Now and for Never Read Online Free PDF

do?”
    He nodded. “I mean, not so much you but … the things you do. I worry that one day it’s not all going to come back around and be all right.” He shrugged helplessly—a gesture he was distinctly unsuited for. “I worry that I’ll lose you. Or worse, that I’ll never have had you in the first place.”
    â€œBut then you wouldn’t even know, would you?”
    â€œMaybe not.” He reached up and traced the curve of her cheek with a fingertip, making her shiver. “But I don’t want to find out.”
    â€œI don’t either.”
    They lapsed into silence again and the night spiralled out all around them, dark and serene and filled with small night sounds made by small night things.
    â€œMilo … back in the camp,” she said hesitantly. “With the fire and the fighting and the danger and running around … did you really—”
    â€œMean what I said?”
    She looked up at him. What he’d said was “I love you.”
    â€œYeah, Clare de Lune. I really did. And that’s why I can’t risk losing you again.”
    â€œWhat about at the end of summer?” she asked, giving voice to a silent, nagging doubt that she’d only just now acknowledged. “I mean, I’ll be going back home …”
    â€œAnd you think I can’t be bothered to cross a measly ocean to come and see you?” Milo’s voice had gone a bit husky. “I have a ton of lieu time banked at work, a light course load next semester, a fantastic travel agent, and an intense burning incentive to get on a transatlantic flight. I might just make it to Canada before you do.”
    Clare was about to say something flirtatious and witty when Milo bent his head, his eyes burning like blue flames before they drifted closed, his lips stealing every cubic inch of breath from her lungs. Milo’s kiss was spectacular, and Clare kissed him back for all she was worth. It went a long way toward making up for all the not-so-spectacular stuff that had transpired in the hours since the skies above Glastonbury Tor had shattered at Milo’s command and Clare had felled him with a bodycheck, knocking him back into the past to rescue his cousin together. It also convinced her that she’d do anything he asked. All she and Milo had been trying to do was keep each other safe. To save each other from harm—just as Al and Marcus had been trying to do. She started to come to a decision.
    No. No decisioning while kissing, said a voice in her head.
    Too late, said another voice.
    Do not mess with the kissing.
    I’m not stupid.
    Uh …
    All right! All right. I’ll sleep on it, okay?
    The voices in her head continued on arguing in that fashion while Clare’s lips steadfastly ignored them both and got on with the important things. Because in the morning those same lips would be the ones to tell Milo all the decisions Clare was making that he wasn’t going to want to hear.
    Yay, lips.
    IT WAS WITH GREAT reluctance that Milo finally pried himself away from Clare’s lips and let her go. When he got back to his room in the Glastonbury hotel he didn’t even bother turning on the lights. He had an overwhelming urge to fall face-first into a pillow and commence snoring. The bone-deep weariness dragging at his limbs was worse than any all-nighter he’d ever pulled—and there’d been more than a few of those over the course of his academic career.
    He bolted the door and in a kind of dream state shuffled toward the bed, navigating by way of the dim blue moonlight that filtered in through the window and stripping off the windbreaker as he went. As he passed the bathroom, Milo caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and was startled by the writhing blue patterns undulating across the moon-pale skin of his arms and chest. Slithering, serpentine … glowing .
    He lunged through the bathroom door, slamming his hand against