“Let’s sneak away,” I whispered, going on tiptoe to reach his ear.
He looked down at me, his fair eyebrows—one split in half—raising. “Out into the snow?”
I grinned. “You can keep me warm.”
He smiled back, doing a decent wolf impression, and we slipped past the trees and out into the darkness. The world—our world—might end tomorrow. But tonight I was going to live.
10
CASSIE
ANOTHER SLOW SONG CAME ON and we all groaned at its corny lyrics. Nate pressed me closer, and I loved the way he felt.
If only it could be like this forever, I thought dreamily. Not just me and Nate, but Becca and Tim, too. Sticking together. Living next door to each other. The four of us just seemed… right. Like we were linked. Supposed to be together. It was trust, I decided. We all had the ultimate trust in each other.
“Let’s go out where it’s dark,” he whispered in my ear.
“Why?” I asked, not wanting to move. “It’ll be cold out there.” I snuggled closer to him and let my eyes drift shut.
“I’ll keep you warm,” he promised, and took my arms from around his neck.
After the warm crush of bodies on the dance ground, the woods were super dark, oddly quiet, and, as I predicted, freezing. The cold caught my breath.
“I need my coat,” I said.
“Come here,” he said, and wrapped his coat around both of us. His chest was lean and hard, and his arms around me felt like steel bands. Had it been just this morning that I’d almost frozen to death, almost drowned?
Lowering his head, he kissed me. I tilted my head and opened my mouth, deepening our kiss, wanting this to never stop. A flame of happiness sparked into life in my heart and grew steadily. When was the last time I’d felt happy?
Maybe… maybe the last time had been before my dad had shot himself? That was more than a year ago. That was a long time to go between feelings of joy.
We ended up on the snowy ground, with Nate bearing the discomfort of the cold earth and me on top of him. I held his face in my hands and kissed him over and over, feeling his thick hair in my fingers, a ridged line of scar tissue on his skull from some fight.
Finally he pulled away, holding my face, looking at me. A thin shaft of moonlight wove through the dense trees and lit the side of his face, showing his beauty, the movie-star looks I’d always sneered at in high school.
“Tomorrow we’re going to get our assignments,” he said quietly, an intense expression on his face. “We don’t know where we’re going or what we’re gonna face. We don’t know if we’re coming back.”
I sat back, straddling his hips, keeping my hands on his chest, aware of his breathing. “We’ve been on this road for a year,” I said. “We’ve always known we might die. I mean, if there’s one thing the Crazy House taught us, it was that we were gonna die, and probably die young. But we’re prepared, and we’re alive and together now.”
He stroked his hands along my cheekbones, as if memorizing the feel of my face.
“Yeah,” he said, and then, “Cassie—I want to marry you. If we die tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, I want to know that we were married, that we belonged together. Forever.”
As soon as he said the M-word, I was shocked into stillness, my pre-kiss mouth open like a croaking frog. My brain had jammed, then whirled into frenzied activity as it processed this bizarre notion.
I hadn’t expected this. Slowly I let my gaze slide over his face until I could search his eyes, see if he was serious or just, you know, like, brain-damaged or something. Sure, people got married young in our cell, but…
My mind cleared. I leaned down and kissed him again. “Ask me later, on the other side.”
“I’m asking you now,” he said, a note of irritation in his voice.
“Then I’ll ask you later,” I told him.
“I want to feel connected,” he insisted.
I squirmed on his hips, seeing his eyes glaze for a second, and I grinned. “We can feel connected… if you want,” I said.
Much later, we stood up and brushed twigs and dirt and leaves off our clothes. I had an idea and took out the knife that was always with me. I flicked it open—it was seven inches of razor-sharp blade that I cleaned and honed almost every day.