Chapter 180 180

Chapter 180 180
Lucian's POV:

Two days later, Sanders' class ended at one-fifteen and Emma was waiting for me outside the door with her bag over her shoulder and this look on her face that I was learning to recognize, the one that meant she'd already decided something and was waiting for me to catch up.

"I don’t have any more classes today, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either..." she said. "My mom's at work until three-thirty. Evie's at school and Dad's at the store."

"Okay."

"That's two hours."

"I can do math, Emma."

"Can you? Because it seems that you don’t get, do you?"

I took me a moment to understand what she was trying to say. Being fast was not like my thing.

"You mean, we..." I said. "Oh..."

"Yes," she said and laughed a bit, amused. "I mean that we 'oh'... Which translates to 'we can have some time alone.' You get it now?"

"Kind of," I said and I laughed nervously. "I think."

She took my hand and we walked. Off campus, through town, the usual route except faster than usual because her legs were moving with purpose and I was doing that thing where I matched her pace without thinking about it, which was hard because my legs were longer and I had to take weird small steps.

We didn't talk about what was happening. We didn't need to. We'd been talking about it without talking about it for two days, since the burned pillow, since "we'll figure it out," since she'd kissed me mid-sentence in my bedroom and I'd felt the gold push behind my eyes and held it, barely, and she'd looked at me and said "I'm not scared of you."

The Thomas house was quiet. She unlocked the front door and we went in and the silence was specific, the kind that only existed when a house was completely empty. No TV from the living room, no radio from the kitchen, no Evie stomping around upstairs. Just us and the ticking of the clock in the hallway and the hum of the fridge.

Emma put her bag on the kitchen chair. Took off her jacket. Looked at me.

"Come upstairs," she said.

I followed her up the stairs and every step felt like it had its own gravity. Her room. The small one at the end of the hall, desk by the window, bookshelf overflowing, the corkboard with its sticky notes and postcards. The laptop on the desk was closed. The bed was made, kind of, the covers pulled up in that way that looked effortless but I was pretty sure wasn't.

She closed the door. Turned around. Leaned against it.

For a second we just looked at each other across the room, maybe six feet of carpet and a thousand things we hadn't said.

"I'm nervous," I said. Because I was and because lying to her was done, all of it, forever.

"Me too. But we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. I mean, don’t feel like I’m pushing you to do something you don’t want to, we can just—"

"I want to," I said, way too fast and embarrassing. "I mean, of course I want to, with you, Emma. It’s just that I’m a bit... terrified, you know? You've done this before. And I haven’t..."

"Yes. But not with someone I really love and whose hands can set things on fire." She smiled. Small. "So this is new for both of us."

She crossed the room to me. Slow. Put her hands on my chest, over my shirt, and I could feel her palms through the cotton and she could feel my heart, I know she could, because it was slamming.

"I’m scared things will get outta control," I said.

"Well, maybe we need rules, then," she said. "If it gets too hot, I'll tell you. If I say stop, you stop. If something starts smoking, we deal with it. Okay?"

"What if I hurt you?"

"You won't."

"You don't know that."

"I know you healed my sister with those same hands. I'll take my chances." She looked up at me. "Now stop arguing and kiss me, Lucian."

I kissed her with my hands on her face and her mouth opening under mine and felt the taste of her, mint and something sweet, the gum she chewed in Sanders' class. Her hands fisted in my shirt and she pulled me closer and I went, I just went, because saying no to this was something I couldn't do anymore.

The gold pushed. I felt it, that familiar pressure behind my eyes, and I did the redirect, gold up, spread, breathe, but loosely, not fighting it, just redirecting the heat to my chest where it could sit without hurting anyone. My hands were warm on her face. Not burning, just warm.

She pulled back.

"Your eyes," she said. "They’re starting to shift. There's gold around the edges."

"Does it bother you?"

"No. It's... I don't know, it's kind of hot." She paused. "No pun intended."

"Terrible."

"Shut up and take off your shirt."

I pulled my shirt over my head. Dropped it on her floor next to the bookshelf. And stood there, bare from the waist up, in Emma Thomas's bedroom, and I felt more exposed than I had in the forest with the gold coming out of my hands, because that was my power and this was just me. Just skin and muscle and a body that I still wasn't used to, too tall, too broad, hands that belonged to someone bigger than the kid I used to be.

She looked at me. Not rushed. Her eyes moved over my chest, my shoulders, my stomach, and her face did something that made the gold push harder.

"You're staring," I said.

"I'm allowed. I'm your girlfriend now."

She reached for the hem of her own shirt. Pulled it up and off in one motion, casual, the way someone does when they've done this before and aren't scared, and she was standing there in her bra, dark blue, simple, and the light from the window was coming in from behind her and I forgot about the redirect.

And about everything else, actually.

"Emma..."

"Come here."