Bryce wrapped his arms around me.

I started to cry.

I couldn't help it. I just sobbed for a few minutes while he held on to me.

"It's okay," he whispered.

And, then, we were kissing. I wasn't sure if I'd kissed him, or if he'd kissed me. We were just kissing.

Soon, somehow, I was on top of him. I took his shirt off and stripped my own shirt off as quickly as I could. I couldn't think of anything but being as close to him as physically possible. I felt his bare chest against me, and I put my arms around his neck. I pressed my body into his with all my weight.

I unbuckled his belt. As soon as I started doing this, he pulled off my sweats.

Before I knew it, we were making love.

And I did think that maybe I really was falling in love with him. Ever since we'd been trapped alone together inside the coffin, Bryce and I had been linked together. Neither of us would ever see our lives in the same way afterwards, and only the two of us could really understand what that meant. My marriage with Shawn was obviously over. A future inside the Muldoon quarantine zone, living amid a devastating plague, wasn't much of a future, but it was the only future any of us had. Maybe Bryce and I could share it together.

Sleeping with him that early morning was like nothing I'd ever experienced. I knew there was some chance that he could be infected, and that I was responding to the pathogen's pheromones. But what I felt for him felt so real, and so human. Bryce was staggeringly tender with me, and yet so irresistibly firm at the same time. He whispered how he hadn't been able to stop thinking about me while we were locked away from one another, he pulled me close, and I thought I was going to explode with pleasure.

But just at the last moment, that self-preserving part of me rose back up in my consciousness, and I pulled away from him. Bryce collapsed beside me, cradled my head in his arms, and kissed my forehead.

He whispered something. "You and me," he said. "We're going to stick together."

I kissed him softly.

It was so hard not to just fall asleep in his arms. I hadn't felt such warm, satisfied peace since long before the plague.

But the morning sky was growing brighter.

The sun was already about to rise. My family would be up soon. I had to get back to my bedroom.

It was just before I was able to unwrap my legs from Bryce's, and while he was still lying on top of me, that I saw someone standing in the living room window, looking right at us. . .

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