Free Betrayed by Francine Pascal

real truth…I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about here. Maybe you really do hate my guts, and your stalker ex-boyfriend just trapped you in a closet for two minutes, and you’ll need years of extensive therapy to recover. If that’s true, then I am so sorry. But if that’s not true…if your entire body is buzzing from being next to me in this closet the way mine is buzzing from finally being this close to you again…then please, please tell me the truth. We can go back out there right now and face all those freaking horrors and death traps alone, or we can stay in here for a few more minutes and…I don’t know…just…be together. So just tell me the truth now and I will never ask you again. Do you want to be together? Do you want—”
    Gaia shut Ed’s mouth with her own. She clasped both her hands firmly around the back of his neck, pressed her lips to his lips, pressed her body to his body, and answered his question, clinging to him so strongly, it was almost as if she were afraid she might lose him again. They fell against the door as he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, reaching his hands all the way around her back and grabbing onto her. His hands weren’t really within his control at this point as they swept forcefully up to her back and then to the back of her head, pressing her to him, breathing her in with the desperation of a man who’d been slowly suffocating for days. And in all honesty, he had been.

Philosophical Questions
    GAIA LET HERSELF GIVE IN. SHE just did. It was entirely beyond her control. And she didn’t care. Finally, for at least two whole minutes, she didn’t care about all the watchful eyes and impending doom. She didn’t care about her enemies. She didn’t care who her father was. She didn’t care about what joylessly heroic thing she was supposed to do next. All those things were surely waiting for her down on the ground somewhere. But as long as she had Ed’s lips, as long she had his body pressing her against that door, she could hover just slightly above all of it, feeling weightless and resurrected in this cold cement janitor’s closet.
    Resurrected. That was honestly the feeling coursing through her veins. Being brought back from the dead. At least for two minutes. His kiss was just like oxygen, or food, or water. And Gaia had been starving, parched, and holding her breath without him. All these days of zombifying self-enforced deprivation, and here at last was a moment of critical relief.
    She knew she had just broken about twenty different promises by kissing him. Promises she’d made to herself, pacts she’d made with her uncle, and her father, and even Satan.
    But Ed was just making too much sense. What was the use of being fearless if she was going to live what basically amounted to a fearful life? Peering around every corner, tiptoeing on Loki’s stupid tightrope all day and all night? Denying herself everything and giving him complete control?
    No, it wasn’t even that. That’s not why she was wrapped in Ed’s arms. It was nothing that philosophical or profound. It was so much simpler.
    It was just wanting him so much. That’s all it was. Wanting him so much that it crossed over into that very pesky category of “need.” So much that standing next to him in the dark had been screwing up her breathing. So much that the simple act of being tugged into a cold, wet closet felt like some kind of irresistible foreplay.
    She’d given it every bit of resistance she had left. She’d lied through her teeth again and again. She’d glued her hands to that door. She’d barked endless orders to her body to stay cold and stiff—to ignore her racing heart. To stop pumping all that blood through her chest and up to her face. To avoid the electrical sparks she felt just from having his hands on either side of her, pressed against that