The below excerpt is from our August guest editor's novel Lovely, Dark, and Deep. Justina Chen's newest release is now available in hardcover.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Minutes, hours, light-years later, a single snowflake grazes my cheek. Its sister lands on my forehead. Little whispers sent from Mother Nature: Welcome back to my world. Josh kisses the wetness away, melted snow- flake tears: not yet, not yet, not yet. We lose the competition with Mother Nature, which is no contest anyway. There’s no way he can kiss all the snow- flakes away when the snow falls harder. Stars, meteors, and moon disappear overhead, graying the night sky. Now, only now, do I feel the ice-cold air lash my cheeks and my neck. I shiver. Only then do I remember the time.

“It’s midnight,” Josh says. His voice is husky. “You really got to pumpkin?”

“I really got to pumpkin,” I say, laughing.

Immediately, I regret my answer when he pulls away from me and jumps down to the snow-covered ground. He slips a little. “Careful. Weird, it wasn’t supposed to snow.”

“You checked the weather?”

“Of course.”

I sigh, already missing his warmth, his arms, his chest. He holds out his hand, my knight in the snow. I take it and scoot off the hood. He catches me in his arms. One stolen kiss becomes two. Three. Four.

I shiver.

“You’re freezing. Come on,” he says in a distinctly take-charge way as he walks me back to the passenger side.

“Not yet.”

“You’ve got to pumpkin.”

By the time we are both inside the truck, the air has become insistent with snowflakes, heavy, thick, and fast. Inside our snow globe, Josh cranks on the windshield wipers to full speed. Mother Nature scoffs. These flimsy blades are nothing against the force of her snow.

“You buckled?” Josh asks, glancing over at me.

Even though I nod, he does a visual check, eyes dropping from my shoul- der to my hip. I wait for his quip. I get none.

Kissed to near oblivion, I hadn’t even noticed that a gray Tesla has joined us in the parking lot. It lurches forward, then skids. Josh pulls up to the driver’s side, rolls down my window, and leans over me.

“You need any help?” he asks.

The gray-haired driver, with a golden retriever lying in the back seat, shakes his head. “No, I got it. Freak snow though, huh? I’m going to wait it out. You kids might want to, too.”

That’s not possible when I’ve got to be home before dawn. The early bird patrol awakes around five, and there will be a perimeter check at seven when I should be rousing for my heart-healthy breakfast.

As soon as my window is rolled up, Josh asks me (again), “You buckled?”

“Still buckled,” I confirm.

Yet (again), his eyes sweep me, triple-checking.

“It wasn’t supposed to snow,” he tells me (again). “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“You can’t control the weather.”

He doesn’t answer. We turn out of the parking lot without a problem, but as we slow at the stop sign, the truck skids. I yelp.

“I’ve got four-wheel drive,” Josh says, but whether he’s reassuring me or himself is unclear. “This is the last thing my parents agreed on after the acci- dent. They wanted me in something indestructible.”

“Hey, we can wait it out.”

“You’ve got to get home. Or can you call your parents? Let them know you’ll be late?”

I could, but the problem is they don’t know I’m out. I don’t tell Josh that. Before he can detect my lie, he checks his cell phone instead and swears.

“No service. How about you?” he asks.

Thankfully, I don’t have cell service either. The truth is safe in the dark with us.

“Okay. Home then?”

“Home.” I can feel his impending question and answer preemptively, “Still buckled.”

“Good,” he says, gripping the steering wheel. “Home.”

Easier said than done because the traffic is at a dead standstill at the on- ramp to the highway. We can’t even get on I-90, stuck with the rest of these late-night travelers.

“Let me find out what’s going on,” I tell him, and jump out of the truck before he can insist on doing that himself. A Toyota sedan is ahead of us. I tap on the snow-speckled window. “Hey, excuse me. Do you have any idea what’s happening?”

“They’ve closed the pass,” the tiny woman with three passed-out tod- dlers in the back seat tells me.

“Entirely?”

“Yup. Nobody was expecting the snow. None of the snowplows are ready, and all the motels up around here are sold out for the night.”

“When’s it going to reopen?”

“Who knows?” She shakes her head, a mass of brown curls. “An hour? Two? In the morning?”

Shivering, I hurry back to the truck and report to Josh: We aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Forget Cinderella and her pumpkin; I’m going to be Rapunzel locked in my room forever when my parents discover this. My windows will be welded shut, padlocks bolted on my bedroom door. What colossal stupidity to slip out tonight, to prove to them that I was capable of a normal life.

Josh’s hand upon mine stops my spiraling. “Hey.” “Hey,” I say.

“Your parents would rather have you safe.”       

Which is true. If they knew where I was in the first place. The snow con- tinues its relentless fall from the sky, muffling all sight and sound outside.

“We can’t suffocate in here, can we?” I ask. “I mean, like, if it dumps six feet by tomorrow morning?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t Donner Party you.”

“And here I thought I was tasty.”

“I better double-check that.”

“I’m not buckled anymore.”

With that invitation, Josh leans in to kiss me. I meet him halfway, slipping my arms around him. Time, parents, suffocation shrug off me, skin that I no longer want to wear. Our kiss deepens, then deepens more. I need to feel him, want him to feel me, but I am wearing a sleeping bag (rated to be weather- proof down to negative ten degrees). I pull away.

“Not yet,” he whispers.

“I’ll be back.” I shrug out of the heavy parka, and Josh throws it into the back seat. And there is only my low-cut shirt and the steaming windows and Josh and me pressing into each other.

What feels like hours later, he drags himself away with one last touch, tracing the lines of the lariat I wear around my neck. “Wait a second.”

“Now?” I say dubiously.

“It stopped snowing.”

“Clearly, I need to step up my kissing game if you noticed that.”

“Not a chance, but hang on.” Josh rummages in the glove compartment and holds up an ice scraper like it’s some he-man’s trophy. When he opens the driver door, the cold slips inside. So does reality. Thoughts of Mom and Dad blast me. How much trouble was I going to be in this time?

Above me, Josh scrapes the snow off the sunroof. A patch of clear sky hangs above us, a second miraculous opening in the clouds.

“Your own personal theater,” Josh says when he returns to me, shivering and breathing on his cupped hands. I take them into my own.

“Ice cubes!” I say, recoiling from him. “New rules: no touching, not until there’s no possibility of secondhand frostbite.”

“Huh.” Josh pulls his hands from mine, rubs them together rapidly, breathing on his fingers hard.

I laugh. “Seriously?”

“Seriously wondering about going outside now.”

“Are you kidding me? Watching a meteor shower from the comfort of my own private theater?” I lower my seat all the way back so I can look straight up through the clean sunroof into the sky. “My hero. Persephone would approve.”

“Would she?”

“Yes, even in her teeny, weeny, tiny bikini that would give her frostbite in two seconds flat.”

“You have a point.”

“Say it again.”

“Youhavea—”

Before I can kiss him, a meteor rockets above us. I gasp. He whirls around to stare out the sunroof in time to see the second one skimming the sky. For an instant, the twinned meteors streak together before they burn out. There are no words, or even kisses, after that. Josh’s hand finds mine, and we both hold on tight.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Searing white. My skin is fire. A lava field of magma pours over me. I am a vampire, burning to death in the sun. I cannot open my eyes. They are dry kindling, combustible. There is a buzzing in my ears. Is that my skin sizzling? Broiling? I almost moan, afraid, but can’t make a sound.

“Viola!” I hear from both far, far away and much, much too close.

I cringe.

“Viola.” My name, three notes of panic.

A hand presses into my forehead. I frown from the pain, shrink from the touch. A moan escapes me, no light, come-hither sound. Even I’m alarmed by what I hear: injured animal trapped in biting metal.

A billion layers of heaviness are cast over me. Another moan. No skin contact, no contact, no. But I can’t speak, and the cool fabric buries me. And I remember where I am: inside Josh’s truck, watching the meteors, kissing each other. We must have fallen asleep. Sunlight presses against my eyelids. How long have we been here, out in the open? I am sinking through the leather seat, the metal frame of the truck, the dirty snow, the pitted asphalt below.

Josh, I can hear him struggling with the broken sunroof, trying, trying, trying to slide it closed inside. He grunts, but even his Thor muscles cannot fix this brokenness. The driver’s side door opens and then slams shut. My parents are here. But no, I’m alone in Josh’s truck, light surrounding me like I’m standing at the doorsteps of heaven. Or before the inferno of hell.

So much light, it is hard to tell.

I want the black of my bedroom. The blinds. The blackout shades.

My wish is granted. The interior of the truck dims. Blessed, blessed dark.

The car door opens again, and I welcome the cold to soothe my hot-fire skin. I know I am covered in welts.

“Mom,” I whisper, wanting her so badly. She’ll know exactly what to do. Then Dad will make it happen.

“We’re getting you home soon, Ultra,” Josh says confidently, even if he can’t fulfill that promise. “The highway’s going to reopen before long.” He sighs. “I’m going to find a phone. Get help. Just hang tight. I’m sorry. So sorry.”

“Me, too,” I whisper to him. I’m sorry for coming up with this idea, sorry for leaving the safety of home, sorry to drag him down with me.

Pain and guilt, we burn in different ways.

Copyright © 2018 by Justina Chen