Snowflakes & Fire Escapes Read Online Free PDF Page B

above us, too. Sometimes, I thought, it was hard to feel grounded when you couldn’t recognize the world around you. My eyes searched the skies, but I felt nothing spark inside of me. It was like we were trapped in a void. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I saw a star.”
    “Me, either,” Cody said. “I can’t remember the last time I actually looked for one.”
    We lay there some more, and I knew we were both looking for stars, looking for something beyond this existence and out into the greater universe, but just like me, he came up empty. It sort of made it feel like this was all there was.
    Like there was nothing outside of this life we had been given.
    We both wanted more, though. Cody had told me, one of the secrets we shared in the dark on my sixteenth birthday, the first time he told me he had fallen in love with me and I whispered those words right back. He said he didn’t want to be like his father … that he didn’t want to waste his life running these streets.
    He said he wanted out of Hell’s Kitchen.
    I said I wanted the same.
    “I guess that does it,” he said after a while. “Can’t see the Heavens so this must be Hell.”
    “Must be,” I mumbled in agreement, giving up on stargazing to snuggle up against him. I lay my head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arm around me. He smelled woodsy, and earthy, the pungent aroma of smoke lingering on his clothes and mixing with his cologne. Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply, breathing him in.
    He smelled like a world outside of this city.
    He shifted position, cupping my chin and pulling my face up toward him so he could kiss me. It was soft and sweet as always, his tongue meeting mine as his hands roamed. He caressed my face and neck before his hand drifted down to my waist, toying with the hem of my shirt for a moment. I felt his fingertips graze the bare skin along my side as he dipped beneath the fabric. He stroked my stomach, moving up, his hand slipping beneath the cup of my bra, pushing it out of the way to palm my breast.
    His thumb grazed across my nipple and I gasped, savoring his touch. This was what we did, the moments I lived for, when his hands were touching me, the only hands that ever touched me. It never went farther than this; he never pushed for more than just a stolen embrace.
    His lips found my neck, kissing lightly, running his tongue along my skin.
    I shivered.
    “Are you cold?” he asked quietly.
    I was, but that wasn’t what gave me goose bumps right then. “I’m okay.”
    He sighed. “You should probably go in.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    I didn’t want him to leave.
    I didn’t want to spend another night by myself.
    I was so tired of it.
    I was only sixteen and three quarters and I was already drowning in solitude. I felt like I’d spent an entire lifetime alone. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
    “Come with me,” I whispered. “Let’s go inside together.”
    He pulled away to look at me, surprise on his face as he stared into my eyes. He never went inside. It was just the way it was. Cody had broken every rule ever forced upon him, even broken a few laws in his young life, but this rule he followed. Maybe it was a matter of respect. Maybe it was fear.
    Or maybe it was just because I’d never asked him to break it.
    Maybe that was what he had been waiting for.
    An invitation.
    Because he gave it ten seconds then—ten seconds of silence, of contemplation—before he removed his hand from my shirt. I thought he was going to leave, that he was going to send me in alone. His expression was so serious.
    It made my insides curl.
    Cody motioned toward the open window. I climbed through, bringing my blanket with me as he got to his feet. I stood in the living room, straining my ears as he paused again. Ten more seconds. Ten seconds of silence. Ten seconds of contemplation. I listened for the sound of the rattling fire escape, expecting him to disappear. Instead, after those ten seconds passed, he came