As I draw closer, the trestle branches toward a bridge crossing a vine-choked road, and I climb over it, dodging a few Unconsecrated who wander too close. I stumble through hip-high weeds, tripping over old roots and stones. With every step I want to stop, but I just promise myself one more and then one more again. My eyes never leave the coaster; I crane my neck as I draw closer.

The top of it is shrouded in the early-morning mist, a frozen white fog clinging to the dips and curls of the ride.

Something shifts along the curve of the tallest hump and I freeze. It’s a shadow. A person.

My heart starts to pound.

Just then a breeze blows from the water, curling the mist away from him.

The arch of his neck, the set of his shoulders. Everything inside me stops.

Catcher.

He sits with his back to me, staring out past the beach at the ocean.

It takes me a moment to find my voice. “What are you looking for out there?” I call up. And then I start to climb, a fresh energy sweeping through me.

Catcher jerks and reaches out to steady himself. He looks around and I know the instant he sees me. His body goes still, his eyes wide open and his mouth caught on a sound he can’t force out.

Before I even reach the top he’s grabbing and pulling me up. He runs his hands over my body, along my arms and legs and then over my shoulders and up my neck until he’s cupping my head.

I pull his face to mine and I kiss him, tasting his heat and fire and need.

“You’re alive,” he says.

“You’re here,” I say.

“You’re not hurt or infected?” I see the terror in his eyes.

I shake my head. “Well, not infected anyway,” I say, smiling.

This breaks the tension of the moment. We’re laughing and crying and he crushes me to him, burying his head in my neck, and I tilt my head back as the morning sky swirls around us in a hundred million colors, brighter than any I’ve seen.

He traces a finger along my jaw, the heat of him so familiar now. So much a part of me. “My Annah,” he murmurs, pulling my head back so that he can look into my eyes.

I’m so happy at that moment that I don’t know what else to do or say. I just know that I love this man. And more than anything, I want to live my life with him—truly live.