Free Shift by Jeri Smith-Ready Page B

turned the pencil end over end. “We e-mailed and video-chatted for a while, and then … she stopped.”
    I wanted to throttle this Suzanne person for putting that shadow of hurt in his voice. “How long were you together?”
    “Eight months, three weeks, and a day. A day and a half.”
    I didn’t mention that it was a shorter relationship than mine and Logan’s. If Zachary was measuring the time in half days, she must have meant a lot to him.
    “My point is,” he said, “if Suzanne had appeared in my room a few months after she left, even after I met you, I probably would’ve done what you did. And she’s not even dead.”
    All along, he’d been so patient about me and Logan. It wasn’t because he was a saint—it was because he understood. “You really do get it.”
    “I get it. That doesn’t make it easier to hear about you in bed with him.” He started drawing again, his lines heavy. “It was bad enough when he was a ghost and he couldn’t touch you, and I thought, ‘If I wait long enough, she’ll come round,’ and so I waited and waited, but I waited one day too many, didn’t I?” The pencil tip snapped against the paper. “Bugger!” Zachary hurled the pencil into the wheat field.
    We sat silent as his curse echoed against the distant hills, then faded. My blood raced from his outburst. Maybe we were finally getting somewhere.
    “Sorry,” he said at last.
    “That was our only pencil.”
    Zachary made another guttural sound, then picked up the flashlight and tromped off into the field.
    The loss of his nearby heat made me want to follow him, but instead I pulled my knees to my chest to keep warm—or at least alive.
    For five minutes I watched him wander, scanning the rough surface with the flashlight, whose faint red glow reached only a few feet in front of him.
    Finally he stopped, picked something up, then came back, his steps as deliberate as they’d been on the way out.
    “Did you find it?”
    “I found this.” He knelt in front of me. “Put out your hand.”
    I kept my fingers clasped around my shins. “What is it?”
    “Never mind.” He put the item in his pocket. “If you don’t trust me—”
    “Hey.” I grabbed the front of his jacket. “I trust you more than anyone in the world.”
    Zachary’s gaze dropped to my hand, then rose, burning, into my eyes. “So what are we doing?”
    “Nothing. That’s the problem.” I pulled him to kiss me.
    Though my aim was slightly off, and our lips were cold and chapped, I knew in an instant that this was right. Zachary fit me, like the answer to an equation I’d forgotten how to solve.
    His groan of relief told me he felt it, too. He slid his arms around my back, and I pressed against him—as much as my parka would allow—wanting to sink into his warmth. I wanted this perfect rightness never to end.
    Which of course it did. He broke the kiss, holding my face in his hands. “What do we do?”
    My teeth chattered. “Go make out where it’s warm?”
    “I don’t mean right now.” Zachary glanced over at the car. “Though that’s no’ a bad idea.” He shook his head. “We’d be too comfortable.”
    “Not possible.”
    “We have to think.”
    “Do we?”
    “I asked Becca to the prom.”
    “So un-ask her.”
    “I can’t un-ask her.”
    “You un-asked me.”
    “You deserved it.” He cut off my protest. “You did. Hush.” Zachary kissed me again, with even more passion and less precision.
    I tore off my gloves and slipped my hands inside his leather jacket, the zipper’s teeth scraping my skin like icy fangs. The prom seemed a million years away.
    His lips left mine again, but only to shift to the edge of my jaw. “Should’ve given you another chance,” he said, his breath coming hard, “talked to you again before I called her.”
    “You gave me way too many chances. You should’ve just done this.”
    He murmured in agreement, moving his mouth to my neck, right below my ear. His fingers threaded through my