“May I help you?” he asked flatly.

I sputtered for a second, confused. Then, without warning, I reached around him, opened his door, and yanked him into the bedroom with me. Using the back of my foot, I slammed the door shut behind us.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

Still wearing that annoyed scowl, Joshua folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t know what you mean, Amelia.”

“Of course you do!” I threw my hands in the air in exasperation. “You’ve been avoiding me ever since we all came back from Robber’s Cave.”

“I’ve been busy.”

He shrugged, as if that was explanation enough for ignoring the girl you supposedly loved, during what might be your last week on earth together. For a second I blanched, fighting the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm me. So many feelings rushed through me: sadness, fury, loss, disbelief. Finally, all I could do was shrug, too.

“I understand.”

I let my head fall so that I couldn’t see his eyes anymore. Then I turned away from him and reopened his bedroom door. Before I could cross the threshold, however, Joshua’s hand shot past my shoulder and landed flat against the door. He didn’t slam it like I had, but instead waited until I’d let go of the knob to push it softly shut.

For an endless, fraught moment, we both held our positions: him, propped against the door by his palm; me, facing it because I couldn’t bring myself to look at him again. Eventually, I mustered enough courage to turn back around. My knees nearly buckled at what I saw in his face.

Joshua wasn’t crying, but his tired eyes were redder than I’d ever seen them. His mouth had twisted in its attempt to hold back his emotions—a battle that I could tell it would soon lose. Apparently, his crisis of faith had finally resolved itself, in the worst possible way. My beautiful, sunny Joshua had been breaking for weeks, and now the break was complete.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered shakily. “I’m . . . I’m not as good at dealing with loss as you are. And I . . .” Here he paused to draw an unsteady breath. “I’m not ready to lose you. I’m just not. I just . . . can’t.”

At the last word, his shoulders slumped forward and he seemed to fold in on himself. I should have said something comforting, or tried to convince him that he wouldn’t lose me. In other words, I should have lied.

Instead, I focused every part of myself upon Joshua and then threw myself against him. Within the span of a few seconds we went from standing apart to falling together onto his bed. I kissed him until I couldn’t breathe—until he kissed me back just as fiercely. I wrapped one of my legs around his hip and spun with him across the bed, tangling myself in his sheets and in his arms.

In between our kisses, I whispered feverishly, “I love you, I love you.” He panted the words back to me, running his hands through my long hair and using it to tug me gently to him again. Other than those whispers, we didn’t speak, and we didn’t have to. Both of us felt the same need to consume each other, to breathe each other’s breath until one of us stopped breathing altogether.

Joshua paused, midkiss, and then pulled away slightly. By this point he’d positioned himself over me and now he looked down on me with so much tenderness that I felt the fissure in my heart crackle and expand. With one hand on my hip and the other cupped softly around the back of my neck, Joshua leaned in close to my ear.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please.”

I knew what he was asking, and it wasn’t for me to make love to him; it was for me to stay—to find some way to stay here, in this world, with him. Unfortunately, that was the one request I had no power to fulfill.

In lieu of an answer, I slipped my hands beneath his shirt and, in one swift motion, tugged it over his head. He didn’t try to stop me but instead moved his hands beneath my shirt as well. After he’d positioned his fingers along my hemline, he hesitated, clearly asking me for permission. I gave him a quick but fierce peck on the lips, and he nodded in acknowledgment. Then he slid my shirt off slowly, so that the silk brushed deliciously along my stomach and arms.

Once he’d done that, however, he surprised me by catching my gaze fully and holding it.

“I love you,” he said simply.

I smiled and traced his lower lip with my forefinger. “I love you, Joshua. And I always will.”

He returned my smile, and then returned his mouth to mine. This is it, I thought. This is finally it.

My heart began to knock loudly against my ribs. So loudly that I thought my heart sounded like someone knocking on a wooden door. Exactly like it, in fact.

“Joshua?” Rebecca’s voice called from the other side of the closed door. “Joshua, are you doing homework?”

Damn, I thought. Damn, damn, damn.

With no small amount of reluctance either, Joshua pulled his lips from mine to answer, “Uh . . . yeah, Mom. Just . . . finishing up some Anatomy.”

I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from giggling. Even though we’d been interrupted, I somehow felt lighter, happier. Strange, how his touch could do that to me: reconnect me to him in away that I doubted would ever break again. No matter what happened this weekend.

“Well, when you get to a stopping place,” Rebecca continued, “can you come downstairs? A few of our guests arrived early, and I’d like you to say hello.”

My stomach did a little flip. I knew that I would see the young Seers in just a few minutes, and that I would need to be ready to brief them on our plans. But even though I knew what I needed to say, I hadn’t entirely prepared myself to actually see them. Particularly after how our first meeting had ended.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Joshua called out to his mom, rolling away from me with a final brush of fingertips across my bare stomach. Despite my worries, I smiled, luxuriating in the touch for another few seconds before joining him off the bed.

While he dug around on the floor for our clothes, I couldn’t help but stare at him hungrily. Joshua bent back up, caught me looking, and grinned. He held my shirt out for me and, when I reached for it, he pulled it back slightly so that I had to stretch to grab it. I laughed and took it easily from his hands.

We began to slip our shirts back on, but neither of us could stop peeking at each other. Still laughing, Joshua yanked his shirt into place and then wrapped me in a playful hug as I finished with my clothing.

“Hey,” I teased, “if you keep doing this, I won’t be able to fix my haystack hair.”

“You’re beautiful, even with bed head,” he whispered into the nape of my neck, and I shivered happily. Then I pulled away so that I really could put myself back together. Once we both looked somewhat presentable, I placed my hand in his and let him lead me out of the bedroom and down the hallway.

I had a fleeting moment of worry that his mother would notice we’d come downstairs together, and rightly suspect what we’d been up to. But when we crossed through the archway leading into the kitchen, an entirely new set of worries replaced that one.

The three young Seers I’d met this Christmas in New Orleans were sprawled across the Mayhews’ kitchen like they owned the place, all but ignoring their older relatives. Drew and Hayley were practically slobbering over each other at the breakfast table, near a disgusted Jillian and Scott; and Annabel looked cool and collected as she leaned against the kitchen island.

None of their behavior was particularly unnerving. But my mouth dropped open when I saw the person leaning against the island with Annabel. Actually, I saw his eyes first—a clear, gorgeous blue, offset by his smooth coffee-and-cream skin. He caught my shocked stare and flashed me a wide grin.

“Hey, Amelia,” he drawled.

“Felix!” I cried out joyfully.