Page 41 of The Christmas Express

Ember

Alex is back, and this funny little party is complete again. The train still hasn’t moved, the main lights still haven’t come on, we’re no closer to getting to Vancouver, but, right now, I don’t care. I don’t care!

‘Can I show you something?’ Alex says, leaning close to be heard over the music. My lips are next to her neck and I can smell her soft, outdoorsy scent, and feel her breath tickle my cheeks.

‘Is that a line?’ I tease.

She laughs, and pulls me towards the stairs.

As I follow, nerves buzz through my body. I don’t know where we’re going, but she keeps her hand in mine, and I know that wherever she’s taking me, I want to go.

At the bottom of the stairs, she leads me away from the celestial carriage, and we walk through car after car, past late-night passengers, over sleeping, outstretched legs, until we arrive at the very end of the train.

‘Here,’ she says, reaching to a hook beside a large, sturdy-looking door, and hands me a thick coat, lined, that reaches the ground. Interesting, we’re putting more clothes on?

She takes a coat for herself too, and I put mine on.

I want to banter, to flirt, but this feels like it, like she’s going to kiss me tonight, and the thought has laid itself on top of all others, like the snow itself.

And so I’m silent, trusting, and reaching for her hand again when she smiles at me and opens the door.

What she opens the door to takes my breath right out of my lungs, lifting it into the night sky, as white as the mountaintops that surround us.

We’ve stepped onto the platform at the back of the train. The snowfall has stopped, but it’s mounded in silky ripples right across the tracks and high up the sides of the train. It looks like we’re floating in the clouds.

The sky has cleared and the billion stars I saw from within the train the past few nights look like they’ve been polished and tripled. The moon is large tonight, and it glitters the snow and the mountains in the dark.

‘This is...’ I look up, bathing in the starlight, not caring how cold my cheeks are, or that I can practically feel my eyelashes freezing on my face.

‘Pretty, huh?’ Alex says, interrupting my thoughts in a way I don’t mind at all.

I lower my gaze to her, standing there in the dark, lit up by the moon and the stars and the snow. Suddenly, I find the only words I need to say. ‘I want to kiss you.’

Her face grows serious and she steps an inch closer. ‘I want to kiss you, too.’

I smile, with relief, with anticipation, with want.

Alex reaches a hand up to my face, her cold fingertips moving my hair aside, and causing a frisson to run down my back.

A hint of her honey smile crooks the side of her mouth. ‘Cold?’ she asks, and pulls me closer, wrapping her coat around me, too.

Her body is warm under the coat, and the fire I’m feeling tells me I’m probably the same.

I tug her by the waist, running my eyes over her lips, level with my nose, so close that if I tilt my chin up right now the kiss we both want could finally happen.

A smile forms on my own lips. A bubble rising in me that I recognise as excitement. It’s so fucking nice to want someone, have someone want me, feel connected, let the Hollywood romance and the leading lady and the celestial setting sweep me away.

I lift my chin, my top lip grazing her bottom lip so lightly, testing, tasting.

Alex pauses. She pulls back a millimetre, rests her forehead against mine, increasing the gap between our mouths.

My heart thuds, confused. Is she coming back in?

‘Ember,’ she whispers, her voice nearly lost in the dark, it’s that quiet.

‘What?’ I take a step back too, moving my forehead from hers, but she stays looking down. ‘Is it the Bryn thing? You... you don’t have to worry about that any more. I think you know that you’ve changed how I felt when I first started this trip?’

‘It’s not that,’ she says, and her shoulders slump. She won’t look at me.

‘Can you tell me what it is back inside, later, once we’ve kissed?

It can’t be that important.’ I’m half joking, half covering the worry which is threading its way into my happiness.

Despite the worry, though, I’m still pulling myself towards her, longing for the kiss, for the moment, to keep going.

I think I might need this, for some reason.

Alex looks up at me then, pain in her eyes, her head tilted, and she scans my face like it might be the last time she sees me.

‘What is it?’ I ask, a little more forcefully this time, the cold creeping under my coat now.

She swallows, taking her time, stretching out the moment, looking at me like she wants to take me somewhere where we can forget about the rest of the world. Finally, she licks her lips, and says, ‘I need to tell you something.’