“I love your hope. You make me want to have hope, too.” Sam kissed my knuckles, and exhaustion filled his tone. “Are you really all right after earlier?”
“I am. Really.” Though I would never forget the heat and horror. “What will happen now? Will there be an investigation into the explosions? Will the survivors be cared for?”
Sam nodded. His damp hair brushed my skin when I lifted my face. He smelled like soap and shampoo, no traces of tonight’s events.
“There will be an investigation, but it will take a long time to question so many people. It was already night when this happened, and most live alone. There will be few alibis, few reasons to believe anyone. People who’ve actively spoken out against newsouls will be the first suspects.”
“That’s a good start.” It wasn’t enough, though. “I doubt everyone who hates newsouls is stupid enough to blab about it before planting explosives.”
Sam snorted. Had that been a dumb thing to say? I started to lean back, but he tightened his fingers around mine, keeping me pressed against his spine.
“You’re right,” he said. “There are people who hate newsouls but will have kept quiet until they were ready to act.”
I shuddered, wondering who those people might be. “It’s easier when you know who your enemies are.”
“Really is.”
I bit my lip, like that would keep in what I didn’t want to say. Maybe I held my breath, too, and my heart slowed down, or maybe I tensed. At any rate, Sam knew I was trying not to just blurt out my every thought.
“What is it?” he asked, and I could almost hear the resigned smile.
I pressed my face against his back, though his shirt was tight against his skin so there wasn’t anywhere to bury myself. “Promise you won’t be upset.”
He just kissed my forefinger. Not a promise.
“It”—at least I didn’t have to explain what it was—“happened so soon after the meeting, whoever did it must have known our plan.”
He was very still. A statue of a musician.
“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that it happened so soon after I asked for help. People have been throwing rocks and breaking into nurseries. Maybe this was their next step and it had nothing to do with tonight.” I peeled off Sam, off the piano bench. He hadn’t moved, but I couldn’t stay still. In spite of the wretched day that wouldn’t end, everything in me itched to run. To go somewhere. The grief inside me needed to escape.
I stalked around the parlor as though my anxiety might leak out from the force of my feet hitting the floor. I made the perimeter twice before Sam came to life again and began tracking my progress.
“I hope you’re right,” he said at last. “I hope it is just a coincidence, because the idea of one of our friends being responsible is too horrible.”
My insides twisted into knots as I stopped before him. We were both exhausted and heartsore. Maybe right now wasn’t the best time for this talk.
When the light shifted in the window behind him, casting him as a silhouette, he looked my age. I trailed my fingertips over the soft curves of his cheekbones, down his freshly shaven jaw, and across the thick lines of his eyebrows. At my touch, he swallowed hard, and little by little the tension drained from his shoulders and neck. He dropped back his head. His lips parted and his breath shallowed.
“I miss being outside of Heart,” I said. “I want those days in Purple Rose before the sylph came.” I caressed the frown line between his eyes, how I always knew he was thinking too hard about something. Then I found the line by his mouth, a long curve from his smile.
“Me too.” His hands breezed over my hips. I didn’t fight the urge to lean toward him, press my body against his.
Just us, the parlor instruments, and the early morning quiet, it was easy to imagine we were the only people. No explosions, no sylph, no Janan.
My fingers came to the end of their wanderings on his forehead. I smoothed back his hair and kissed him. “Sam.” A shiver ran through his body when I said his name. “Will you sleep in my room with me?”
A wicked smile flashed, and his hands dipped from my hips to my bottom to my thighs. “I’d like that.”
My skin burned with his touch, even through my clothes, and I ached to discover what he might feel like without the layers of cloth between us.
Before I could suggest it, he drew away. His hands fell to his knees and the longing faded from his eyes, shifting to regret. “But I should sleep in my own bed.” He spoke softly, but that didn’t dampen the pain of his words.
I stood there like a moron, feeling trapped in another rejection, trapped in the memory of when I’d first arrived in Heart. We’d faced each other in the kitchen so close, so tense I’d thought he might kiss me. But he hadn’t.
He stared at his hands, as though remembering the same event. “Ana.” Just a breath. “I do want to, but maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Why?” I knew why. I’d heard why earlier.
“I…” Resolve steeled his voice. “It wouldn’t be proper.”