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“You—” Solo begins.
He stops talking, too.
We are inches away from each other. If I lean forward, my nose will touch the hollow of his neck.
Somehow we are closer now.
He breathes out and I breathe in.
Closer. My breasts touch the top of his abdomen. A shudder goes through him.
Through me, too.
His fingers tremble as they touch my cheek. I swallow hard. There’s blood on his fingers, and now there’s some on the back of my neck because his hand is under my hair and we are no longer inches away, we’ve gone metric, we are millimeters away and he breathes and I breathe and we both make shaky sounds like we might both be dying but not yet.
Nothing has ever moved as slowly as his mouth coming down toward mine.
It’s a million years.
His lips touch mine.
So, some part of my brain thinks happily: That’s a kiss.
Oh yes, that is definitely a kiss.
Some years and decades and eons later we pull apart. And he says, “Now: We have to run.”
– 27 –
We race to my room and arrive panting, the two of us babbling to Aislin about beat-downs and crazy people and cover-ups.
“We have to get out of here!” I conclude.
Aislin cocks her head. “You have blood on your mouth.”
“What?” I can feel the furious blush. “I must have cut my lip.”
“Yeah. It’s not your blood, honey,” she says. She turns to Solo. “So, I guess I missed my chance with you?”
“Um…”
“Where are we running to?” Aislin asks. Not upset, mind you, just curious. As though fleeing from my own mother and her crazed minions is a perfectly normal, everyday occurrence.
“Just out of here,” Solo says. He touches the cut on his scalp and grimaces. “Do you still have the flash drive?”
I dig in my purse and produce the little device with the Apple logo.
The three of us look at it, sitting in my palm.
So small, so dangerous, so terrible.
“Good.” Solo nods tersely. “Hang on to it.”
I rush to pull on jeans, turning away to put on a bra and T-shirt. Only then do I realize that I’m facing a mirror.
“He didn’t look,” Aislin says. In a mystified voice she adds: “He really didn’t.”
“I have excellent peripheral vision,” Solo says, winking a blood-caked eye at Aislin.
