“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 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.