Awaken

“You’ve always been able to make me laugh,” he said. “Even when things are at their worst. How do you do that?”

“According to Mr. Smith, it’s because I’m the sunshine,” I said, unable to keep a note of self-deprecation from creeping into my voice, “and you’re the storm.”

“That sounds like something he would say.” Grinning, he pressed my fingertips to his lips. “I think he’s probably right.”

“Oh, John, no!” His lips felt as icy to the touch as his hands. “Why are you so cold?” I slipped my free hand around his shoulders while I tried to think what a responsible adult, like my mom or Mrs. Engle, would do in this situation. “Do you want me to make you some soup? I could go downstairs and make you some soup — it’s a gas stove, so it should still be working — and bring it back up —”

“I don’t need soup,” he said. “All I need is you.”

He dropped my hand to snake his arm around my waist, burying his face in the curve between my neck and my shoulder — a favorite place of his — then sending me sinking slowly back against the voluminous pile of soft “accent” pillows my mom’s decorator had insisted on stacking against my headboard.

You don’t sleep on them, the decorator had explained to me. They’re called throw pillows because you “throw” them off the bed right before you go to sleep.

I don’t know why anyone would bother throwing those pillows off the bed when they made such a deep, comfortable nest for two people who’d been through as much as John and I had recently. I liked the way they towered around us, forming a safe cocoon against the world as John clung to me in the semidarkness, his heart pounding hard against mine, listening to the rain as it continued to pour down outside my shuttered windows.

At least, I thought, he was able to speak about what he’d been through. That had to be a good sign. On television, doctors were always saying how it was healing for soldiers and other victims of violent assault to talk about their traumatic experiences.

“What else?” I asked, as thunder rumbled off in the distance and his lips roamed sleepily along the curve of my collarbone.

“What do you mean, what else?”

“I mean, what else about when you were with Thanatos?”

He lifted his head to stare down at me as if I were a madwoman. “Why would I want to talk about Thanatos now?”

“Because,” I said, “talking about it might be therapeutic. Whether you admit it or not, you’ve had a lot of distressing experiences in your life.”

He leaned up on one of the accent pillows to look me in the eye. “So have you.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But my parents have also paid for me to have a lot of therapy, so the chances of my suffering from any long-term neurosis is minimal.”

“This is all the therapy I need,” he said, raising his hand from my waist to another part of my anatomy, nearer my heart.

I sucked in my breath. “I’m pretty sure in therapy, that would be called a diversionary tactic.”

“Then I need a lot more diversionary tactics,” John said, his fingers moving to tug on the string that kept the bodice of my dress closed in the front. “Also, there’s something you promised to tell me that you still haven’t said —”

I don’t know if it was the intoxicating mixture of his closeness; his kisses; the comforting cocoon of pillows; the romantic, constant drumming of the rain outside; or the fact that, after so long, we finally seemed to have found somewhere we could safely be together. But it wasn’t long before I found myself murmuring, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” exactly as I’d longed to the entire time he was gone.

He expressed his love for me, as well, as emphatically as ever …. so much so that I was relieved for the booming thunder outside, since I knew it would cover any sounds we might make that could wake up my mom — though at times I wasn’t certain whether the thunder was being generated by John or the storm itself.

Later, lying lazily in his arms beneath my white down comforter, I said, “We can’t fall asleep. There’s too much we still have to do.”

“I know.” His chest was rising and falling beneath my cheek in a slow, rhythmic movement as he breathed. “But I think it’s all right for now.” He held up my diamond, the only thing I was wearing. “It’s silver. There’s no danger. We deserve to rest for a few minutes.”

“No,” I said firmly. “If we fall asleep and my mom finds us in here, she’ll kill you all over again.”

“If you’d just marry me,” he said, “the way I asked you to, everything would be fine.”

“You don’t know my parents,” I said. “Believe me, everything wouldn’t be fine if we got married.”

“I would rather be open with them,” John said. “I can provide for you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s not really the issue. And besides, you live in an underground cave.”

“In a castle in an underground cave.”

“That is currently overrun with the souls of the dead.”

John thought about this. “With a bit of luck, that’s something we’ll soon resolve.”

“Luck,” I said, gazing sleepily at the still flickering LED candle. “That’s something neither of us has ever had much of.”

He stroked a lock of my hair. “We found each other, didn’t we?”

“That was my grandmother, not luck. She made sure we met so she could kill me later and break your heart because she hates your guts.”

His hand stilled on my hair. “Oh. That’s right.”

“Don’t let me fall asleep.”

“I won’t,” he said.

The last thing I remember was lightning as it made a bright white stripe against my wall when it flashed between the slats of the shutters. I never heard the thunder that followed, however.

20

And light I saw in fashion of a river

Fulvid with its effulgence, ’twixt two banks

Depicted with an admirable Spring.

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Paradiso, Canto XXX

Sunlight streamed through the slats in the storm shutters, making cheerful patterns across my walls.

I heard birdsong outside, as well. I hadn’t heard birds singing while the hurricane was blowing. I could also hear the steady hum of the air conditioner. That meant the power was back on. My room was cold enough that I needed to pull the down comforter up over my bare shoulders and snuggle closer to John for warmth.

The storm was over. It was morning. And I was in my own room, in my own bed, next to John.

Then a coldness that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning gripped me.

The storm was over. It was morning. And I was in my room, next to John.

We’d fallen asleep. After I’d told him not to let me fall asleep, he’d not only let me fall asleep, he’d fallen asleep himself. He lay beside me in a chaotic scatter of throw pillows, the comforter half on, half off him — but mostly off — his bare chest rising and falling deeply, dead to the world.

Probably not the best choice of words.

But I had the feeling he was going to wish he was dead to the world when he woke up and saw who stood in the open doorway a few feet away, holding a steaming cup of coffee and staring at the two of us in complete and utter shock.

“Mom,” I said, sitting bolt upright in bed. “This is not what it looks like.”

“Isn’t it?” my mother asked in an icy cold voice. She was wearing the fluffy bathrobe I’d given her for Mother’s Day. “Because I have the feeling it’s exactly what it looks like.”

I threw the comforter over John, as if, were he hidden from view, he would no longer exist. Perhaps he’d get the clue, wake up, and blink himself somewhere else. It would be the best thing that could happen.