“Go!” he whispered, and I didn’t need to be told twice.
The thought that someone was going to call our names any second now was right there in the back of my head. At least Damon—but last time I saw him, he’d been lying on the grass on his back, chewing on a straw, staring at the sky with his hands under his head. He couldn’t have seen us sneaking away, and Silas wasnotgoing to tell on us, that much I knew for sure.
Just like that, I was on the other side, and then March pushed himself through the gap, too, small leaves clinging to his hair and clothes. I laughed as I took them off him, and he laughed when he heard me laughing—then grabbed my face in his hand and kissed my lips. Once.Hard.
That my knees didn’t give was a miracle.
“Let’s go.”
The path on the other side was narrow and overgrown, winding downhill through tall grass and wildflowers. We walked fast, like we were kids sneaking out past bedtime, and neither of us spoke until we reached the road at the bottom of the hill. I didn’t think it important to askwherewe were going—no, I was perfectly content toneverknow, so long as I was with him.
That’s how strange my life had become so quickly.
The road ahead was cobbled, lined with hedgerows, wide, and there were carriages in the distance, too. March took us down to the middle, then slipped through a break in the hedges, which led us to the yard of another house, twice the size of Vesta’s.
I had my other hand in front of my mouth to stop from laughing as we shot across the neatly trimmed grass, and all the way to the other side—while people inside the house saw us.
A woman had been by the window, and she’d been talking to someone, and she’d stopped and stared at us when she saw us running with her mouth open, but we didn’t wait around to see if she’d come out.
We ran through another two yards like that, and I was starting to suspect March had no idea where we were going—and I had no trouble with that at all, mind you—but then we jumped over the wooden fence of the last house, and we were on a wide cobbled road again, different from the last.
This one had larger buildings to the sides in the distance—and carriages in front of it. Lots of carriages being pulled by single horses, most white.
“What isthat?” I finally whispered, only because I was curious.
“Delivery carts.” March pulled at my hand. “I knew they would be here somewhere. Let’s go!”
He took us past houses for a little bit until we noticed one of the carriages was coming our way.
Then March stopped again, pushed me back against the tree near the gate of someone’s house.
I laughed—how could I not? So unpredictable, sointense,and I adored it. Especially when we were chest to chest like that, and he was looking down at me like I was all the wonders of the world combined.
We were like different people, March and I. We’d changed so much in the handful of hours we’d spent alone in that room with the glass floor. We’d made something new, something that was mine. Andhis.
Us, right now, right here, nobody else’s.
“What are you doing?” I breathed because he just kept looking at me like that, and my toes couldn’t curl more than they already were, and my heart couldn’t beat any faster without breaking out of me for real.
“You have forty-eight freckles on your face, and I can’t seem to decide which is my favorite yet,” March said.
The carriage was already close, and the sound of the hooves hitting the ground and the driver whistling filled my ears, but all I could really hear was him.
Forty-eight.Something about that number.
Now I wanted to run to a mirror and count them myself.
My mouth opened, but no word came to mind.
March leaned in a little closer. “You ready?”
I didn’t get to ask what for. I didn’t even get to understand what he was asking me properly, not when he wasstanding so close to me like that. But the next moment, my hand was in his again, and the carriage had just passed us, and March pulled me after it.
My other hand was over my mouth again as we jogged behind it, and there weremorecarriages behind us, but they were too far away to see (I hoped). Because by now I knew what March was going to do.
I knew even before he grabbed the back rail of the cart and swung himself up onto the bed in one smooth motion, letting go of my hand.
Then he reached down for me.
