Sand Man

Part Seven

Chapter 33

"There's no way..." I start, but she stops me.

"Think about it, Kesh. What else could it mean?"

Before I know it our eyes are locked on to each other and I can't look away. And, for the first time, I don't feel too embarrassed or shy to need to. The way she's looking right back at me tells me she isn't hiding anything either. So I reach out to her, wanting desperately to close the gap that separates us. Our bodies touch again and our arms wrap together, as we had before, but this feels different. This time it's not just my chest touching her chest. This time, it's us.

Her chin pressed against my collar. Her arms tight around my back.

The pressure of our bodies so close suddenly makes my temperature rise. Even my shirt feels unnecessary. I want to take it off. To make us as close as possible, so no separation could give way to more.

I think about the way her cheekbones glisten. The way her voice sounds when she sings her call through the woods. The way she feels inside my embrace right now. All make up who she is, but not what she means. I lift her face to mine, and her arms loosen around me. Everything I know, everything she knows, meets for the first time in a first kiss.

I can feel every second that she's waited for me to figure things out in an instant. An entire year's worth of love in one kiss and I don't ever want it to stop. I want time to pause, to move backward even, because everything about it just feels so good.

I just got to kiss a girl that I met in a dream. Yet now I know, for an absolute fact, that she is real and I am real because of her.

When she lets me go, I see that her smile is wider than I've ever seen it. Even more so than the other day when she saw me with the Sand Man's sword-with my sword. I had been right about her feelings for me and her belief in me; I just couldn't imagine such a thing being possible with her or with me.

But just as I'm getting the courage to tell her how much I'd wanted that kiss, something terrible happens...

Chapter 35

The smile instantly drains from her face and her eyes dart away from mine. I assume we've been found by the look of dread she gives me. So I turn, expecting to see an intruder, another keeper, or worse-her brother-standing right behind me and witnessing what I just did.

I turn around, as dread sinks my stomach down into the soles of my shoes, but I see no one. I spin back to face her as her eyes flash down to the watch on her wrist. Then I know immediately what's going on.

She raises both hands up to me and I tense, expecting her to shove me away as she had the last time we were out here and out of time, but she doesn't. She stops herself as if I am suddenly something that needs special care and should only to be touched gently. She looks up and says simply, "Go."

Whatever time that watch said, I hate. I hope I never know what that time was or else I'll break whatever clock I see it at. I hate it because it represents one of the many things that separates us and it brought about that same look of sadness that I'd drawn her in back at home. I wish I could tell her no. I wish I could just ignore the clock and stay here longer.

But I do just as she says and I leave. I turn and run down the path toward my station in a dead on sprint.

Well, a sprint can't really describe what I'm doing-because truthfully I'm not even sure if my feet are hitting the ground on each stride. It's like I'm flying. She hadn't given me a time count, but by her expression-I couldn't have more than a few seconds to get away.

The sun has dipped low over the hillside and it's nearly dark, long shadows cross the pathway and make it hard to watch my footing. My arms pump hard and my knees rise up in front of me. I turn a corner in the path and see my clearing for the second station ahead in the distance.