CHAPTER 28
Jack pulled me past a pair of tall, redheaded tourists in too-short shorts, and farther into the museum.
The shouts followed us.
I looked frantically for the green SORTIE sign that signaled an exit, but there were none this way. Only bathrooms.
“Too obvious,” Jack said, and made a sharp left turn through an open door into an office. He slammed it and locked it behind us.
A few moments later, the doorknob jiggled, then fists pounded an angry beat. “Open the bloody door!” Scarface yelled. I backed away, searching for another exit.
“They’ve got to have it or they wouldn’t’ve run,” Scarface’s muffled voice came from outside.
More pounding. A kick to the door that bowed the bottom inward. That was the only door, but there was a window.
More footsteps, running toward us. Mumbles, curses. “Security guards,” said one of the Order, and I thought I heard something about “the Commander” again. Finally, Scarface raised his voice enough to be heard.
“If you change your mind about letting the old man die, you have one day,” he said. “Call this phone number in the next twenty-four hours with the name of the One, or he’s dead. We won’t give you this chance again.” He rattled off a number, and I scribbled it on a scrap of paper I found in my bag.
A rush of pounding footsteps retreated. I stared at the phone number in my hand, but another set of steps reached us and the door handle rattled, much less violently. “Sécurité!”
Jack shook his head and gestured to the window. I stuffed the paper into my bag. Luckily, we were on the first floor, near some kind of employee exit. Jack helped me out, and vaulted out after me. He grabbed my hand, and we sprinted up a ramp.
“What was in the sarcophagus?” Jack asked, breathless, as he pulled open the wrought-iron gate leading off the Louvre grounds.
“Some kind of leather pouch. It felt like it might have a book—”
Down the block, an emergency exit flew open. The Order piled out. We skidded to a stop.
“Watch for them, you arse!” Scarface yelled, pointing away from us. “One of you go to the front, the other to the side. Girl’s in a white coat, that little git’s in a black one. They can’t be that hard to find.”
I dug my fingers into Jack’s arm. There was too much traffic to run across the road, and they’d see us anywhere else.
Scarface started to turn.
Jack propelled me back down the ramp we’d just run up. It curved back on itself, so we ended up just off the street but down one level, next to a bike rack. We shrank back into a recessed doorway. I jiggled the doorknob frantically, but it was locked.
Jack gestured for me to pull off my jacket, and tossed it under a helmet in one of the bike baskets. He put his own jacket around my shoulders, then plucked a straw fedora off the ground. It looked like a tourist had lost it over the fence. Jack made a face, but it wasn’t dirty, and he popped it on his head and pulled it low over his eyes. “Take your hair down,” he whispered. I pulled out my ponytail holder and let my hair fall over my shoulders so I’d look as little as possible like the girl they’d just seen.
Scarface and another man’s voices moved closer. If they looked down when they walked by, we were finished. We weren’t hidden very well. Jack backed me as far into the shadows as possible, trapping me between himself and the wall. “Don’t move,” he whispered. His eyes darted behind him. “They’ll think we’re . . .”
I nodded. I was dressed pretty strangely for this time of the day, but it made it look like we could be coming home from an especially late night, trying to find a place to make out.
Jack stood so close that his forearms brushed my shoulders, so close that his cologne, or his skin, or whatever that musky sweet smell in the crook of his neck was, would have overwhelmed me if I hadn’t been so scared.
The footsteps drew nearer. I tensed. I wouldn’t put it past them to actually kill us to get this stuff. My pulse pounded wildly, and I glanced up at the street.
Jack’s lips were in the hair at my temple, his breath warm at my ear. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “We’ll be okay. They’re almost gone.”
My shiver then was only partially from fear.
The voices got louder, came right alongside our hiding place and paused—then kept going. I let out a breath and stood on tiptoe to see over Jack’s shoulder. Nothing. Gone. I collapsed back down, a bubble of relief expanding in my chest—and then I stumbled. I flew into Jack’s arms, and the beer bottle I’d tripped over flew back against the door behind me with a loud clink.
The voices stopped. I clutched Jack’s shirt in both my fists. For a second, they didn’t move, we didn’t move, the whole world held its breath. Then footsteps, hurrying back toward our hiding place. Jack turned to see. I had the better vantage point, and watched as a shadow fell across the gate at the top of the ramp. If Jack turned any farther, he’d be exposed.
He started to crane his neck, and I grabbed his face and yanked it back around. His skin felt hot, his light stubble scratchy under my fingers.
He opened his mouth, but I shook my head violently, nodding above us. Just two kids making out in a dark corner. They wouldn’t care about us then.
The shadow stopped. The wrought-iron gate squeaked on its hinges, and the shadow leaned over the railing.
I did the only thing I could think of.
I kissed Jack.
I yanked his face down to mine, holding it between my hands, hoping his hat was blocking our faces.
Oh God, please don’t let him come down the ramp. Oh God, please don’t let Jack freak out and pull away.
Oh God. I was kissing Jack.
Kind of. Our lips were mushed together but frozen, our eyes wide open and staring at each other in terror. I was holding my breath. I was pretty sure he was holding his, too.
A second went by, or a minute, or a week, and his eyes went midnight black and shining.
Over the noise of the traffic, I heard a sniff. “Just a couple of kids snogging in some grotty old stairs,” the retreating voice said. It sounded like the redhead. “Not them.”
“Then go find them, you wanker,” Scarface said, and the voices faded away.
My hands fell away from Jack’s face, and our lips came apart. I collapsed against the wall, limp with relief.
Jack still hovered over me, glancing over his shoulder. When he seemed satisfied they were gone, he turned back, and instead of saying anything, instead of even looking at me, he closed his eyes with a long, shaky sigh.
He knew I had done that to save us, right? Not that I didn’t want to, but I wasn’t trying to get him in any more trouble, or make things any more complicated. My unsteady breath echoing off the walls was the only sound I could hear, and it was entirely too loud. “Jack—” I said, and he opened his eyes.
Where I thought I might see exasperation, I saw anything but. There was something wild in his eyes, something desperate in the way his lips parted. But he was not upset. Definitely not upset. My mouth snapped shut.
Our faces hovered inches apart, frozen but twanging, like magnets we suddenly had to pull on as hard as we could to keep from coming together.
He started to say something, but stopped. At the look in his eyes—fear, frustration, longing—my end of the magnet got a lot harder to keep in check.
Then one—or both—of us let go.
His lips crashed into mine.
It was nothing like the fake kiss a minute ago. His lips softened to mine immediately, and his hands, usually so cautious, pulled me to him so tight, I molded to his body.
He was kissing me. Jack Bishop was kissing me. And I was kissing him back like I was drowning and he was air. The brim of the fedora butted up against my forehead, and he shoved it out of the way and onto the ground.
“Avery, God,” he murmured. He parted my lips, and I grabbed his collar and pulled him closer, closer, closer, and every feeling from the past few days—the pain and the danger and the wanting and the confusion and the need—all tangled together in that kiss, in his mouth on mine, and down my collarbone, and my fingers sliding under the untucked hem of his shirt.
I tipped my head back and let his lips find their way down my neck, and his neck tasted like salt and spices, and his hands, my hands, all over everywhere, and I was falling, falling, falling, with just his arms holding me up.
Voices sounded from the street. I didn’t think it was the Order, but over the traffic and our breath echoing off the walls, it was hard to tell. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I just didn’t want him to stop kissing me.
And he didn’t.
It wasn’t my first kiss, but it felt like it. It felt like how kisses in movies looked, which I’d assumed was just fiction. But this was real. For an irrational moment, I thought we could kiss away the mandate, and the Order, and the rest of the world. A kiss like this could do that.
Finally we pulled away. Aftershocks of the kiss vibrated through me.
Jack’s shaky breath mingled with mine, his fingers wrapped around my hips like they were all that was holding him upright. I leaned up to him, my lips, of their own accord, blindly trying to find their way back to his.
He bent toward me once more and brushed his mouth across mine. That kiss, that last whispered breath of his lips, gave me goose bumps over my whole body.
Jack suddenly dropped his hands and took a deep, shuddering breath. Without thinking, I reached out to stroke his sleeve. It felt wrong now to not be touching him. But instead of wrapping me up in his arms like I thought he would, he pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His hands curled into fists. “God, I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to do that. I’ve gone and made it worse.”
My arm dropped to my side like dead weight. No. Kissing doesn’t make things worse. Kissing makes things better, especially kissing like that. If everyone got kissed like that, there would be no problems in the world.
I wondered what it would have been like if Jack had been a normal transfer student and there was no Circle, and no Order, and no Saxons, and no fate dictated by the mandate.
Is it possible to feel nostalgic for something that never actually happened? If it was, it was a shade of toska. A craving for something you couldn’t possibly understand. A craving I was finally letting myself feel, only to wish I hadn’t.
Jack turned his back to me. He straightened his shirt, put on the blazer I shoved back at him. He was so achingly beautiful with his hair mussed up from having my fingers tangled in it that I could barely breathe.
As if he’d read my mind, he smoothed his hair back into place.
I stared at him for a beat more, sure he could feel the longing pulsing out of me—and then I deflated. My heart slammed shut so hard, I shuddered.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, as blandly as I could muster. “That was obviously a mistake.”
He turned around. His eyes didn’t say it had been a mistake. “I’m just trying to do the right thing,” he said. “You know that, right?”
Of course I did. Whatever else I felt, I knew he always tried to do the right thing. I turned away, pulling my hair back into a ponytail. “How do you know what the right thing is?” I whispered.
“That’s the problem, then, isn’t it? I don’t anymore. The thing that feels right . . .” He shifted his eyes to me, and back away just as quickly. He paced to the bottom of the ramp. “The only thing that feels right is as wrong as it can get.”