I wanted to kiss her again, so badly, I wanted more of her, but instead, we held hands, our heads tipped back, and together we slowly turned, looking up into the infinity. It was like falling, or like flying.
I was torn between wanting to rush out of this moment, toward that more, and wanting to stay in it, living in a state of constant anticipation and constant safety. As soon as we stepped back into the house, the hunt of the wolves would become a real thing again, and I wasn’t ready.
Grace, out of the blue, asked, “Sam, are you going to marry me?”
I jerked, looking over at her, but she was still gazing up into the stars as if she’d merely asked about the weather. Her eyes, however, had a sort of hard, squinty look about them that belied the nonchalant sound of her voice.
I didn’t know what she expected me to say. I felt like laughing out loud. Because I realized all in a rush that of course she was right — yes, the woods would claim her for the cold months, but she wasn’t dying; I hadn’t lost her for good. And I had her right here, now. In comparison, everything else seemed small, manageable, secondary.
Suddenly the world seemed like a promising, friendly place. Suddenly I saw the future, and it was a place I wanted to be.
I realized that Grace was still waiting for an answer. I pulled her closer, until we were nose to nose under the northern lights. “Are you asking?” I said.
“Just clarifying,” Grace replied. But she was smiling, a tiny, genuine smile, because she had already read my thoughts. By her temple, little flyaway blond hairs drifted in the breeze; they looked like they must tickle, but she didn’t twitch. “I mean, instead of living in sin.”
And then I did laugh, even though the future was a dangerous place, because I loved her, and she loved me, and the world was beautiful and awash with pink light around us.
She kissed me, very lightly. “Say okay.” She was starting to shiver.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal.”
It felt like a physical thing, held in my hands.
“Do you really mean it?” she asked. “Don’t say it if you don’t really mean it.”
My voice didn’t sound as earnest as I felt. “I really mean it.”
“Okay,” Grace said, and just like that, she seemed content and solid, certain of my affections. She gave a little sigh and rearranged our hands so that our fingers were intertwined. “Now you can take me home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
• SAM •
Back at home, Grace fell into my bed and asleep at about the same moment, and I envied her easy friendship with slumber. She lay motionless in the eerie, deathlike sleep of the exhausted. I couldn’t join her; everything inside me was awake. My mind was on continuous playback, giving me the events of the day again and again, until they seemed like one long creation, impossible to pull apart into separate minutes.
So I left her upstairs and made my soft way downstairs. In the kitchen, I dug through my pocket to drop my car keys on the counter. It seemed wrong that the kitchen looked the same. Everything should’ve looked different after tonight. A television humming upstairs was the only indication that Cole was in residence; I was glad for the solitude. I was filled with so much happiness and sadness that I couldn’t think of speaking. I could still feel the shape of Grace’s face pressed into my neck and see her face when she gazed up at the stars, waiting for my answer. I wasn’t ready, yet, to dilute that by speaking out loud.
Instead, I sloughed off my jacket and went to the living room — Cole had left this television on, too, though it was muted, so I switched it off and found my guitar where I’d left it leaning against the armchair. The body of it was a bit grubby from being outside; there was a new nick in the finish where either Cole or I had been too careless with it.
Sorry, I thought, because I still didn’t want to speak out loud. I picked the strings softly; the change in temperature from outside to inside had put it a little bit out of tune, but not as much as I would have thought. It was still playable, though I took the moment to make it perfect. I put the strap over my head, familiar and easy as