Afterward, we headed into my room, and I was just reaching for the light switch when Emma stopped me.
“Wait, what is that?” she said, wandering toward my bed. She paused just beside it and looked up. “Oh, wow.”
Right above her was the large skylight I’d had installed two years ago to brighten the room. It doubled as a stargazing window, perfect because this far out in the boonies, there was hardly any light pollution. I joined Emma and looked up to see the Star-Crossed Lovers perfectly framed within the glass, so close now they were almost touching.
“I almost forgot about them,” she said. “Wait, if they’re about to meet, then”—she looked to me—“is it Valentine’s Day?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Uh. Yeah.”
“He buried me on Valentine’s Day?”
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled, wincing.
She plopped down on the edge of the mattress, looking like a marionette whose strings had been cut. “Damn, hereallyhated me.”
“Impossible,” I said, sitting beside her. “He actually hates himself. Men like him can never face their own flaws, so you, with all your light and laughter and love, became the target of that self-hatred.”
She looked over at me. “Why are you so wonderful?”
“I’m not. I’m decent, at best. The bar, as we’ve already established, is just in hell.”
She leaned forward, her hands framing my face. “No. You, Noah Evans, are my hero. Youliterallysaved me tonight.” She shook my face, looking slightly deranged. “Accept my praise, damn it.”
I chuckled and pulled free. “All right, all right.”
Her gaze went back to the skylight. “Can we sit and watch them for a while instead of TV?”
“Sure, we can.”
She crawled toward the headboard, tripping over her oversize clothing. When she was settled against the pillows, she patted the spot beside her in invitation. “It’s even better from this angle.”
Yup, a beautiful woman in my bed had just said that sentence to me, so of course my mind tried to turn it into something dirty. I strangled the thought before it could fully form and crawled up the mattress next to her. She was right,the view was better from here, especially when you sank down low and rested your head against the pillows.
“When was the last time this happened?” I asked. “Wasn’t it on another Valentine’s Day?”
“Yes, in 1986. The astronomers claimed it wasn’t supposed to happen again, but the universe had other plans, and now the Star-Crossed Lovers are getting their second chance at love,” she said, quoting the lines that had been continuously repeated across the internet in the months leading up to this. Coming from her, they sounded less cheesy and more romantic. Maybe it was her tone, soft, reverent, like even after all she’d been through, she still believed in love.
She settled deeper into the pillows at my side, turning a little toward me. “Can you ...”
I waited a beat for her to finish the sentence, but she shook her head. “Can I what?”
“Never mind, it’s stupid.”
“Say it anyway, so I can make fun of you.”
She poked my side. “Well, I’m definitely not now.”
“Say iiiiiit,” I urged. “Say it, say it, say it, I’m the youngest child, I can keep this up all night, say it, say it, say it, say—”
“I was going to ask you to hold me.”
I shut up.
She dropped her head back, closing her eyes. “Go ahead. Tell me how sad and desperate I am.”
“I would never.”
She rolled her head sideways, looking at me in the darkness, her damp hair spilling around her, full lips quirked in a rueful grin. “No one’s touched me in almost a year. Not anything more than a brief hug, at least, and I just ... I think I’m touch starved. I must be, because after everything that happened tonight, all I can think about right now was how good it felt to be in your arms.”
