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 still, 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.
