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“What’s that symbol mean?”
I jumped at the sound of Liam’s voice. He was standing right behind me.
“You scared me!” I yelped. “I didn’t hear you come down.”
“You were pretty engrossed,” he replied, tilting his chin toward the screen. “What does it mean? Is it a math symbol? Paul was a math person, right?”
“You know it’s not polite to read other people’s emails,” I said, more testily than I’d meant to.
Liam flinched. “I didn’t think we had secrets from each other. I thought…” He looked again at the screen and a look of understanding crossed his face. His jaw muscle clenched. “I see now. It’s supposed to represent a heart. Is that his idea of romance? Sending you a heart cobbled together of signs and numbers?”
“He just wanted to make sure I was okay,” I said, ignoring his critique of Paul’s heart. Truth was, I’d always thought the heart emoticon was a little goofy, but I didn’t like the idea oflaughing at Paul with Liam. It seemed disloyal—and petty of Liam.
“And are you?” Liam asked, narrowing his eyes at me. “Okay?”
“Of course I’m okay,” I replied. “I guess maybe I just need a little…space.”
Liam blanched and looked away. “Space? I see. Well, I can give you that.”
He left the room so quickly it was as if he’d vanished. I could hear him pounding up the stairs, though. If only he’d made that much noise when he’d come down before—but I shouldn’t have to hide an email from an ex-boyfriend. He was being ridiculous, I told myself as I heard him thumping down the stairs. And if he was this possessive after a week together, what would he be like in a long-term relationship?
The sound of the front door opening made something hurt inside my chest. Was he really going to storm out without saying good-bye?
What a baby, I told myself, gripping the seat of my chair with my hands to keep from running to the door.
I was still listening for the door to close when he appeared at the kitchen door. I let out my breath and unclenched my hands to wipe away a tear before he saw it, but he was at my side, kneeling and kissing the tear away, telling me he was sorry, before my hand could reach my face.
“I am such an idiot,” he said, lifting me from the chair and pushing me onto the kitchen table—and closing the laptop on Paul’s suddenly inadequate heart cobbled together of signs and numbers.
Liam was penitent all that day. He disappeared for a while, telling me that he was giving me my “space.” When he got back, just before dusk, he said he had a surprise for New Year’s Eve. He got out our borrowed skis and told me to follow him.Instead of taking one of the trails we had skied before, he set off down the path that led to the honeysuckle thicket. We hadn’t gone this way—and neither had anyone else. The snow was undisturbed, crusted on top with a sugary glaze that crackled as Liam broke the surface with his skis. I followed in his tracks, glancing nervously into the thicket on either side. Somewhere in this thicket was the door to Faerie, and it was still open—if only a crack—until midnight tonight. Wouldn’t the creatures who had come through on the Solstice be going back tonight? What if we got between them and the door? What if, somehow, we went through the door?
“Hey,” I called to Liam, “it’s getting dark. Don’t you think we should head back? We could get lost.”
“We can’t get lost,” he called back over his shoulder without stopping. “We just have to follow our tracks back.”
We skied on, Liam going so fast that I broke a sweat keeping up with him. The last thing I wanted was to lose sight of him and find myself alone in these woods in the dark. But as the light began to fade from the sky, turning first clear lavender tinged with mauve, I was distracted by how beautiful the woods were at this time of day. The snow, reflecting the fading light, took on an opalescent sheen. The last light caught in the net of tangled honeysuckle and hung there heavy as dusky grapes in a net. I could feel the weight of that purple light, hanging on the verge of night and then spilling over, casting violet shadows on the frozen crust. Just as the last light faded, the narrow path ended and we came into a clearing. Liam had moved to one side, side stepping with his skis so that I could stop at the edge of the clearing without disturbing the surface of the snow.
It was a perfect circle. Branches of the sprawling shrubs arched overhead, forming a ribbed vault. At the opposite side from where we stood, two trees leaned together, making a narrow arch. Like a doorway.
“I found this place before the blizzard and thought it would look perfect in the snow. Look…”
He pointed toward the opening in the trees and for a moment I thought, something is coming.
But somethingwascoming through the door. The gap between the trees filled with white light, cold and pure as the moonlight that had carried the incubus across my bedroom floor to me. I suddenly felt afraid, but more for Liam than myself. I turned to him. His face was so still and white that for a moment I had a presentiment of his death. This is what he’d look like dead, I thought, and felt a pain that seemed to cleave me in two. I reached for him…and saw that my hands were white, too.
I turned back and saw that somethinghadcome through the door. The full moon was rising directly in the gap between the trees, spilling its light into the clearing and turning the circle of snow into a silver disk—a mirror into which the moon gazed and fell in love with its own reflection.
“It’s beautiful…” I said, turning back to Liam, but fell silent when I saw his face. “Liam, what is it?”
“I wanted to bring you here because I knew how beautiful it would be tonight with the snow and the full moon…that it would be perfect, just as this last week has been…or at least until I acted so stupidly today. But I know it’s all going to change once the new year starts and we go back to work and everyone comes back to Fairwick. It won’t be the same.”
I started to tell him that it would, that nothing had to change, but I knew he was right. “I’ve been afraid of that, too,” I said instead.
He took my hand. “You have?”
I nodded and he put his arm around me—as best as he could with both of us standing still in our skis.
“This sucks,” he said.
