She laughed. “Not tonight you don’t.”
“Oh come on. I’ll be on the couch; you won’t have to see.”
“You are so wrong,” she said, turning her face away to look back up at the sky.
I only joked because I felt like she was getting too close, because part of me wanted to tell her my secrets, but I knew I couldn’t. I hadn’t wanted to lose the moment.
“Hey,” I said, reaching out my hand to her. She caught it in hers and fit our fingers together. Her gloved hand against my bare one.
“Look,” she said quietly. “They’re fading.”
I glanced up at the sky at the vanishing northern lights. We both rolled so we were once again on our backs, staring up at the endless sky. Except this time our bodies were closer; this time we were pressed together and our hands intertwined. We watched the colors until they were barely a memory, until they were almost completely faded away.
Something in me felt lonely watching them go… like the disappearing lights represented the loss of something more. Something important.
We lay there long after the sky turned black and we could see the stars. Eventually, we got up, our hands no longer touching. And as we walked away I realized what I lost.
This moment.
This chance.
Maybe if I’d said something more, admitted just one of my secrets, something might have changed.
But I hadn’t and now it was gone.
Nothing had changed.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Secret - Something kept hidden from others or known only to oneself or to a few.”
Piper
He wanted to know my secrets. I almost told him. I almost told him everything. Lying out there in the Alaskan snow hadn’t been cold. It was warm. We’d never been that close before. Sure, I always felt a little pull between us, but tonight it seemed stronger. I felt like I might get a glimpse of the man he seemed to hide.
I almost admitted my secrets. I thought about it. But I knew in that moment I wouldn’t be able to stop at one. They all would’ve come tumbling out of my mouth. The way he looked at me through the dark… I could feel his stare. And even though my hands were gloved, I swear I could feel the heat of his skin against mine.
For a moment, when he touched my cheek, I thought he might kiss me, lay his lips upon mine, and that the northern lights would’ve become just background to the show of colors and feelings swirling within me.
But something held him back. Just as something held me back.
I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I wanted to find it. I wanted to erase it so the only thing between us was the beating of our hearts and the barrier of our skin.
I knew what held me back was the missing pieces of the puzzle that was Dex, but the more I got to know him, the harder it was to remember I was trying to piece him together. I was beginning not to care about the things I didn’t know. I was beginning to only think about the things I did know.
He said he felt as if he were competing with the man who died. That might have been true in the beginning, but now the tides were turning. What Dex didn’t seem to realize was that everything else was beginning to have to compete with him.
And he was winning.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Asphyxiation - the condition of being deprived of oxygen (as by having breathing stopped).”
Dex
That night I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t because I was in a new place. I’d slept in far worse places before. It was because of her. She was one room away, nothing separating us but drywall and paint. Her light went out hours ago and I knew she was sound asleep, but still, her presence unsettled me.
How could one girl have so effectively tied me up in knots? Never in all my life had anyone gotten under my skin like this. And that’s where she was. Somehow she wiggled her way beneath the surface; she wormed her way into my mind.
