Forever

“Do you want to get out?” Sam asked. My hand was already on the door handle. Outside, the air was cold enough to have teeth to it, but I was fine, for now. I joined Sam at the front of the car, where he leaned on the hood. When I leaned back on my hands next to him, the hood was hot from the engine, a buffer against the cool night.

Together we gazed up. The flat black field around us made the sky as big as an ocean. With the wolf inside me and Sam beside me, both of us strange creatures, I felt we were somehow an intrinsic part of this world, this night, this boundless mystery. My heart thumped faster, for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint. I was suddenly very aware that Sam was just inches away from me, watching with me, his breaths visible in front of his face.

“This close, it is so hard to believe,” I said, and my voice caught for some reason on believe, “that it isn’t magic.”

Sam kissed me.

His kiss landed sort of on the side of my mouth because my face was still turned up, but it was a real kiss, not a careful one. I turned toward him so that we could kiss again, properly. My lips were hot with the unfamiliar feeling of his stubble and when he touched my arm, I was hyperaware of the rough calluses on his fingertips against my skin. Everything inside me felt raw-edged and hungry. I couldn’t understand how something we’d done so many times could feel so strange and new and terrifying.

When we kissed, it didn’t matter that I had been a wolf hours ago, or that I would be a wolf again. It didn’t matter that a thousand snares were laid for us as soon as we left this moment. All that mattered was this: our noses touching, the softness of his mouth, the ache inside me.

Sam pulled away to press his face into my neck. He remained there, hugging me fiercely. His arms were tight enough around me to constrict my breathing, and my hip bone was pressed against the hood hard enough to hurt, but I would never, ever tell him to let me go.

Sam said something, but his voice was inaudible against my skin.

“What?” I asked.

He released me and looked to where my hand rested on the hood. He pressed the ball of his thumb on the top of my index finger and studied the shape of our fingers together as if it was something fascinating. “I missed looking at your face,” he said softly. But he didn’t look at my face when he said it.

Above us, the lights shimmered and changed. They had no beginning or end, but it looked like they were leaving us anyway. I thought again about the mud beneath his fingernails, the abrasion on his temple. What else had happened while I’d been in the woods?

“I missed having my face,” I said. In my head, it had seemed like it would be funny, but when I said it, neither of us laughed. Sam took his hand back and lifted his eyes to the aurora borealis. Sam was still looking off into the sky like he was thinking of nothing, and suddenly I realized, I was being cruel, not saying anything lovey to him after he had said it to me, not saying anything that he needed after being gone for so long. But the moment to say something right back was gone, and I didn’t know how to say something that wouldn’t sound corny. I thought about saying I love you to him, but even thinking about saying it out loud made me feel strange. I didn’t know why it should; I did love him, so much it hurt.

But I didn’t know how to say that. So I held out my hand, and Sam took it.

SAM

Outside of the car, the lights were even more dazzling, as if the cold air around us moved and shimmered with violet and pink. I stretched my free hand above me as if I could brush the aurora. It was cold, but a good cold, the sort that made you feel alive. Over our heads, the sky was so clear that we could see every star that could see us. Now that I had kissed Grace, I couldn’t stop thinking about touching her. My mind was full of the places I had yet to touch: the soft skin inside the bend of her elbow, the curve right above her hip bone, the line of her collarbone. I wanted to kiss her again, so badly, I wanted more of her, but instead, we held hands, our heads tipped back, and together we slowly turned, looking up into the infinity. It was like falling, or like flying.

I was torn between wanting to rush out of this moment, toward that more, and wanting to stay in it, living in a state of constant anticipation and constant safety. As soon as we stepped back into the house, the hunt of the wolves would become a real thing again, and I wasn’t ready.

Grace, out of the blue, asked, “Sam, are you going to marry me?”

I jerked, looking over at her, but she was still gazing up into the stars as if she’d merely asked about the weather. Her eyes, however, had a sort of hard, squinty look about them that belied the nonchalant sound of her voice.

I didn’t know what she expected me to say. I felt like laughing out loud. Because I realized all in a rush that of course she was right — yes, the woods would claim her for the cold months, but she wasn’t dying; I hadn’t lost her for good. And I had her right here, now. In comparison, everything else seemed small, manageable, secondary.

Suddenly the world seemed like a promising, friendly place. Suddenly I saw the future, and it was a place I wanted to be.

I realized that Grace was still waiting for an answer. I pulled her closer, until we were nose to nose under the northern lights. “Are you asking?” I said.

“Just clarifying,” Grace replied. But she was smiling, a tiny, genuine smile, because she had already read my thoughts. By her temple, little flyaway blond hairs drifted in the breeze; they looked like they must tickle, but she didn’t twitch. “I mean, instead of living in sin.”

And then I did laugh, even though the future was a dangerous place, because I loved her, and she loved me, and the world was beautiful and awash with pink light around us.

She kissed me, very lightly. “Say okay.” She was starting to shiver.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

It felt like a physical thing, held in my hands.

“Do you really mean it?” she asked. “Don’t say it if you don’t really mean it.”

My voice didn’t sound as earnest as I felt. “I really mean it.”

“Okay,” Grace said, and just like that, she seemed content and solid, certain of my affections. She gave a little sigh and rearranged our hands so that our fingers were intertwined. “Now you can take me home.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

SAM

Back at home, Grace fell into my bed and asleep at about the same moment, and I envied her easy friendship with slumber. She lay motionless in the eerie, deathlike sleep of the exhausted. I couldn’t join her; everything inside me was awake. My mind was on continuous playback, giving me the events of the day again and again, until they seemed like one long creation, impossible to pull apart into separate minutes.