinch or hide. He knew who I was, he’d seen what I’d done, and he knew what I would do to him someday too. But he was still here. I would be a fool to let him go, and I was many things—a liar, a criminal, a murderer—but I was not a fool.
You can be seen and not loved, or loved and not seen. Noah loved me, and saw me. But more than that, he chose me. I couldn’t give him forever, even though he deserved it. I couldn’t keep him safe, even though I wanted to. But I could give him today. Tonight. And I would try to give him tomorrow, and every day after, for as long as I possibly could. It wasn’t enough for me, but it was enough for him.
I tilted my head up and asked, “What would you do if I kissed you right now?”
He pretended to think about it for an obnoxious amount of time before saying, “I would kiss you back.”
I’d been surviving on crumbs for so long—thoughts of him, memories of us. But now, with him here and close and willing, I realized I’d been starving.
I wrapped my hands around his neck and kissed him softly. His hand grazed the hem of my shirt, and when I felt his skin on mine it was like a storm beneath his fingertips, the rolling of clouds, the snapping of lightning. All at once it was too much and not enough, and I arched against him and kissed him harder, roughly.
You think it can’t get worse than wanting someone and not having them, but it can. You can want someone, have them, and want them more. Still. Always. You can never get enough.
We broke apart to breathe, our foreheads still touching. He didn’t say he loved me. He didn’t need to. I could feel it in the way he pressed my palm against his neck. His eyes were closed, and my heart turned over. He needed me too.
What had happened would always be part of us, but we’d survived it. We were still here. The curtain would fall on us eventually, but I would fight to keep it up as long as I could. For now it was just us, together, and there was nothing in our way.
Still, I heard David’s words replay themselves in my mind, in his voice, as I led Noah back into the house and up the stairs.
“He wouldn’t love you if you weren’t what you are.”
But I am what I am. And he does.
73
NOAH
I KNOW WHAT I CAN do to a girl with a word, a look, a touch. And I want to do them all to her.
MARA
I PRESSED MY LIPS TO his throat, and he tilted my chin up, my face aside. He whispered wicked things against my ear.
I grinned, and unbuttoned his shirt.
NOAH
I KISS HER SOFTLY, TWICE. then her head tilts, dips, and her mouth closes over my heart. As she kisses my burning skin, a shock shudders through me.
Mara is the one I never knew I was waiting for, and as long as she’ll have me, I will never let her go.
MARA
I SHRUGGED HIS SHIRT FROM his shoulders, and he lifted mine from my chest. We shed everything until skin met skin.
And then Noah Shaw showed me why he had the reputation he had.
I shivered at the delicious sting of his jaw as he trailed kisses down the dip in my navel, at his fox smile as he painted me in feeling. Soft, muted, dreamy colors first—ochre and umber and rose with his tongue. My breath caught, and I needed—I needed—
“Hurry,” I pleaded.
“Slowly,” he said.
NOAH
I THRILL AT HER RISING, aching, swelling sound as I draw out every torturous kiss. Her muscles tighten and tremble and she grasps the sheets and I glance up, needing to see her face.
She is wild. And I have never seen anything more outrageously beautiful in my life.
But then she threads her hands into my hair and pulls.
MARA
AS I DREW HIM UP against me, into me, there was a pinch of scarlet.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice gentle in a way I’d never heard.
I breathed “Yes” as the color softened and faded. I pulled him closer.
NOAH
I SLIDE MY HANDS UP her back, and her ankles lock around my waist and she takes me in with those fathomless eyes. We are connected: hands, limbs, mouths, bodies, souls. I have never known this.
Mara kisses me and it is sugar on my tongue and champagne in my blood; I want to drown in her taste and scent and sound. Hers is the body electric; she is the high I’d been chasing but never caught until now.
MARA
NIPPING. PULLING. TEASING. TASTING. HIS strokes were slow, intricate, as they blended and feathered and blushed me into something radiant. The colors glossed and glazed into something bold and bright.
NOAH
EVERY TOUCH COMPOSES A NEW, unheard measure; I am hypnotized by the texture and timbre of her notes as they trill and turn and beat and slide. The sheets are our world, and in them she is finite and infinite, beautiful and sublime, bound in my arms and boundless at once.
I move and her scale lengthens, stretches, rhapsodic and gorgeously violent as her eyes grow dark and threaten to close.
“Stay with me,” I nearly growl, trying to bite back my desperation, my fear that she’ll slip away. I never want to stop looking at her from here. “Stay.”
They flutter open—she’s still here, still her. “I need to hear you,” she begs in that voice, and I can’t refuse her¸ not anything, not now, not ever. But the words that come aren’t enough for this. For her. So I speak in a language she doesn’t know.
Je t’aime. Aujourd’hui. Ce soir. Demain. Pour toujours. Si je vivais mille ans, je t’appartiendrais pour tous. Si je vivais mille vies, je te ferais mienne dans chacune d’elles.
I love you. Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever. If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If I were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one.
MARA
THE WORLD DISTILLED TO ONLY the sound of us as we both stretched out on the edge of the world.
The colors shone, burned through. Sienna and crimson and gold, and I swallowed my name from his mouth and he kissed his from my lips, and I was incandescent as I tripped into—
NOAH
BLISS.
The echo of her pleasure hits my blood and takes me with her. Mara is unstrung, unbound, unleashed in my arms.
Finally.
MARA
AFTER, I LAY AGAINST HIM. Our heartbeats synchronized, and I twined around him like moss on a limb. I was soft in his grasp and he was so solid and warm and real against my cheek. My smile wouldn’t fade, but the colors began to. Violet to cobalt, then indigo, then black.
NOAH
THERE IS NO SILENCE, BUT the timbre of her sound does change. Grace notes, sweet and blue, sweeping, sliding, falling. I know what they mean.
“Stay,” I whisper into her damp, curling hair, as if it’s the only word I know. “Stay with me.”
But her eyes flutter and shut.
I can’t close mine. Mara falls asleep to “Hallelujah.”
EPILOGUE
DAWN CREEPS IN THROUGH THE curtains, staining the backs of my eyelids red. I blink once, twice in the near darkness, then stretch. I inhale the scent of Noah’s shampoo and smile as I reach over in bed to pull him closer. My hand closes around a piece of paper, though, not his hair.
I prop myself up on my elbow and yawn, scanning the room for evidence of Noah. When I don’t find any, I turn on the bedside lamp. His bag is here, and his clothes are in them—not strewn around like mine. We were supposed to be leaving New York today, and it looked like he’d already packed. That wasn’t unusual. But not waking up to him beside me was. I bite my lower lip, remembering his mouth on it last night, and draw back the sheets to look for my clothes. The note flutters to the ground beside me. I pick it up.
Couldn’t sleep, went for a run. Back soon. Prepare yourself.
xxxxxx
N
A smile spreads across my lips, so wide it hurts. I’m overpow
ered by love for him, for this boy who knows exactly what I am, exactly who I am, and loves me anyway, despite it. Because of it. I couldn’t wait for him to get back so I could tell him. Show him. A week had passed, but it could have been a year—I would never get enough.
And I don’t have to. We have all the time in the world.
I glance at the clock—9:30 a.m.—and shower and dress before heading down to the kitchen. My brother is banging cabinets around, loudly, to announce his presence; a charm of protection against any stray public displays of affection, no doubt. Luckily for him, I was just as embarrassed by our loud colonization of the town house as he was—more, probably. Unluckily for both of us, Noah didn’t care. God knew what Daniel heard.
A ferocious blush rises in my cheeks, and I vainly try to hide it with my hair. “Morning!” I chirp. I’m so obvious. “Is there coffee?” I rummage through the pantry, making a ton of unnecessary noise myself.
“In the pot . . . that you just passed.”
Right. “Right! Thanks!” I snag a mug from the cupboard.
Daniel shot me a look. “You okay?”
“Yes! You?”
“I’m slowly adjusting to a new reality that includes superpowered teenagers and the entities that try to control them. Are you packed yet?”
Nope. “Mmhmm.”
“Car’s picking us up at four.”
“I know.”
He then says what I’m thinking. “It’s going to be weird for you at home, isn’t it.”
I nod.
“But you’ll be back soon? That still the plan?”
It was. Once we returned to our respective homes, Jamie would present our proposal to skip our senior years and head directly to college without passing go. It was a real thing, early admissions or something, and it would get us out of Florida faster and with fewer loose ends than anything else we could come up with. And we needed to get out. None of us could imagine finishing out our senior year of high school. It would be hard enough performing for our parents, pretending for them, but I knew I needed the summer. Joseph would be losing not one but two siblings in the fall—it would be hard for him. I wanted him to have the time with us. With me.
Daniel takes a swig of orange juice and then slips his arms into the sleeves of a long button-down shirt. “I’m going to meet my friend Josh over at Juilliard before we go. Don’t forget, car at four.”
“I won’t forget.”
“Oh, also.” Daniel spins around on his heels and heads for the hall closet. “You need to start prepping if you’re going to test in June.” He reaches for something on the top shelf, which is stacked with board games. They topple to the floor.
“Not how I planned that.” We start picking up game pieces: Risk, Monopoly, Scrabble. “Oh. Hello there.”
I look up to see my brother holding a wooden, heart-shaped piece in one hand; a planchette. From a Ouija board. I look around and sure enough, there it is behind him, lying between Sorry! and The Game of Life. My brother peers at me from the little plastic circle in the middle.
“Wanna play?”
I glare at him, goose bumps notwithstanding.
“Kidding, kidding.” He drops the piece back in its box. “This is what I actually wanted to give you.” He rummages through the games and then picks up a book: One Thousand Obscure Words on the SAT.
I roll my eyes. “What would I do without you?”
“You won’t ever have to find out.”
I wonder if Daniel knows that I will do anything I can, everything I can, to make sure that stays true.
“Having a little post-breakfast séance, are we?” I turn at the sound of Jamie’s voice. He’s staring at the unfolded Ouija board. Not kindly.
“Accident,” Daniel says, and tosses the book to me. I stuff it in my new messenger bag as my brother puts the games back in the closet where they belong. “See you kids later,” he said with a wave. “Car’s coming at four, J.”
I look at Jamie once the door closes behind Daniel. “J?”
He lifts his chin. “We’ve become fast friends. While you and Noah were . . . busy.”
I walk backward toward the door, slinging my bag over my shoulder. Blushing too. “I’m going out for a walk.”
“You? A walk? Since when do you need food, sunshine, fresh air?” Jamie looks around dramatically. “Oh. Noah isn’t here. That explains it.”
“Shut up.”
“Come. Let us find him together,” Jamie says, and offers his arm, which I take. We wander a bit before heading to the park. I do not fail to notice the pendant around Jamie’s neck; he’s developed a habit in the past week of hooking his finger around it while he talks. Mine rests in my pocket, nestled next to Noah’s. I haven’t made my decision yet.
“So what college am I going to lie to your parents about for you?” Jamie asks, bumping my shoulder.
“Not sure.” We walk past a street cart selling roasting nuts; the smell mingles with the scents of dust and metal from the construction being done on the street. “But I like New York.”
“Same. I was thinking about Columbia, or NYU maybe. Not sure I’ll get in, but I’m black, queer, and Jewish so I got three brochures.”
I smirk and catch a glimpse of our reflections in the dark glass of an office window. Not that long ago, I probably would’ve died laughing at the things Jamie said. But what we’ve been through has thrown us forward a decade, at least. People who didn’t know us would think we looked like teenagers still, and if they saw pictures of us Before and After they might not even be able to tell the difference. But I can tell. Our smiles for cameras are jaded now, our grins at jokes a bit bitter. That’s what separated us from the multitudes of Them. We lived harder. Knew better. But we laughed anyway. Laughed because there was nothing else to do but give up.
And I would never give up. I’ve done terrible things I regret and terrible things I don’t. But I don’t need to be fixed. I don’t need to be saved. I just have to keep going.
We cross the street into the park, and blossoms fall like snow as we walk beneath the trees. The sky is blue and cloudless—a perfect spring day. It’s like a dream, light and beautiful and happy, the kind I never have.
“Fancy meeting you here,” says Noah. He’s right behind us, in slim, dark jeans and a faded black T-shirt. His hair is carelessly tousled and noticeably clean. He’s carrying a shopping bag, which dangles lightly from his fingers.
I look him over with narrowed eyes. “How long have you been following us?”
“Forever.”
I touch a finger to my lips. “Funny, you don’t look like you’ve been running.”
Jamie claps his hands once. “That would be my cue!” He kisses me on the cheek. “I’m going to bid farewell to my illustrious cousin, your illustrious attorney.”
“Say hi to her for me.”
“Shall do.”
“Me as well,” Noah chimes in, but Jamie’s already walking away. He raises his hand to give him the finger from over his shoulder. Noah’s mouth spreads into a grin.
“So where were you?”
He moves the shopping bag farther behind him. “Oh, hookers, blow, the usual.”
“Why do I even love you?”
“Because I come bearing gifts,” Noah says, and withdraws the thing from the bag with a flourish. A sketchbook.
My cold heart melts a little. “Noah.”
“The old one was a bit morbid,” he says, the corner of his mouth turning up with a smile. “Thought you could use a fresh start.”
I rise on my toes to kiss him.
“Wait,” he murmurs against my lips. “You haven’t seen the best part.”
“There’s another part?” I ask as he takes my hand and tugs me toward a bench. He slips the sketchbook under his arm and sits me down by my shoulders.
“Close your eyes,” he says, and I do. I hear him turning the pages of the sketchbook. “All right. Open.”
I’m looking at a drawing, if you could call it that. But of
what, I have no idea.
“I thought I’d christen it for you, so I drew your portrait.”
“Oh!” Oh, hell. “It’s . . . really special, Noah. Thank you.”
He bites his lip. “Mmm.”
“But wait.” I turn it horizontally. “Why do I have a tail?”
He tilts his head to look at it. “That’s not a tail, that’s your arm.”
“Why is it coming out of my ass?”
He closes the sketchbook. “Behave.”
“Or what, you’ll spank me?”
He leans toward me. His mouth makes contact with my earlobe, his rough jaw with my cheek, and he says, “That would be a reward, darling. Not a punishment.”
My heart is already racing. Gets me every time. “Speaking of,” I say softly. “I missed you this morning.”
“I’ll have to find a way to make it up to you. Have you packed?”
“We have time still,” I say, because I’m not ready to go.
Noah knows what I’m thinking. He laces his fingers between mine. “We’ll be back.”
We would be. I could feel it. I stretch out next to Noah, my head in his lap, my feet on the rail. People weave around us, but it feels like we’re alone in a sea of beating hearts and breathing lungs. I watch smoke rise from a manhole across the street, and can almost see it form words in the air: welcome home. We could be anonymous here. Just a normal couple, young and in love and holding hands in New York.
I lean down and withdraw a book from my own bag as Noah plays with my hair. It’s the SAT book. Wrong one. I drop it back in and finally find the one I’m looking for—a novel, freshly bought, about superpowered teens. Call it research.
“What book?”
I show Noah the cover, then flip to the last page.