“That’s what you get for scaring the hell out of me,” said Zoe. “By the way, if you were a regular person you would never have fallen for that.”
He looked down at her body and seemed to see it for the first time.
“Your limbs are bare,” he said.
Zoe waited for him to look away shyly.
Instead, he said, “They are beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she said. “No one’s ever said that about … my limbs.”
X pushed his hair back behind his ears. His face and neck were covered with droplets of water that picked up the light. He took off his coat. He laid it at the side of the pool. He drew Zoe close and put his hand at the small of her back. She could feel it pulsing there. All his shyness had vanished. He seemed hungrier for her than he’d ever been.
“Are you free?” Zoe asked him. “Have the lords let you go?”
“Do not make me answer,” he said. “Let me have this moment.”
He took Zoe’s hands and placed them on his hips.
She knew what he wanted her to do.
She pushed up his shirt, her hands sliding slowly up his body. His skin was hot to the touch. The heat jumped to her own palms and traveled up her arms. She felt as if she and X were part of one continuous body now. She tried to hold his eyes, but he looked away as her fingers grazed the welts and bruises that covered his ribs.
“Don’t be ashamed,” said Zoe, her voice a whisper. “I don’t want you to ever be ashamed, okay? You haven’t done anything wrong.”
X nodded, but she wasn’t sure he believed her.
Zoe tossed the shirt to the side of the pool. She missed. The shirt landed on the water and hung suspended like a jellyfish. Zoe didn’t notice. She stared at the tattoos along X’s forearms. She smiled.
“What is it?” he said. “Tell me.”
“Nothing,” she said.
She’d been looking at the “giraffe” with the spiked tail.
X pulled her even closer now and took her face in his hands. He tilted it up toward him.
“I loved your letter,” he said.
Zoe had forgotten about the thing. She let out a squeal of embarrassment.
“Oh my god,” she said. “It was in the coat!”
“I insisted that Ripper read it to me until I had committed every syllable to memory,” said X.
“Shut up,” said Zoe. “You did not!”
X cleared his throat.
“‘The minute you left, I realized I loved you,’” he said. “‘Crap, I’m already running out of paper.’”
“Stop, stop, stop,” she said.
They stood smiling and swaying in the water. It was becoming impossible to keep their bodies apart. There was no such thing as close enough.
X ran a thumb over her lips. She parted them at his touch.
She waited for his mouth to come to her—and it did.
When she emerged from the locker room in her street clothes, Zoe saw that X was trembling. Now she knew for certain what she’d already suspected: he hadn’t collected his final soul. He had defied the lords. He had come to her instead. She couldn’t imagine what the consequences would be. Under the stark fluorescent lights of the lobby, X began to look afraid. Was he afraid for himself—or for her?
Now she understood why he hadn’t wanted to talk.
She didn’t want to talk either.
Instead, she wanted to show him something. But it was far. She didn’t know how they’d get there.
X understood before she said a word.
“Wherever you want to go, I will carry you,” he said.
Zoe remembered how X had carried her and Jonah home through the woods. At the time, she’d been so out of it that all she remembered was a feeling of immense safety and the sight of the trees pulsing by.
X made a basket of his arms now, and she reached around his neck. She felt warmed. Protected. Enclosed.
Her cell phone buzzed. She fished it out of her coat, and found a text from her mom.
You ready? it said. Should I come get you?
Zoe sank gratefully into X’s chest.
No, she texted back. I’ve got a ride.
And then X launched them into the snowy night. This time, the journey in his arms was bumpy and nauseating, and Zoe realized that holding on to a comet seemed really cool until you were actually holding on to a comet. She clung to X’s neck, shouting directions. They moved faster than she thought possible. The landscape blurred by, trailing streaks of light. Zoe saw everything in flashes: the snowy ski runs; the dark, twisting river; the thick puffs of smoke that rose out of the trees as if giants were lying on their backs in the mountains and smoking cigars.
A hundred miles rushed by. Soon, X descended and skidded to a halt, snow swirling everywhere. When they’d finally come to a stop, he set Zoe down with infinite care.
She lurched forward and threw up.
And then she spent the next five minutes trying to get her ears to pop. X was mortified, but Zoe reassured him.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said. “I thought it’d be romantic.”
Zoe had guided him to a deserted spot in the mountains. Only now did she realize that, with the moon locked behind clouds, they wouldn’t be able to see a thing.
X seemed unconcerned.
“Which way are we bound?” he said.
“That way,” she said, pointing vaguely into the darkness. “I think?”
X knelt and placed his palms against the snow. A tunnel of light burst in front of them, 10 feet high and 20 feet wide. It illuminated the hills and evergreens as far as Zoe could see.