by Kristie Cook
“So I’m taking it that you don’t own much jewelry then.”
“Not really,” I say, fingering a delicate necklace. Then I turn around and hold out my hand. “May I see your ring?”
He slips it off his finger and hands it over. It feels like forever since I last held this ring in my hand. In the waning sunlight, I read the words I hadn’t been able to remember that day he first showed up in my class: To my darling son, life awaits.
I slide it back onto his thumb. “Obviously from your mother?”
He nods, and I wait for the story behind the ring, perhaps behind the words, but it doesn’t come. And it strikes me that Jonah has always been guarded with his stories, with his past. With his mother.
Just then another ring catches my eye, beckoning like a siren’s song. It’s stacked on a leafless miniature tree’s branch along with a number of other rings. I lean in to look at it closely. It’s made of a thin rope of knotted wood. The more I stare at it, the more it calls out to me.
Jonah leans in. “Find something interesting?”
“This one,” I point out, oddly excited. “It’s … beautiful.” My finger, mere millimeters away from the ring, gets a small shock and a humming goes through my body, like recognition. I withdraw my finger and stare at it.
“Are you okay?” Jonah asks.
I nod, dazed. He pulls a stack of rings off the branch, extracting the one I’ve been admiring.
The Dwarf running the stand appears at our side. “Well, well,” he says approvingly, “this is a pleasant way to close shop tonight.”
“Pardon?” I ask as Jonah turns to look at him.
“It’s always nice to find a match. Seems like it happens less and less nowadays.”
When he doesn’t offer any clarification, I prod, “Meaning?”
But Jonah is the one to answer, despite appearing dazed himself. “This ring is yours.”
“Yours isn’t here,” the Dwarf says, as if he and Jonah are discussing tomorrow’s weather report. “Pairs rarely are mined at the same time.”
Jonah simply stares at the ring in his hand.
“No worries, though,” the Dwarf continues. “Usually doesn’t take too long to find it. Not once the first is, anyway.”
“Find what?” I demand, still confused.
The Dwarf leans against the stand. “His ring.”
I ask my boyfriend, “You want a wooden ring?”
“It’s not wood,” the Dwarf says, frowning. “It’s Dwarven gold.”
I look at the ring in Jonah’s fingers and then at the others back on the tree branches. “They look like wood.”
The Dwarf stares at me as if I’m dumb. Jonah says, ignoring him, “Dwarven gold is very rare and has certain Magical properties.”
“Impossible,” I say quickly. Only people have Magic … don’t they?
“I know it seems like it, but it’s true. The thing about Dwarven gold, though, is that it takes on different properties once it touches certain people.” Jonah slides the ring onto his pinky. “See, on me, it stays the same.” Then he takes my left hand and slides it onto my ring finger. The wood, warm against my skin, tingles before slowly hardening into rose gold. “But on you … it changes.”
I’m so startled I grab another ring and slip it on. But the new one stays wooden. You’d think, having grown up around Magic, stuff like this wouldn’t surprise me, but it does. I look up at Jonah, not asking, but waiting for an explanation.
“It’s because we have a Connection,” he says softly, moving closer. I ignore the Dwarf’s obvious curiosity at our conversation. “The rings are another symbol of how we’re meant to be. This one is yours. It’ll only ever change for you.”
I finger the ring, still warm and perfect against my skin. “And you have one out there somewhere?”
He slides off the second ring and kisses my hand. “Yes.”
Several minutes later, after he’s bought me my treasure using a credit card exclusive to Annar and we’re standing in an enclosed doorway out of the snow, I’m still marveling at the ring. Every time I take it off, it reverts back to wood. But on my finger, against my skin, it changes into something solid and beautiful, something representative of the real feelings and ties I have to Jonah.
“We need to find yours,” I say, giddy and drunk over the sheer romance of it all.
There is a long pause where he struggles to find the right words. “Chloe, I need to confess something to you.” He holds up my hand, fingering the ring. “I know we’ve only rediscovered each other recently, but I want … need you to know that you have been the only girl I’ve ever truly loved my entire life. I can’t remember a time in which I wasn’t in love with you.”
I seriously feel like swooning. “I feel the same way.”
“We’re going to be eighteen in just a few months, and living here.”
I nod, refusing to break my gaze away from his. My birthday is in three months, his in two.
“And, I want you to know …” he says quietly, almost nervously, “that I plan to love you, and only you, for the rest of my existence. The last fourteen months, and most especially the last two, have made that crystal clear to me.”
I open my mouth to say something back, but he squeezes my hand, indicating he isn’t done. “I want to marry you as soon as we can. I don’t ever want to be separated from you again. I know that sounds crazy, with us being so young … But like I said, we’ll be here soon.”
I stand there, my heart frozen, my breath gone, the ring alive on my finger. And if I’d thought I was happy earlier, that my heart had wanted to burst then from simply being with him, well, it’s nothing compared to this. “I want that, too.”
He lets go of my hand so he can put his behind my head. “There’s only ever been you for me, Chloe.”
I am so filled with love for this man it’s ridiculous. We kiss for a very long time, oblivious to all the people and things going on around us. The first thing I say when we come up for air is, “How soon can we do this?”
He laughs quietly, resting his forehead against mine. “Let’s finish high school first, and our first year at the U. But no longer than that, okay?”
But the more I think about it, the better the idea sounds to me. Being with Jonah is fifty times better than being with parents who don’t like having me around. “Why not when we first move here?”
He holds his left hand up and wiggles his fingers. “Well, we don’t have the ring yet, right? Can’t do anything without it.”
“Seriously?”
“You heard that guy. Apparently, this is how these things work.” When he sees the look of disappointment on my face, he adds, “But isn’t it any consolation that, by finding your ring, we’re guaranteed Fate wants us together?”
I tug him closer. “I don’t need a pair of rings to tell me that.”
Despite dinner being in an impossibly romantic location, all I can focus on is the fact that Jonah Whitecomb wants to spend the rest of his existence with me. This person, who I first discovered before I could even read, is telling me that he loves me more than anything. That he’s sitting in front of me: real, loving and perfect. And I give thanks to Fate for the first time in a long time. Because it gave me Jonah, and that means everything.
chapter 34
An email from Kellan is waiting for me when I get home. I stare at it for a long time, wondering how things between us have come to two simple sentences telling me about a flight itinerary.
It doesn’t require a response, but I send one anyway: Your brother misses you.
That’s it, just the one sentence. Any more might destroy everything that’s been achieved with Jonah over the last few days. It is a rocky thing, being disheartened and missing one brother while blissfully getting engaged to another.
At a quarter past two in the morning, I call Jonah and tell him about the email. He’s unfazed by my late night angst. “Didn’t you say he was planning on emailing you his flight info?”
“Yes.
You should know I emailed him back. About you.”
He sighs sleepily. “I’m sure whatever you wrote was fine.”
I close my eyes and burrow under my covers. “I told him you missed him.”
“Then that’s fine, because it’s the truth.”
“I know I probably don’t have any right to ask this of you—”
“You can always ask me anything. You know this.”
I still hesitate, chewing on my lip until it bleeds. “What should I do tomorrow? About the flight?”
There’s a pause and what I assume to be another yawn. “Pick him up, just like you promised.”
“Maybe … you should come, too?”
It’s his turn to hesitate. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Panic wells up in my chest. Up until his email, Kellan’s arrival home has been intangible, something in the future. But now I have a definitive time for when I’m going to hurt him, and it makes me sick to my stomach. “We could explain things together. Maybe it would be easier for him.”
“If it was me,” Jonah says, “and I had to watch the two of you reason with me why I was going to lose the only person I’ve ever fallen in love with, well … I don’t think I could take it. Kel and I have our differences, but I know he’d feel the same. It’ll be better for you to go on your own. But I’ll be waiting for you afterwards, like we’ve planned.”
I roll to my side and curl up. “I’m nervous …”
“I can understand that.”
The tang of blood doesn’t stop my lip chewing. “He’s going to be angry with me.”
“If it’s any consolation, he’ll be angrier with me.”
“No, I don’t—”
“Yes,” Jonah says firmly.
“Do you think he’ll be hurt?”
“Chloe …” When I stay silent, he says quietly, “Yeah, he will.”
I have to fight off the desperation, so Jonah doesn’t hear it. Thank gods he’s not next to me feeling it. “I don’t want him to hate me, despite everything.”
“I highly doubt he’ll hate you. He loves you. He’ll still love you.”
Part me selfishly hopes it’ll be true.
“Where were you last night?”
Cora is standing next to my locker, arms crossed. “Annar,” I tell her, bending down to stuff a book in my bag.
“Why were you in Annar?”
“For dinner. Why the grilling?”
Her face softens. “I couldn’t get ahold of you and got worried.”
“That’s sweet.” I stand back up. “But no worries. I was there with Jonah and both Karl and Giuliana.”
“Did you have fun?” But before I can answer, she adds, “Did you see Raul?”
I squint at her. “Raul?”
“Yes,” she grinds out. “Raul. Tall, Spanish, hot?”
“I know who Raul is. And no, I didn’t see him last night. Why?”
Her mouth tightens. “No reason.” Eyes, eagle-sharp, focus on my hand. Hers snatches out and grabs mine. “What. Is. This?”
I try to tug my hand away, but she’s abnormally strong for such a thin girl.
“This ring,” she clarifies loudly. Several people nearby stare shamelessly. “And why is it on this finger of all fingers?”
“Stop,” I hiss. “Let go before you have to fix whatever bruises you’re creating.”
Her grip lessens, but she doesn’t let go.
“We can talk about this later, but not here at school.”
“After school then,” she insists, finally letting go.
“Can’t,” I say, rubbing my sore hand. “I have to go pick up Kellan from the airport.”
She arches a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Why isn’t Giules getting him? Or Karl? Or his brother? Or father? Or anybody else who isn’t you and likely to forget her pretty head when they see his sexy self?”
I blink. Praise for Kellan from Cora is … well, it just never happens. “You think Kellan is sexy?”
She grimaces, as if she’s sucking on a lemon. “Duh. A corpse would find that guy hot.” And then she leaves.
Kellan is already standing outside of the airport by the time I arrive, bag sitting at his feet, hands shoved in his pockets. He looks tired,
stressed … sad, even. And my heart goes out to him, because somehow or other, Kellan always tugs at my deepest heartstrings.
Remember why you’re here, the little voice orders. Remember what’s at stake.
As if I couldn’t. Jonah is back at my house, waiting with Karl and Giuliana. Goodness knows what he’s thinking right now, or even worse, imagining might happen here with his brother. But he’s put his trust in me, believes I’m here to break things off with Kellan so we can all start fresh on the correct paths we’re supposed to be on. And I mean to prove that trust is well-deserved.
Once I’m standing in front of Kellan, though, I revert to the person he’d once talked to at a football game: a nervous, awkward girl whose heart is fluttering and finds it hard to breathe in his presence. “Hi there!” I practically yell, slapping the forced cheerleader smile on.
He’s surprised and instantly wary. And then I stupidly remember that things like false smiles and cheery voices may work on everyone else I know, but not on an Emotional. He knows they aren’t real.
And that makes it worse. Because now I’m grinning like an idiot with tears in my eyes. All I can think about is how I’m going to break his heart, how even though I love him, I’m going to tell him we can never be anything more than friends. Which I desperately want us to be, because something in me tells me I can’t let him go—so if I have to torture myself by hanging onto him as a friend, I’ll do it.
Even though I know he knows it’s fake, I continue with the forced cheeriness. “How long have you been here? I hope I haven’t kept you waiting!”
“Not long,” he says, sounding so calm that I want to shake him.
“Did you have a good flight?”
“If by a good flight you mean having some old lady sleep on my shoulder and thereby restrict my movements out of fear of disturbing her, then yeah, it was great.” He smiles when he says this, the self-deprecating one I adore so much.
“You should have taken the portal,” I say, shivering in response. But Kellan misreads this, or at least pretends to, and says we ought to go sit in my car to get out of the cold. Once we’re safely inside, with the heater on high, he tells me, in the same rational, calm voice he’d used before, that I should just say whatever it is I have to say.
Now I’m even more nervous, because of course Kellan knows something’s wrong.
“Your trip? It was good?”
He sighs, leans his head back against the headrest, and stares at a family shoving their luggage in the back of their minivan a few cars across from where we’re parked. He doesn’t answer my question; instead, he says, “Thanks for the email, by the way,” which is possibly one of the toughest things to hear him refer to. Because by acknowledging this, he’s also acknowledging that he knows Jonah and I have, at the very least, been talking with one another in his absence.
“You asked me to do it, so I did.” I hate myself for saying it, because it sounds like an accusation, or, at worst, a cop-out: Me and Jonah, we’re together because you told us to be!
“Yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I?”
Invisible hands are strangling me so tightly I can barely get coherent words out. “Kellan … I … I need you to know … that …”
His eyes do not stray from the family, now bickering about the weight of their bags. “Obviously, it went well. My brother is no longer angry and resentful.”
It isn’t enough, and I’d been doing it way too much lately, but I stammer out a heartfelt apology. He cuts me off, so calmly I want to scream at him, demand he sound anything but rational about the demise of our relationship: “Right. I figured this would be the case. I take it …” And then he pauses, searching for the right words. But he doesn’t find them. Or, at least, he can’t sa
y them, calmly or not.
So I give him his confirmation, barely choking the word out he already knows and really doesn’t need. “Yes.”
His eyes close. The only sound between us is my tremulous breathing and the hiss of heat through the vents. Even the family outside has stopped yelling.
Why does this hurt so much? If this is how it’s supposed to be, then why do I feel like I’m breaking apart? I mean, I don’t doubt my love for Jonah, especially now. I don’t doubt my future with him, either. We’re Connected, and now that I know what it means, I absolutely see it and feel it with him. And that’s an amazing thing, at seventeen, to be so sure of someone. To know that they will always be there for you, that they will always accept you as you are. So many people never find this, seventeen or seventy. So many people search their entire lives to find someone to share their existences with and fail. But not me—I’ve found my home. And I’m at peace with this.
So why then the crushing grief over having to let Kellan go? Why do I know that I love him, despite what everyone says about people with Connections only ever being capable of loving one person, and them alone? Why does it feel like my lungs are collapsing, my heart crumbling? Why these intense feelings of devastating loss, when I know Jonah is the one for me?
Even the little voice is muted. It has no more answers than I do.
“I … I wish …” I mumble, now on the verge of full-blown hysteria, “I wish I could explain all of … this …”
While still calm and measured, his words are also hollow. “You don’t have to.”
“But—”
He won’t look at me. “Don’t.”
“Kellan—”
A muscle in his jaw twitches. “Look. You do not have to paint me a pretty picture of what you and Jonah have. I may be an idiot, but I’m not a masochist.”
“No,” I gasp quickly. “I wasn’t—”
Finally, some heat fills his words. “You think I want to hear about how wonderful things are for you and him?”
“No! I just—”
“Honestly? There is nothing you can say right now that will …” He stops. Shakes his head. Runs his fingers through his dark hair. “I need to go.”
