Sublime(26)
Author: Christina Lauren

“And obviously it didn’t stop you.”

He grins. “No way. We’ve grown up hearing stories about this place. About Walkers and disappearances, of people claiming to see a girl slip along the shore or hearing voices.” He bends to pick up a leaf, spinning it in front of him. “I mean, it was creepy, yeah. But not everyone bought into it. Just adults discouraging crazy kids from drinking and fornicating at the lake. Made it sound cooler, really.”

Lucy snorts and shakes her head. “Of course the prospect of danger would make it more appealing to you. And even before I died, I don’t think we were supposed to come out here. Too far from the main buildings, too many ways to get in trouble.”

They stop walking, and he bends to her, whispering, his smiling kiss covering her lips, “I can think of lots of ways to get in trouble out here.”

“How long have we been gone?” she asks, tilting her head back as Colin kisses a path from her chin to her neck. He mumbles something unintelligible, and she means to ask him what he said, but a bird cuts through the air over his shoulder. A raven. It’s beautiful, with wings like shards of ebony. It flies overhead, calling out into the silence before circling back and landing somewhere in front of them.

Lucy turns to find it, to point out the hauntingly beautiful bird to Colin, but she freezes, the words lost in a gasp when she realizes how far they’ve walked.

She can see the hulking shape of Ethan Hall behind them in the distance, and ahead of her is the raven, its talons wrapped around the highest arch of the imposing metal gate that surrounds Saint Osanna’s.

But something is different. Instead of feeling an invisible bubble pushing against her chest and sending her back to the trail, she feels like a fish caught on the end of a hook. Pulled. Slowly reeled in.

She takes a step forward.

“Luce?” Colin asks. “You okay?”

“I don’t know,” she says, continuing on, her steps quicker now. Purposeful. As she nears the iron fence, she looks up and meets the raven’s watchful stare, can see her own reflection in the luminous black of the bird’s eyes. “Something . . . something’s different.”

She hears the crunch of snow as Colin jogs to catch up, feels the beat of a pulse in her hollow veins. When Colin stops at her side, the pull gets stronger. “Do you feel that?”

“Feel what? Lucy, what’s going on?”

“Like suction? Like I’m metal and there’s this giant magnet on the other side? You don’t feel that?”

Colin shakes his head, eyes wide as he blinks from Lucy to the gate and back again. “Do you think you can get through?”

“I don’t know.” Her mouth is suddenly so dry, drier than she can ever remember. For the first time since waking, she wants something to drink, can almost imagine the feel of cold water as she swallows.

“Touch it,” she hears Colin whisper. “Lucy, touch it.”

She licks her lips, shaking as she lifts her arm, fingers trembling as they find the icy metal. There’s no resistance. She holds her breath, watching as her hand passes between two of the ornate balusters and to the other side.

“Oh my God,” she gasps. “Oh my God!” There’s the faintest hint of a tan; blue veins form a map across her palm and up her wrist. There’s a scar. Freckles. Imperfections. She forms a fist, feeling the warmth of her own skin. “Colin!”

But he doesn’t answer. Colin is gone.

Chapter 32 HIM

SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT, COLIN FEELS Lucy slip into bed behind him. The mattress shifts with her weight as she burrows under the layers of quilts and electric blankets to wrap her arms around his chest. He’s not sure how, but Lucy and Jay have managed to move him from the lake to the dorm and up to their room without anyone noticing. He’s wearing a set of old flannel pajamas and is in bed beneath a pile of blankets. Jay is gone, so Colin assumes he must have had the first watch. He doesn’t remember anything after leaving Lucy’s underwater world.

“Hi,” she says, her voice muffled against his back. “Hey.” It comes out as a croak, and he closes his eyes tight against the burn. His throat feels swollen, scorched, as if he ate a meal of solid fire. “Have you been lying here for long?”

“No. I got here a few minutes ago. I’ve been waiting for Dot to go to sleep. She’s been down in the common room stirring the same cup of coffee and staring at a blank TV for more than an hour.”

He doesn’t want Dot to see him like this, and the guilt he’s been trying to ignore flares inside his chest. “She didn’t see you, did she?”

“No,” Lucy assures him. “She never would have let me get past the stairs.”

So Dot came to his dorm to be close to him? He rubs his face, groaning quietly. “She’s worried. She feels so responsible for me.”

“Yeah.”

“I think she knows I’m doing something crazy. She knows about you.” He shivers and presses the heating pad closer to his chest.

“I thought she might.” Lucy ignores the way anxiety burrows into her skin and tucks the blankets more securely around his body. “Are you warm enough?”

“Mm-hmm. But if you want to seduce me, you might have to leave on my socks,” he says, trying to lighten the mood. He doesn’t want to think about the downside to any of this. Only wants to feel her curled behind him and remember the world underwater. A fraction of his mind registers how crazy this is, that from the outside looking in, he might even appear suicidal. And with a piercing stab to his chest, he realizes this is how his mother must have felt. Doing whatever she could do to have even one more day with her daughter. Colin has never been more positive that his mother wasn’t insane after all. She simply wanted her family back.

It’s early—hours before the sun comes up and the students flood campus—and Colin can hear one of the delivery trucks outside, dropping off supplies at the kitchen. The steady beep as it backs up echoes off the stone buildings and fills the empty quad. “Hey, how’d you two get me up here anyway?”

“That would be Jay. Turns out he’s excellent at distraction and a lot stronger than he looks.”

“How is he?”

“He’s okay,” she says, and he feels her shrug slightly. “I mean, he seems to thrive on this kind of thing. I don’t get it, but I’m glad he’s like that. What he’s doing for us is amazing.”

“I know.”

“I wonder if we’d be able to do it without him. I wonder if I could get you out of the water somehow.” She pauses, watching him. “I wonder if that’s why I’m so strong now.”

Colin is silent in response to that. He’s given this some thought. If the lake is where Lucy was before she found him and where she goes when she disappears, Colin wonders if he could simply go find her there. He’s not exactly sure how they got to the other side because his head is still a bit foggy, but he likes to think if he had to, he could find it alone.

“Tell me what happened,” he says. “It’s true, isn’t it? You got past the gate.”

“You remember that?”

He nods.

She shivers beside him. “Other than finding you, I don’t remember ever feeling so drawn to something. I saw my hand, and it looked alive, Colin. I felt like I needed to be on the other side of the gate.”

“Do you think that’s how it works? We need to get you off campus? Like, unlocking some puzzle?”

“I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think it’s that simple. It can’t be.”

“Maybe you’re overthinking it.”

She doesn’t answer, just presses her cheek into the back of his shirt, reassuring herself that he’s warm and really here.

“It’s where you were before you came back?” he asks.

“I think so. I feel like I’d been pacing inside a cage, looking out through the lake, waiting to come be with you.”

“And you think it’s where you go when you disappear?”

Her arms tighten around him when he says that. “Yeah, but I don’t plan on disappearing again.”

Maybe not, he thinks. But at least I know where to find you. Colin relaxes. This knowledge makes the prospect of the approaching spring much less terrifying.

Chapter 33 HER

THE DEEP PURPLE WATER-SKY TREMBLES ABOVE them, with stars made out of a million of the smallest bubbles. The illusion of earth and lake bottom turns into the soft, inviting blackness. An instinctive burst of energy courses through Lucy’s system, and she pushes forward faster.

“God, I can’t wait to get there,” Colin says, floating behind her. “I hope we can stay longer this time. I want to try the gate again.”

Lucy doesn’t respond, simply kicks her feet through the icy clear water. It’s all she’s been able to think about: how her skin looked like real flesh, that she felt the sting of the cold air on her fingertips, but she’s worried there’s something they haven’t considered yet.

It’s strange to not be able to see but to know exactly where to turn, like the directions are embedded in her muscles. Does he feel it too?

“Can you find it?” she asks, stilling. “What?” He stops next to her, his arm pressed along the length of hers.

“Do you remember how to get there? Could you find it on your own?”

He looks behind them, to where the water has simply emptied into blackness, and then forward again. “Not like this. I can’t see anything. I don’t think this is how we got here before.”

“Never mind,” she says, grabbing his hand to pull him closer. “I guess it’s a feel thing. Maybe after you’ve been here a few more times.”

“Maybe,” he says, though he sounds unsure.

A few seconds later, she instinctively turns. A light in the distance grows brighter and brighter.

It takes a moment for their eyes to adjust, but everything is exactly as they left it. A canopy of crystalline leaves sparkles above them. The sun is a trapezoidal beam of yellow sweeping across the frozen shore. Orange, blue, red, and purple flowers bloom in small pops before they freeze, leaving waves of stained-glass color in their wake. A light snow is falling, and Colin holds out his hand; intricate, lacy snowflakes land in his palm.

She grins at him, watching him look around. It’s everything at once: vibrant color and glistening ice. They can smell the wet earth beneath the snow and hear the water freeze across the lake. It becomes disorienting and overwhelming, and she can see the moment it becomes too much for him when he sits on the bank and covers his eyes.

She sits next to him, resting her hand on his bent knee. “Are you okay?”

“I love you,” he says quietly, slowly blinking up to the sky.

She breaks into a grin so wide it takes her several seconds to respond. “I love you back.”

He picks up her hand and massages her fingers. “I thought I knew what love was before.”

“I didn’t.” She leans down, kisses the back of his hand.

Colin looks over at her, his eyes as hungry as she feels when she pushes him onto his back in the snow.

“Cold?” she asks, moving over him.

He shakes his head, hands running up her sides, lifting her shirt up and off in a single movement. “Not even a little.”

Her hair falls in a curtain around them, and he pushes it back, kissing her like she’s a normal girl he can grip and feel and not worry about breaking.

Lucy wonders if time moves down here at all because before she knows it her clothes are gone and Colin is smiling down at her, snowflakes in his hair and clinging to his lashes, disappearing into the skin of his bare shoulders. He bites his lip as he moves above her, fingers memorizing every inch and finding where they come together.

Frost gathers on their skin and disappears as quickly. Light explodes behind her eyes, and Colin holds her shaking hands with his. He says her name against her mouth, that he loves her, that even having all of her will never be enough. He groans into her neck, and when they still, his heart silent against her chest, she can hear the sound of feathery snow falling around them.

“How’s it possible to feel like I want to be here with you but I shouldn’t be?” he asks. They’re on the trail again, hand in hand as they make their way toward the front of the school. Lucy tried to say no—to distract him—but there wasn’t any conviction behind her words.

“I don’t know,” she says, “but it’s how I feel bringing you here too. It feels selfish.”

“Lucy?” he says, and she watches a cloud of anxiety pass through his eyes. “I think this is what we’ve been missing. Don’t you?”

She looks up, watches how fast the sun seems to move across the snowy sky. She can feel it with every step: the need to keep going, to escape.

They stop with the iron gate in front of them, its hulking mass like a scar blooming out of the pristine snow. Lucy notices Colin rubbing the spot over his sternum. “Jay’s bringing me back. My chest hurts,” he says. “We don’t have much time, Luce.”