Page 66 of The Apparent Trap

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. We’re watching, studying each other, and the breathing slows down. With it, the reality of what just happened starts to come to the forefront.

“I’ll definitely be thinking about that for a long time, yeah,” he says, his voice sandpaper rough.

He leans toward me, his face closer to mine than it’s been all night. The heat of his breath warms the tip of my nose.

I can feel my body revving again, like it’s gotten a hit and is desperate for another. All I want is for him to close that gap between us, “why else’s” be damned. I heard all the reasons. I know all the reasons. They’re not wrong. But they’re so wrong. I can’t stand it anymore. I want to feel him on me. I want his mouth on mine.

I lean in a little closer to him. He has to know what I’m angling for, but he’s holding himself back. He’s the only one being responsible. I’ve lost every shred of possibility.

And just when I think maybe he’s caving, that maybe he’s going to let himself have what he clearly wants, all of a sudden the night lights up.

It’s as though the sky itself has come alive. Thick ribbons of green, punctuated by pink edges, twist and ripple overhead. It’s like watching a moving watercolor, an invisible paintbrush spreading across the canvas of the entire heavens. It’s achingly slow but somehow still pulsing with electricity. In a view that’s usually pinpricks of white light against a sea of black, this is like crashing waves of vibrant color.

It’s pure magic, a private show just for us courtesy of the sun and the air and the secrets of the universe. The way the light moves is an abstract dance, nature’s version of a poetic ballet without music to guide it.

For twenty minutes we silently watch. We watch the lights brighten and shift. We see the sky itself bend and change. It’s like being on a new planet, and yet nothing could make you feel more grounded to being in a specific place and time.

And then slowly, it starts to fade. The sky still holds an eerie shade of green instead of pitch black, but the singularity of the moment has passed us by.

We’re in a new moment.

Everything has changed.

I know now what the sky looks like at its most gorgeous, the closest it can get to otherworldly—I’ll never unsee it. And it reminds me that I also can’t unsee those moments I just had with Lee, the desire, the desperation, the aftermath of coming undone.

And on the other hand . . . the sky is back to normal. Sure, we’ve just experienced something we couldn’t have fully understood before. But it doesn’t make the sky any less dark in this moment, now.

Everything has changed, and nothing has changed.

Lee is sitting on top of a dozen extremely true reasons why we shouldn’t let anything go further. We shouldn’t break the rules I put in place to not hurt us, while we’re out here with the common goal of ensuring the people we love don’t hurt themselves.

Everything Lee has shared with me feels like unearthing a gem, precious, fascinating. But it doesn’t belong to me. It’s like the northern lights themselves—they’ll be luminous whether or not I’m here to watch them.

Chapter 20

I walk into breakfast the next morning later than I should. Our flight is leaving in a few hours, and we need to get back to the airport. But I’m fuzzy at best, like a sparking power line—humming with energy from everything last night, but frayed from lack of sleep.

I notice Lee, Carmen, Amir, and Simon all sitting together in the back, and I take a moment to watch them all before they spot me.

Well, one person in particular.

Lee must’ve slipped out early before I even woke up. When my alarm went off, I’d rolled over in the direction of his cot, but it was empty.

So my eyes drink him in now, lit up in the daylight. His stubble looks like it downed a strong coffee—I don’t know how it grows so damn fast, and I hate how closely I can compare its density against only a few hours ago. It’s like whatever happened overnight made him darker and more handsome.

Or maybe it’s just that now when I look at him, I know what he sounds like when he’s letting go.

I take a deep breath and try to shake it off. I can’t let last night be anything. We’re about to leave Sweden, and while this place is a hell of a lot colder than Vegas, what happens in Sweden also needs to stay in Sweden.

Besides, nothing happened. Nothing . . . really happened.

I sit down deliberately as diagonally far from Lee as I can. He and Simon are having an in-depth chat about the best salt timing for burger patties that I definitely have no interest in. Amir is engrossed in a book. Carmen is half listening to Lee, but she seems out of it.

“Hey,” I say, and she looks over. “Are you okay?”

“Hmm?” she asks, the daze even more apparent.

“You seem tired.”