“I slept shockingly well,” Gus said, stretching like a cat. He arched his back, which pressed his stomach up against me. “Well, after the first bit, anyway.”
“I’m glad.”
“I didn’t, uh, dream what happened after my nightmare, right?”
He looked so nervous, which added a new layer to my cake of self-loathing. I never should have let things get this far, because now I was going to have to hurt his feelings.
“No,” I said, wanting to run as far as I could away from this bed, and from him, and from my entire life. “No, you didn’t dream it.”
“Good.” Gus smiled and it broke my heart. “Good.”
“We should get dressed. Get back to the house. I’m sure Daisy’s texted me a million times by now, if my phone hasn’t already died.”
“We could just let her wait,” Gus said, smiling around his bit lip. “Enjoy being here a little longer.”
Dammit.
“I have work to do.”
I threw off the covers, exposing us both to the cold, so that I’d have no choice but to get up. My face heated as I took in the scene before me, my clothes scattered wildly across the floor. I’d been in far too much of a rush last night to think about keeping them neat.
I pulled my boxers on and told myself not to look at Gus as he got out of bed and went to the hearth to collect his clothes. I succeeded for all of thirty seconds—long enough for him to get his pants on, but nothing more—before I turned and drank in the sight of his lean back, shoulder blades kissed by the morning sun.
I blinked.
“Did you know you have a tattoo?” I asked without thinking.
“I—what?”
“A tattoo. On your back.” I pointed, as though he could see it. “Your left shoulder.”
“Really?” Gus craned his neck, trying to get a look at it. It was such a goofy, automatic response, and I couldn’t help laughing.
“You can’t see it. The angle’s wrong.”
“No fair. Describe it to me.”
I pressed my lips together, thinking. “It’s a symbol of some kind. Kind of like a little pi sign. The math thing, not the dessert.”
Gus wrinkled his nose. “Gross. I hope that doesn’t mean I’m a math nerd in real life.”
I chuckled. “I don’t think so. It isn’t actually a pi sign, that’s just the closest thing I can think of. It’s got a little apostrophe to one side, though. And the top doesn’t squiggle the right way. I’ll draw it in the snow when we get outside.”
I made Gus wear my parka, double-checked that the coals in the fireplace were truly dead, and we stepped outside into a glittering winter morning.
The sun shone down on a landscape made new by the blanket of snow that covered everything. Tree branches sparkled with icicles, and bushes bent low with the weight of the snow piled on them. Deer tracks crossed in front of the hut, only six feet away from the door, and the air had that warm, blue scent of promises and freedom.
“It’s like something out of a fairytale,” Gus said as a cardinal winged by, a flash of red against the bright white landscape.
I found myself nodding. “It really is.”
It had that special quiet you only get on snowy mornings, all sounds muffled in a world not yet awake. A stray breeze caressed my cheek, and I wished, just for a moment, that I could freeze time and live in this moment forever. Freedom and peace and happiness, shared with someone I—well, someone I’d come to care about.
But Gus would have to go back to the real world someday. And so would I.
He turned and smiled, and honestly, it wasn’t fair for the universe to have produced someone like him--someone who glowed from the inside, like an ember lit up his heart. How could he look so happy, given everything that had happened to him?
How could I feel so happy with him?
I cleared my throat and looked away, afraid he might see more than I meant him to in my eyes. I trampled through the snow until I reached a drift about waist-high, and traced the pattern of his tattoo onto the surface. A little apostrophe, and then a shape that looked like one of the arches at Stonehenge.
“Mean anything to you?” I asked, looking over my shoulder.
Gus’s eyes went wide. “It’s a chai.” He sounded surprised. “Wait. How do I know that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what a chai is.” I pronounced the