39. Lily
LILY
“Lily!”
She turned, flinching at her name, poised to jackrabbit into the woods where she could lose them.
Sebastian Allsaires ran down the hill where they had held almost three hundred graduations, his voluminous coat flapping behind him like a pair of demonic wings.
She would have known him from his gait, smooth even over the steep and slick terrain.
She would have known him from his voice alone; from his shadow in the dark.
He was not real.
He was right there, racing toward her, right when she’d realized she needed him.
Lily stopped pacing and gripped the railing of the bridge even though it was so cold it burned against her skin.
Her breath came in fast, shuddering puffs.
She’d escaped the Metaphysics building only minutes ago, had skidded down the hill and hidden, shivering, in the copse of trees along the gravel path, waiting for them to run after her, but they hadn’t come.
Trying to make sense of it, she’d found herself on the bridge over the dam, her mind as frantic as her pulse. She’d just barely started to come to her senses when she heard her name.
“Lily!” he shouted again as his tall boots tossed up gravel behind him.
Then he was there, in front of her, chest heaving, hair wild, eyes blazing even in the dark, jaw a catch of shadows.
His breath unfolded in the air, and she wondered how he had so much of it inside him.
He stood, unmoving except for his ribs rising and falling, pinning her with a look she couldn’t begin to understand.
“Sebastian?” She stepped toward him, the moon brilliant in her periphery.
He kissed her.
Her mouth was open to say something she immediately forgot, and her first emotion was shock at the sensation of his lips against hers—their warmth and lushness.
For a second she froze, terrified of doing something that would belie her inexperience, but then his palm found the flat of her back, cupped the wing of her shoulder blade through her shirt, and she forgot everything she’d ever known.
She pressed into the kiss, leaning onto tiptoes, finding herself amazed at the way their profiles fit together.
His forehead bumped against hers, and when he opened his mouth, she could taste honey and spice on his breath.
His fingers crept up her neck, stirring her hair, shivering her nerves. She was being unmade.
He pulled away first, and all of the thoughts she’d unlearned in the previous twenty seconds came flooding back. She flinched away from him and stared, trying to read him, trying to find the catch. There was always a catch.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped, pressing one flounce-cuffed wrist to his forehead. “I should have asked first.”
“Is this real?” She thought of every ’90s rom-com, every time she’d been asked on a date as a prank, Conrad Hawleyhurst saying that Tripp Braithwhite wanted to fuck her.
He looked stricken, taking a step toward her. “Lily.” Her name sounded different when he said it. Like it was something ancient and precious, like it was Magic. “It’s real. This is real.”
More than anything, she wanted to believe him. More than anything, she couldn’t. She clutched the railing, her knuckles blanching, wishing she could crush the steel into nothing. She would not cry in front of him.
She was going to cry in front of him.
He placed a hand on her injured wrist and she jerked to look at him. He stepped backward then, his eyes all shock at the darkness they saw in hers.
“Lily?”
“What about Gemma?” She forced the words between her teeth, only partially because she was freezing.
“Gemma?” He looked perplexed for a moment. “It’s over.”
“When?”
He shook his cuffs to reveal his watch. “Ten minutes ago?”
She stared out at the lake, still and black except where the moon hit it. Her anger was fading, but she needed to stoke it, keep up her walls. He stepped in, following her gaze, but she didn’t move away.
“I…that letter.”
She closed her eyes, exhaling everything that she’d been holding onto. That letter. A tear, traitorous, slipped between her lashes.
“I’ve been so stupid, Lily.” He tugged her to face him. “Could you ever forgive my idiocy?”
In that moment, she knew.
She grabbed him by the lapels of his ridiculous coat and pulled his mouth into hers.
The second kiss was better because it wasn’t a surprise.
Her hands traced their way up his shoulders, around his neck, and he held her, hitching her up against the railing with one arm so she didn’t have to strain to reach him.
He was so warm under her hands, his hair softer than she’d imagined it.
She breathed in the familiar scent of his sweat, the pleasant sharpness of his aftershave soaked into the wool of his coat as it scratched along her jaw.
They were sliding together, twin planets falling into orbit around the same sun.
The heat of him thawed her enough to remember she was freezing, enough that she didn’t care.
It warmed her mouth enough to feel the swelling bruise, but the pain only strengthened the joy that burst through her in effervescent pops and shivers.
Gently, his tongue traced her lip and stopped. He drew back, gasping. “You’re bleeding.”
She brought an exploratory finger to her lip and it came away a darker black. Sebastian held her by the biceps as he tried to study her face in the shadows.
“You’re shaking!”
When she looked down, she saw it was true. Her teeth ground together, involuntarily.
“Where’s your jacket? You must be freezing.”
“I’m fine—” she chattered out, but he was already sliding out of his coat, whipping it around her shoulders, enveloping her in its residual warmth and worsted-wool embrace.
He tugged the collar up tight around her chin, dipping his fingers beneath it to free her hair.
The gesture nearly brought her to her knees and stole her breath away with its tenderness.
He held her in place by the lapels, either unable or unwilling to let her go.
“What happened?” he demanded softly.
As the breeze stirred his hair, rippled through his shirt, and the moonlight broke across his shoulders, she thought, momentarily, that he was a far more dashing Byron than the real one could ever possibly have been.
She forced her gaze up, meeting his eyes.
All she wanted was to remain in the bubble of the moment that had already passed.
She pressed her lips together to wet them and winced. The pain was coming back.
“Hawleyhurst,” she whispered. “He and Braithwhite ambushed me in the Metaphysics Library.”
“Hawleyhurst.” It wasn’t a question; it was a revelation.
“They stole my notes. They knew—they knew we were working on it. They must have been watching us for weeks.” The hysteria she’d pushed off in escaping, that Sebastian had forestalled with his arrival and his mouth, returned.
She shivered, even though his coat was like a warm lead blanket around her shoulders. “I should have…I—”
Seb shushed her, pulling her against him, his fingers pressed against the back of her head. With her ear against his chest, she could hear his heart thundering in his ribs. When she could speak again, she pulled away.
“They were invisible or something. I don’t know how.”
He stared at her. “Tell me.”
“I figured it out just before they came in. They cut the lights and grabbed me.”
Seb’s voice was very flat as he said, “He did this. Hawleyhurst?”
Lily’s chin jerked in a nod.
He went very still then, his hand clutching hers so tightly she had to grit her teeth.
Whatever had shattered between the two of them was so much more than a broken relationship, she realized, as she studied his face.
His jaw was a knife in the darkness, the muscles of his neck corded with tension.
His expression was one of black fury, and in the depths of it lurked a promise of violence.
“Seb.” She jerked him, literally, out of his thoughts. “I don’t need the notes.”
“That’s not important.” He shook his head. “We need to go back, get your things, if they’re still there—”
“No, it is important!”
He blinked at her.
“Tomorrow’s the full moon.” She watched the understanding settle on his face. “If we want to make progress before the next clue goes out to everyone, and before they can do anything with our notes, we need to move now. Tonight.”
“Tonight?” Then, “Tonight. Okay. Yeah.” He grinned at her then with wild abandon. “Fuck it, let’s go.”