After The Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

intended,” he said with a laugh, when they were lying together afterward, wedged among the cushions. “But then, you cheated. You are more experienced than I am.”
    “I like it.” Tessa kissed his fingers. “I am going to have a great deal of fun introducing you to everything. I can’t wait for you to hear rock and roll music, Jem Carstairs. And I want to see you use an iPhone. And a computer.
    And ride the Tube. Have you been in an airplane? I want to be in an airplane with you.”
    Jem was still laughing. His hair was a terrific mess, and his eyes were dark and shining in the lamplight. He looked like the boy he had been, so many years ago, but different, too: this was a Jem Tessa had only just begun to know. A young, healthy Jem, not a dying boy or a Silent Brother. A Jem who could love her with all his strength as she would love him back.
    “We’ll take an airplane,” he said. “Maybe to Los Angeles.”
    She smiled. She knew why they had to be there.
    “We have time to do everything,” he said, tracing one of his fingers down the side of her face. “We have forever.”
    Not forever, Tessa thought. They had a long, long time. A lifetime. His lifetime. And she would lose him one day, as she had lost Will, and her heart would break, as it had broken before. And she would put herself back together and go on, because the memory of having had Jem would be better than never having had him at all.
    She was wise enough to know that, now.
    “What you said before,” she asked. “That Jace Herondale loves Clarissa Fairchild more than anyone you’ve ever known except someone — you never finished the sentence. Who was it?”
    “I was going to say you and me and Will,” he said. “But — that’s rather a strange thing to say, isn’t it?”
    “Not strange at all.” She cuddled in close against his side. “Exactly right. Ever and always, exactly right.”
    ***