I got to my feet, preparing to clear away our plates, when a sudden bright light streaked past the kitchen window. My head pivoted towards it, just in time to see another blaze of light follow the path of the first.
Josh moved rapidly to stand directly behind me. I could feel the heat of his body as he stepped even closer to peer through the window. When his hand rested lightly on my shoulder, a voice inmy head told me to step away, while another – just as strong – told me to lean back against him.
I did neither, because with unexpected urgency Josh suddenly said, ‘Quick, get your coat. It’s a meteor shower.’
I did as he asked and shrugged into my coat. I couldn’t find my gloves, but that didn’t matter because Josh took my hand as we descended the cabin’s snow-dusted steps, and there was a heat that pulsed through him that warmed me like a flame.
‘Does this happen often?’ I asked, my gaze fixed skywards as the white trails of light shot across a sky clearer than any I’d seen before.
‘It’s happened a couple of times since I’ve been here, but never this bright or vibrant.’
It was hard not to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ as though we were at a fireworks display. My neck was aching from looking upwards, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the lights streaking across the inky black sky. Josh’s hand was still linked with mine as we stood side by side, watching Nature at her most miraculous. The realisation that there was no one alive I’d rather share this experience with shocked me a little.
‘It’s like they’ve come out tonight to say goodbye to you,’ Josh said, his voice huskier than usual.
It was the most romantic thing anyone had said to me in a really long time. Perhaps that’s why my eyes suddenly started to sting, or maybe it was just from the intensity of staring for so long at the meteors.
I was searching for the right reply when suddenly the lights were extinguished, not because they were done, but because Josh was now standing in front of me, so close that the vapour of his breath mingled with mine.
His head was slowly descending, so cautiously that I knew he was giving me time to stop this madness. In a way I think healmostwantedme to stop it. But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I wanted him to kiss me every bit as much as I’d done that very first time in the sycamore tree.
My lips parted in a silent invitation. His mouth and tongue were tentative, gentle almost, but mine weren’t. They were too busy saying all the things I’d never found the courage to voice and that he wouldn’t want to hear even if I had.
He was holding back, I knew that, so I curled my fingers into his shoulders, and then suddenly the fireworks shooting across the sky were nothing compared to those igniting between us. Josh crushed me against him, until every plane of his body was pressed into me. I clung to him as desire, white-hot and molten, travelled through my veins.
I had dreaded my first kiss after Adam. I’d been terrified it would disgust me, or worse, remind me of all that I had lost and somehow erase his memory. But Josh’s kiss wasn’t like that. It was new and old at the same time. I’d kissed him when he was a boy and then a man, before I’d even known there was an Adam in this world. My body had known and still remembered Josh, and he occupied an entirely different place in my soul than the husband who I had loved – who Istillloved. It was strange to realise that Josh’s kiss was theonly oneafter Adam’s that wouldn’t destroy me.
Which made it all the worse when I felt him gently remove my hands from his shoulders. The cold night air chilled me as he created a void as wide as a canyon between us. My eyes were still dazed with the desire I had given in to. They took a while to clear and finally focus on the face before me, that reflected none of the passion I know he’d been feeling just moments before.
He took yet another step backwards, staggering as though slightly drunk.
‘I’m so sorry, Lily. I should never have done that.’
My lips still felt swollen from the pressure of his mouth against them, and perhaps that’s why I couldn’t persuade them to frame a denial. Or maybe it was the sudden icy shock of his rejection.
‘I guess the moment got away from me. The lights, the memories, knowing you’re going soon ...’
A pain, like a knife blade, slid through my ribs, on its way to my heart.
‘You kissed me because I’m leaving?’
His brow furrowed and his eyes were filled with confusion. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I just lost control for a moment. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’ He lifted his hands in a gesture of apology, but to me it looked an awful lot like he was warding me off. ‘I shouldn’t have done it. It isn’t my place to kiss you. I—’
‘It. Isn’t. Your. Place?’ Each word felt like it had been severed by a sword.
‘No. Of course it isn’t.’
He was so busy digging himself into a hole, he didn’t appear to have noticed I hadn’t wanted him to stop kissing me.
I slowly shook my head, and the action seemed to make things even worse.
‘For Christ’s sake, Lily. I’m trying to apologise here. Can’t you just let me say I’m sorry and let’s move past this.’
The ice on the ground was nothing compared to the ring that was slowly freezing around my heart.
‘That’s what you want to do? To forget this ever happened?’
‘I do,’ he said, as solemnly as a wedding vow.
