“What are you thinking?” Blue asked.
He didn’t answer right away. Then, when he did, he kept his eyes trained on the view. “I’ve been all over the world. More than one country for every year that I’m alive. Europe and South America and — the highest mountains and the widest rivers and the prettiest villages. I’m not saying that to show off. I’m just saying it because I’m trying to understand how I could have been so many places and yet this is the only place that feels like home. This is the only place I belong. And because I’m trying to understand how, if I belong here, it . . .”
“— hurts so much,” Blue finished.
Gansey turned to her, his eyes bright. He just nodded.
Why, she thought, agonized, couldn’t it have been Adam?
She said, “If you find out, will you tell me?”
He’s going to die, Blue, don’t —
“I don’t know if we’re meant to find out,” he said.
“Oh, we’re finding out,” Blue said with extra ferocity, trying to tamp down the feeling rising in her. “If you’re not going to, I’ll do it myself.”
He said, “If you find out first, will you tell me?”
“Sure thing.”
“Jane, in this light,” he started, “you . . . Jesus. Jesus. I’ve got to get my head straight.”
He suddenly threw open the door and got out, seizing the roof to pull himself out faster. He slammed the door and then walked around the back of the car; one hand scrubbed through his hair.
The car was utterly quiet. She heard the buzzing of night insects and singing of frogs and slow chirps of birds who should have known better. Every so often, the cooling engine let out a little sigh like a breath. Gansey didn’t return.
Fumbling in the dark, she pushed open her door. She found him leaning against the back of the car, arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m sorry,” Gansey said, not looking at her as she leaned on the car beside him. “That was very rude.”
Blue thought of a few things to reply, but couldn’t say any of them out loud. She felt like one of the night birds had gotten inside her. It tumbled and fumbled every time she breathed.
He’s going to die, this is going to hurt —
But she touched his neck, right where his hair was cut evenly above the collar of his shirt. He was very still. His skin was hot, and she could very, very faintly feel his pulse beneath her thumb. It wasn’t like when she was with Adam. She didn’t have to guess what to do with her hands. They knew. This was what it should have felt like with Adam. Less like playacting and more like a foregone conclusion.
He closed his eyes and leaned, just a little, so that her palm was flat on his neck, fingers sprawled from his ear to his shoulder.
Everything in Blue was charged. Say something. Say something.
Gansey lifted her hand gently from his skin, holding it as formally as a dance. He put it against his mouth.
Blue froze. Absolutely still. Her heart didn’t beat. She didn’t blink. She couldn’t say don’t kiss me. She couldn’t even form don’t.
He just leaned his cheek and the edge of his mouth against her knuckles and then set her hand back in her lap.
“I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”
Her skin burned with the memory of his mouth. The thrashing bird of her heart shivered and shivered again. “Thanks for remembering.”
He looked back over the valley. “Oh, Jane.”
“Oh, Jane, what?”
“He didn’t want me to, did you know? He told me not to try to get you to come to the table that night at Nino’s. I had to talk him into it. And then I made such an idiot of myself—” He turned back to her. “What are you thinking?”
She just looked at him. That I went out with the wrong boy. That I destroyed Adam tonight for no reason at all. That I am not sensible at all — “I thought you were an ass**le.”
Gallantly, he said, “Thank God for past tense.” Then: “I can’t — we can’t do this to him.”
It was jagged inside her. “I’m not a thing. To have.”
“No, Jesus. Of course you’re not. But you know what I mean.”
She did. And he was right. They couldn’t do this to him. She shouldn’t do it to herself, anyway. But how it made a disaster of her chest and her mouth and her head.
“I wish you could be kissed, Jane,” he said. “Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.” He flailed an arm toward the stars. “And then we’d never say anything about it again.”
That could’ve been the end of it.
I want something more.
She said, “We can pretend. Just once. And then we’ll never say anything about it again.”
What a strange, shifting person he was. The Gansey who turned to her now was a world away from the lofty boy she’d first met. Without any hesitation, she stretched her arms around his neck. Who was this Blue? She felt bigger than her body. High as the stars. He leaned toward her — her heart spun again — and pressed his cheek against hers. His lips didn’t touch her skin, but she felt his breath, hot and uneven, on her face. His fingers splayed on either side of her spine. Her lips were so close to his jaw that she felt his hint of stubble at the end of them. It was mint and memories and the past and the future and she felt as if she’d done this before and already she longed to do it again.
Oh, help, she thought. Help, help, help.
He pulled away. He said, “And now we never speak of it again.”
52
That night, after Gansey had gone to meet Blue, Ronan retrieved one of Kavinsky’s green pills from his stillunwashed pair of jeans and returned to bed. Propped up in the corner, he stretched out his hand to Chainsaw, but she ignored him. She had stolen a cheese cracker and now was very busily stacking things on top of it to make sure Ronan would never take it back. Although she kept glancing back at his outstretched hand, she pretended not to see it as she added a bottle cap, an envelope, and a sock to the pile hiding the cracker.
“Chainsaw,” he said. Not sharply, but like he meant it. Recognizing his tone, she soared to the bed. She didn’t generally enjoy petting, but she turned her head left and right as Ronan softly traced the small feathers on either side of her beak. How much energy had it taken from the ley line to create her, he wondered? Was it more to take out a person? A car?
Ronan’s phone buzzed. He tilted it to read the incoming text: your mom calls me after we spend the day together Ronan let the phone fall back to the bedspread. Ordinarily, seeing Kavinsky’s name light up his phone gave him a strange sense of urgency, but not tonight. Not after spending so many hours with him. Not after dreaming the Camaro. He needed to process all of this first.