The Conspiracy of Us (22 page)

He hesitated, but climbed in and huddled inches inside. He glanced back out like maybe he should leave after all. Then back at me like he didn't want to.

I stood across from him awkwardly. I'd spent the past forty-eight hours running across Europe, being shot at, stealing antiquities, but I still couldn't deal with one boy. I knew it was wrong, and I knew it was dangerous, but I didn't want him to leave.

I crossed the room to the hallway door, made sure it was locked, and put the vanity chair under the doorknob. The rain hammered the roof, punctuated with pings off the metal railing. I thought I saw a smile on Jack's face in the dark.

“Come in,” I whispered.

Water made my dress heavy and bulky, and in the bit of light from outside, I could see Jack's shirt dripping, clinging to the lines of his body, and now I really couldn't think.

“Clothes!” The word flew out of my mouth. No one would overhear. The rain was so loud now, I could barely hear myself. “Dry clothes! I can get you some.”

“Yeah, that'd be brilliant. Thanks.” I heard a smile in his voice. I hoped he couldn't hear how flustered I was in mine.

I felt his eyes on me while I flipped on the lamp in the closet and searched for anything that would fit him. I finally found a pair of flannel pants. I couldn't find a shirt that was big enough, so he'd have to decide what to do about that.

I tossed him the pants and gestured to the bathroom, then turned back to the pajama drawer. Nightgowns, a lavender silk shorts and tank top set, lacy black lingerie . . .

My face got hot just looking at the lingerie. I pulled out the shorts and tank top and slammed the drawer.

When I'd changed into them and hung the wet dress on a hanger, I looked in the mirror. In the pale lamplight, I looked soft, romantic. My damp hair fell in waves, dark against my skin, and my eyes looked wider, darker than usual. My heart was too empty and too full at the same time.

I came out of the walk-in at the same time Jack opened the bathroom door. He wore only the pants I had given him, his bare upper body silhouetted against the bathroom light. A cool, rain-scented breeze blew through the open balcony window, and goose bumps rose on my skin.

We could just sleep next to each other. Just so I wouldn't be alone.

Jack reached behind him to the bathroom light switch.

“You can sleep in the bed with me. If you want.” The words rushed out of my mouth before I could stop them. “I mean, I know it's dangerous. And it's up to you. But no one knows you're here. And the bed's really . . . big.”

As he flipped the switch, a flash of lightning made the room as bright as day, illuminating him, his lips parted, eyes wide.

Thunder crashed right on top of the lightning, so loud that it shook the floor. My heart, which had already been beating doubletime, hammered so hard my hands shook.

Jack stepped out from the bathroom door. “I think that means yes,” he said.

I
slipped under the covers and shivered at the crisp cool of the sheets. I shivered again when I felt Jack climb in on the other side. I was in bed with Jack. I'd asked him to get into my bed. And he'd done it, despite the fact that being caught here would be very, very bad. I would never have imagined a boy spending the night in my bed to be a life-or-death situation.

Neither of us had closed the window, and the rain pounded down wildly. A gust of wind stirred the chandelier, and the crystals tinkled.

“Good night?” I whispered. I hadn't meant for it to sound like a question.

“G'night,” he said after a second. He didn't sound disappointed, which made me feel a little disappointed.

Whenever I slept over at Lara's, I barely knew there was another person in the bed. Now, though, I could sense the heat radiating off Jack's body, feel every shift of the covers.

Jack moved closer. If not for the rain, my full-body buzz might be audible by now. I shifted, too, a minuscule movement toward the middle of the bed. And then my pinky finger touched a body part that wasn't my own, and my buzz short-circuited. Jack's fingers twined around mine until I could feel his pulse where they interlaced.

I tried to calm my racing heart. Holding his hand—even in my bed—was nothing. But it didn't feel like nothing. The warmth of his bare arm against mine edged out the cool of the sheets, and the band of tension around my chest started to relax. It was like even though I'd said all the wrong things outside, Jack had heard exactly what I meant.

And then the sheets rustled, shifted, and a lightning strike lit everything to neon. I could see the outline of Jack's shoulders as he rolled onto his side. After a second, his fingers wrapped around my hip, and he pulled me gently onto my side, too, facing him. He brought the sheet up and over our heads. My unsteady breath echoed off the covers and our bodies, louder now than the rain pounding outside.

Not only was I in bed with Jack, I was in bed, under the sheets, so close my knees pressed into his. I felt his face tilt down to mine, and I let my lips inch closer to his.

But he didn't kiss me. Instead, he pulled our interlaced hands up between us. He straightened my fingers with his, and ran his fingertips down my palm.

I never thought I'd forget about kissing, but just then, I did. I wanted him to do nothing but touch my hand like this for the rest of my life. And then his fingers trailed over my wrist, down the inside of my arm.

I pressed my lips together hard. Air. I needed air. But I didn't pull back the sheets. If I moved, it might stop. Breathing wasn't worth it.

Jack took his fingers off my arm. Before I could wonder why he'd stopped, he grasped my hand, all its nerve endings wide awake now, and pressed it to his own chest.

There was something delirious about not being able to see, about just feeling the warmth radiating from his body, hearing the soft in-and-out of his breathing, smelling the rain through the open window and on his skin. It mixed with his own scent, warm, earthy, cozy, like a fall storm, making me want to bury my face in his neck. My fingers settled into the curve over his heart, and he swept my hair off my shoulder, the strands tickling my skin. His touch was slow, cautious.

Oh. I hadn't considered that he might not know how I'd react. When he brushed the soft patch of skin behind my ear, I let my neck arch into him, showing him just how okay this was.

I'd almost forgotten where my own hand was until I felt his heartbeat speed up. And then it hit me. After all we'd talked about outside, he thought he had to prove to me that I could trust him. That how he felt about me was real. He didn't know how to do it with words, so he was showing me instead. He couldn't fake the pounding pulse under my palm.

And at the same time, he was making me open up. And I was letting him. Here, in the dark, I had let down my guard without even realizing it.

All I wanted was to do the same for him.

I let my fingertips move, tentatively. I'd never touched a guy's bare chest before. It was hard and soft at the same time, smooth skin over firm muscle.

My fingers grew more confident as I traced down his side, where a few small, round scars marred his skin. I stopped at one and he tensed, like me noticing this imperfection made him feel too exposed. Maybe I should have moved on, but I liked knowing there were imperfect parts of him. I stroked the scar with one fingertip. It took a minute, but I finally felt the tension melt out of him.

This tiny moment felt more intimate than all the kissing in the world.

Everyone kissed. I'd kissed other guys. He'd probably done a lot more than kiss with other girls. But this was different. More. I'd seen cracks in his armor. Now I felt him taking it off.

I ran my hand over his forearm, over where my memory told me his tattoo was even if my eyes didn't. To his neck, where blood pulsed life through the surprisingly delicate skin at his throat, pushed aside a lock of still-damp hair clinging to his forehead. It had gotten warmer under the sheets, but every new bit of his skin still felt cool.

All the time, I fell closer into the kind of trance I didn't ever want to wake up from, half asleep and wide awake all at once.

Jack traced a path down my nose, across the bow in my upper lip. Then catching on the chain of my locket. To my shoulder. Our lips still weren't touching, but I was breathing his air and he was breathing mine.

Something in the far back of my mind told me it would be too easy, in this trance of our breath and our fingers and the rain pounding outside, to sleepwalk ourselves into something I wasn't sure I was ready for. Jack traced my forearm.

Yes, too easy.

One fingertip stroked the inside of my palm. My body felt unfamiliar, unsteady.

His hand settled on the curve of my hip.

With considerable effort, I made myself take hold of his wrist. He froze. My eyes fluttered open, blinking in the dark. I hoped he didn't think anything was wrong. It wasn't that at all.

After just a second, he exhaled softly. He straightened my fingers once more and pressed a kiss to my palm, then to each of my fingertips in turn. I felt a smile tug at my lips.

Finally he pulled the sheet off our heads, and cool air rushed in. I shivered, and Jack pulled me close, until I snuggled into the crook of his arm. His lips brushed my forehead and settled in my hair, and when I pressed my palm to his chest again, his breathing fell into a steady in-and-out within minutes.

I breathed a small, contented sigh into his chest. After everything that had happened, how was it possible for me to feel this happy right now?

I didn't know if I'd be able to sleep at all, and a part of me didn't want to. I wasn't ready to lose tonight to unconsciousness yet, wasn't ready to face the real world again in the morning. But with the steady beat of Jack's heart under my hand, and his warm skin against my cheek, I finally drifted off into dreams.

I
thought I knew what it felt like to wake up, but I'd never woken up like this. I opened my eyes to the unfamiliar and incredibly pleasant sensation of my head rising and falling to the rhythm of someone else's breath.

For a second, I didn't remember where I was.

My head was still nuzzled into Jack's chest. One of his arms held me close to his side, and his other hand rested on top of mine over his heart. Only our legs had moved, tangling themselves together.

Last night had seemed like a dream, but he was here, his skin cool under my fingers, his soft breath stirring my hair.

As I watched, his brows knitted together and his eyes flicked back and forth under his lids like he was having a bad dream. I stroked his chest with one fingertip. He stirred, and his eyes fluttered open.

His heart sped up under my palm and we stared at each other silently. We were both still dressed; we hadn't done anything, really. So why did it feel like we'd done everything?

The morning light flooding the room suddenly felt wrong. Like it was forcing us back to the real world, the world where something other than the two of us existed. Where we had to do something now besides stare at each other—where we had to either acknowledge what had happened the previous night or pretend nothing had happened at all. We already had too much to deal with. Maybe not complicating things more would be for the best.

Still, neither of us had moved so much as a toe. Why was this so hard?

Finally, my fingers rebelled against the silence, tightening on Jack's chest.

The corners of his lips turned up. “Hi,” he mouthed.

A grin spread across my face. “Hi,” I mouthed back.

Jack's smile grew and I let mine take over. For the first time, maybe ever, my chest wasn't empty and aching and cold at all. In fact, it felt so full, it could have burst. This was worth the possibility of getting hurt a million times.

Had I never understood because I never let myself, or because I never had anyone to understand with? It turns out falling for someone doesn't feel like falling at all.

Jack glanced at the chair still under the doorknob, then settled back and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

“How did you sleep?” he whispered.

“Really well.” Despite everything, it was the best I'd slept in a long time. “You?” I wondered if he'd slept at all, or if he'd been as alert all night as I should have been.

He threaded his fingers through mine. “Best I've slept in ages,” he murmured. The hint of self-consciousness looked out of place on his face. “I should probably go, though.”

I wanted to protest. I didn't want him to leave, ever. But I knew he was right.

He pulled back the sheet and sat up, and the sun no longer seemed wrong. Now it was fine, bathing the beautiful, half-clothed boy in my bed in light.

He took his clothes into the bathroom, and I grabbed my phone out of my bag. First I called my mom again—no answer. But I'd thought of something else in that fuzzy place between asleep and awake.

As I dialed the number to retrieve my mom's phone messages, I hugged the pillow that smelled intoxicatingly like Jack and stared out the window at a clearer morning, like the edges of the world had been sharpened overnight. The sun shone on the top of the pyramid, the music of the traffic below came softly through the window, and I was almost able to forget that Jack and I—that apparently Jack and I were now a
we
—had made things even more complicated. And infinitely more dangerous. Even so, I couldn't stop grinning.

I typed in my mom's code and skipped through message after increasingly panicked message from myself—and then my insides went cold.

Jack came out of the bathroom, buttoning his still-damp shirt. “I'll be back with the Saxons and our guards within the hour—”

I held up a finger, listening, more confused by the second. Finally, the message ended.

“What is it?” Jack said. He perched on the edge of the bed next to me.

“I thought I'd check my mom's messages, just in case there was anything from the airlines about a delay or something, but . . . I think this one's from Mr. Emerson.”

I pressed the button to replay it and put it on speaker:

“It's me. People have been watching me. They're here. If I don't make it, I need you to find what I've left.” Mr. Emerson was breathing raggedly, rushing through the words. “The tomb. I've been searching for years. Napoleon found it, and hid it again. I have three clues he left, but there are more. I've hidden them, and you've got to get them before the Circle does. Start at my—the office I sometimes call you from. Follow from there. I'm sorry I've never told you.

“It's the union—Napoleon discovered some disturbing things. And there's more. I was searching for information about the One, and . . . you won't believe it, Carol. I can't say any more, but I believe I've found one of them, and brought—I've been trying to protect—never mind. Both of them are in great danger. You have to find—”

The message cut off abruptly.

My mouth was hanging open. “What—”

Jack replayed the message again. “Some of it's what he told us in the note. But he told her a lot more. Your
mom.
Which means what?”

I shook my head. “I don't know.” I stared at the phone, still ticking off seconds as the mechanical operator's voice asked whether I wanted to save or delete the message. I pressed save. “Maybe we can go through the diary again. See if this connects?”

“Definitely.” Jack turned down his collar and stood up. “But first, I want to get you out of here. We can talk about it all when you're safely with the Saxons.”

I got out of bed and looked down at our feet, his stuffed into shoes, mine bare and cold.

“I'll be back as soon as I can.” He paused, then ran his fingers down my arm. “And, um. Thanks. Last night. Thanks for letting me get in out of the rain.” He grabbed his jacket and stepped out the window and down the long balcony.

I watched him until he disappeared, then locked the window behind him. I collapsed on the bed, my mind spinning. What could Mr. Emerson possibly think my mom could do with the clues? How was
she
involved in all this?

There was a tapping at the window, and I jumped out of my skin. Through the panes, I saw Jack standing outside. I leapt off the bed and threw the window open.

“I forgot something,” he said. He reached through the window, took my face in his hands, and kissed me.

I meant to only kiss him back for a second, but then my hands were around his neck, my fingers in his hair, my body pressed into the windowsill between us. He still smelled the tiniest bit like last night's rain. And then he was climbing over the sill, back into the room, tossing his jacket onto the bed, his lips not leaving mine the whole time.

“Why didn't you do this last night?” I murmured against his mouth.

He let his fingers slide over my shoulders, down to my hips. He broke away far enough to let his eyes follow their path, tracing lines of fire over my skin. “Avery, if I'd let myself do this last night . . .” His thumbs slipped under the hem of my shirt. “I might have lost what hint of self-control I had left.”

“Oh,” I whispered, and all of my own self-control flew out the window.

I waited for him to tell me that we couldn't do this here, now, that he had to go—waited for myself to come to my senses and tell him this was dangerous. That we had more important things to do. That we just couldn't. He didn't. I didn't.

We stumbled backward onto the chaise. And then I was on his lap and he was kissing my cheeks, my eyelids, the tip of my nose, always back to my lips.

Finally, he pulled away. “We shouldn't be doing this,” he murmured. I knew he'd be responsible. I started to pull away with a resigned sigh. “But I don't care,” he finished with a grin.

I forgot where we were, all the danger we could be in or not or why it ever even mattered. It all faded away as my body melted into his, and the daylight streamed through the window and wrapped around us.

A buzzing sound made me jump. It took me a second to realize it was Jack's phone.

“I don't have to answer it,” he said, but I saw his eyes dart to his pocket.

“No, you should.” I shifted on his lap enough that he was able to pull the phone out.

He frowned down at the text, and his grip tightened on my waist. “It says there's an emergency. And—” He cursed. “There are more, from early this morning. We must have slept through them. It doesn't say what it's about. I have to go.”

I stayed on his lap for as long as I could, fingers tracing over his shirt. Even through the worry, a smile lit his eyes and he leaned in for one last lingering kiss.

A noise in the hallway stopped us both still, his arms tight around me. Jack put a finger to his lips. We both held our breath, and I leaned toward the noise.

And then, I heard the most frightening thing I'd ever heard.

A key, turning the lock on my bedroom door.