Free Betrayed by Francine Pascal Page A

door.
    But none of that was going to do any good. Not in a small, dark room alone with him. Not after resisting him for such a painfully long time. Not after everything he’d said in that remarkably insistent, thoroughly desperate, and beautifully Ed-like monologue. It had been worth kissing him just to shut his verbose ass up, but still, every word had rung true. And as per usual, Ed’s uncanny ability to speak the truth had pretty much blown her mangled line of thinking to smithereens.
    Ed probably didn’t even know how right he was. All this time, Gaia had believed that honoring Loki’s clear-cut message to stay away from Ed would somehow keep Ed safe. But Loki was obviously way past honoring any deals, and that included an unspoken deal to leave Ed alone. He’d thrown all of his deranged diplomacy out the window and replaced it with nothing but brute violence and terrorism. So if they were in fact headed toward Loki’s version of World War III, why the hell was Gaia wasting time denying herself the only truly good thing still standing in the ruins of her war-torn life?
    So she pulled Ed closer. As close as she could bring him with his clothes still on. That still wasn’t close enough. And two minutes wasn’t enough time. Why should she have to stop at two minutes? If she was through lying to Ed, then why in fact would she ever need or want to leave this room again? If Loki was starting World War III right outside that door, then here was the perfect fallout shelter. They could simply stay together in this closet and wait out the war. All they needed were some cans of beans, plenty of bottled water, and a set of those purple sheets.
    Right now, she would have settled for just the sheets.
    Ed’s hands ignored her clothes completely, sliding urgently under her jacket and her T-shirt and caressing her bare skin. His right hand traveled the length of her spine, lifting the back of her shirt with it, until she could feel her naked shoulders pressed against the metal door. His left hand slid down the base of her back and grabbed on firmly to the waistband of her jeans.
    Maybe they didn’t even need the sheets.
    Gaia was so deeply engrosseed with his lips and his palms and his fingertips, she’d barely even noticed her own hands reaching under his long-sleeved shirt and grasping onto his white undershirt, tugging it out from his jeans, hiking both shirts farther and farther up his chest….
    And then, almost simultaneously, they let go of each other.
    What’s wrong with you, Gaia? What about Heather? And Tatiana, and Natasha, and Dad …
    Ed must have felt it, too. He must have felt just as ridiculously guilty.
    All of them suffering, or missing, or mourning. That was the reality outside this closet. That was what mattered right now. That was surely where Gaia and Ed’s minds should have been. But standing here with him, the actual universe had fallen so wondrously far away just for a second. They’d flashed back so completely to the last time they’d been this close that they were ready to take things…as far as they could go. Here. Now. In a hospital closet. And that, of course, felt beyond wrong. This was not the time. Not here. Not now. No matter how much they wanted it.
    â€œOkay…,”Ed uttered between short, shallow breaths, staring down at the floor, “we were just…We can’t—”
    â€œNo,” Gaia agreed, staring straight ahead as she tried to catch her breath. “I didn’t even realize I was—”
    â€œMe neither, ” Ed agreed. “I mean…well…maybe I knew I was…but not here. ”
    â€œNo. Not here,” Gaia agreed.
    â€œOkay.” Ed slowly began to breathe more regularly.
    â€œOkay,” Gaia echoed.
    It was official. They could breathe freely. They had made it out of that very sudden and unexpected “situation” without doing anything too shamefully sinful. No,