He looked back at me. “I missed you too.”
All I wanted was to kiss him, to cling to him, but my stomach still hurt. “Are you still mad at me?”
He closed the space between us. “No.”
“Why were you mad at me?” I inched forward.
He stroked his fingers along my temple and behind my ear. “I didn’t want to get hurt.”
“I don’t understand.” But even so, the knots in my stomach were slowing coming undone.
He smiled wryly. “Maybe I’ll explain someday.”
And then our mouths met, and it was like we were erasing all the time and distance apart. He was warm and strong and right under my hands, and as we kissed the horrible tension of the last week faded away and everything made sense again.
We sat near the edge of the bluff, our legs pressed together, his arm around me. His voice had the cadence of music. “Tell me about Kilkarten.”
I sighed. “What if I was wrong? How can I have been so wrong?”
“You can’t know yet. It’s only been two weeks.”
“But what if there’s nothing?”
“Then you try again. You start over somewhere else.”
A strangled laugh came out. “How can I do that?”
He stretched his legs out before him. “I do it every year.”
It took me a moment to process what he meant. “But that’s different.”
“No, it’s not. I know exactly how it feels to want something so badly, and to fail and have to start over again. And again. To keep going even when you’re losing.”
I turned, slightly worried for him. “But it’s not your fault if you lose.”
“Sometimes it is. And it’s my career on the line. My reputation. And I have thousands of people watching. Counting on me. Hoping I’ll fail.”
“You shouldn’t carry that whole weight on your shoulders. It should be the whole team.”
“Natalie.” He shifted to face me. The moon brightened his hair to cold fire. “You shouldn’t be taking this completely on yourself, either.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if there’s nothing.” To my embarrassment, my voice cracked and I started to sniff. “I’m sorry.” I pressed my hand to my nose and mouth, and then when that wasn’t enough, I pulled up my knees as though that would pull in my emotions. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’re stressed out.” He placed an arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him. His warmth seeped into me and edged out the damp air. “It’s okay.”
Was it? It didn’t get things done. Oh, it was useful enough as a way to release stress, but indulging in long crying jags always seemed pointless, when I could instead be working on how to solve the problem. “I don’t cry.”
He sounded wry. “So you’re not human?”
I laughed, and then pressed my hand to my head. “I have such a headache.”
“That’s what happens when you spend so much time trying not to cry.”
I flicked my eyes toward him. “And what would you know about that? Spend a lot of time bottling down tears?”
He leaned his head back, offering me a clear, strong profile.
I breathed out a long sigh. “No, but it’s the same when you’re bottling any emotion, isn’t it? And you keep your anger wrapped up in a charming smile.”
“No more than your anxieties are bow-tied with laughter.”
He had me. I shrugged. “Why cry when you can laugh?”
“Why yell when you can grin?”
We both stared up. “You think we’re kind of fucked up?”
“Utterly.”
I started laughing, and he started laughing, and then we were kissing in the cold night air. He twisted his upper body over mine, and I fell down into the grass, pricks of moisture chilling my arms until Mike’s hands swept over them.
We lay there, me curled into him. We watched the stars brighten. “I’ve spent my entire life thinking I knew what I wanted to do. I’m beginning to think I was wrong, and that scares me. It scares me to think that I might have to go to the conference and admit that there is no Ivernis, and Dr. Ceile was right and I’m just a dreamer.”
“Natalie. None of us are perfect. And you shouldn’t be scared at the conference. If there’s no site here, and you’re able to admit that without clinging to Ivernis—that’s brave. And I’ll come. So you can just pretend you’re telling me, and I’m not going to judge or care, I’ll just want to hear what you know.”
“Really?”
“I promise.”
I wanted Ivernis to be real so badly. I wanted it for so many reasons and so many people, and I’d wanted it for so many years. I wanted to find Ivernis even more when the world or Ceile or my parents told me it was impossible.
But it was nice—it was wonderful—to have someone whose focus wasn’t tied up in the site, but that simply wanted me to be happy
So I leaned over and kissed him.
“Goal!”
The ball tumbled past the posts and made a dive for the hill beyond. Finn, the conscripted goalie, watched it with some regret and more disdain. I cheered and threw my arms around Anna, who let out a squeal that could have been at her perfect kick, but probably came as protest to my sweaty hug.
I jogged over to the sidelines, swapping out with Anka for the last three minutes of play, and scooped up my water bottle, chugging it down as the clock ran out. Twelve to seven, more than enough to make Mike scowl like a child when he joined me at the sides. “Don’t be such a baby,” I called, and then undermined that with, “Losers weepers!”
“You didn’t find anything!” he shot back.
I did a small victory jig. “I found a winning score.”
He reached out and pulled me toward him. “That’s what you call scoring?”
I wanted to kiss him until his eyes shut all the way. “You’re just trying to distract me because you’re a sore loser.”
“Just try me in real football,” he grumbled, and then our lips touched.
I pulled back and swished the rest of my water over him.
He let out a cry, even though I knew it had to feel nice after an afternoon of running. I grinned and darted backward as he reached for me, and then sprinted full force across the field.
Mike tackled me—of course he did—but twisted so he took the brunt of the fall and cushioned my body. The impact didn’t even deter him, because a second after, he rolled over and pinned me to the ground.
He blocked out the sky. All red and gold and laughter, and my scowl had no heat. “No fair.”
He braced his arms on the ground, keeping bare inches between our bodies. “Who said I was trying to play fair?”
“Um...” I kept getting distracted by the light in his eyes. “Fair is good.”
“Scoring’s better.”
If this started, it wasn’t going to end, and if I turned my head I could see Jeremy’s shoes. I hooked Mike’s ankle and bucked him off me.
He cracked a smile as he smacked into the grass. “Damn. You’re strong.”
“I know. That was mostly leverage, though.” I rolled off him and offered him a hand up. “I’m secretly a spy.”
Laughing and teasing, we trooped over to the pub, a hot mess of bodies and sweat that Finn looked relieved to not have to handle for once. Anna promptly sat down in his line of vision and started chatting with the other teenagers she’d befriended.
It had been good to have a day of activity that wasn’t just digging through nothing. For the past five days, we’d labored intensely for zero results. We dug. We sifted. We opened new units. The frown lines deepened around Jeremy’s mouth. Grace and Duncan looked more and more dissatisfied. And I felt guilty.