by Kristie Cook
Before I can even blink, he wrenches the door open and nearly hurls himself out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
I get out of the car, too. “Wait!”
But Kellan doesn’t wait. He is striding away from me, without even his bag, which is still in the trunk of my car. I take off after him, jogging until I catch up. “Please,” I say, grabbing his arm, “don’t leave like—”
He jerks his arm out of my grasp. “Go back to the car and go home.”
“Kellan, I want to—”
“What part of me telling you I didn’t want to hear it did you not understand?”
I reach out for his arm again. “Please don’t leave like—”
“You’re the one leaving,” he says dispassionately.
“You don’t understand—”
He takes a step back, just out of my reach. “Oh, I understand, all right.”
“Then you know—”
“Go home, Chloe.”
“Goddammit!” I shriek. “Will you at least let me finish a sentence already?!”
But when silence and listening is offered, my words disappear. I stand there, staring at him, loving him, wanting him, wishing I could explain things in a way that wouldn’t be more devastating, and loathing myself for bringing all of this pain and misery about because … because … well, I don’t know exactly why. I wish so badly I did.
I say the one thing that comes to mind. The one thing I can offer to explain why I’d ever think of giving him up, which, in any other circumstance, I’d never do. “Jonah’s … he’s my Connection.”
There is absolutely no reaction to this statement.
So I struggle to continue, to find more words to possibly explain away the madness of leaving him. “And … it’s real.… I mean, I wouldn’t have ever been able to do … what we’re able to do … if it’s not real, right?”
Now he speaks. “Do?”
“I … I don’t know what you call it … but … I guess people with Connections do it? Because it shows that … they’re supposed to …” I swallow a huge lump in my throat, “be … together?”
Kellan’s eyes go huge and the little voice shouts, Are you an IDIOT? Why would you TELL HIM THAT??
Kellan may claim he’s not a masochist, but clearly, I am. I drive the final nail in my coffin by crying, “I wouldn’t even think of breaking up with you in any other circumstance …”
“Because,” he snaps coldly, “you and my brother are able to merge together?”
He knows exactly what I’d meant. “No! I mean, because I love him, have loved him since I was little …”
He takes a step closer, looking, for once, dark and dangerous as opposed to beautiful and loving. And then, inexplicably, he pulls me up against him and kisses me hard. My mind, already on the verge of total meltdown, transitions into self-survival mode. There is nothing I can do except kiss him back like my very life depends on it. Like he’s the air I need to breathe.
WHAT IN THE HELL?? the little voice screeches, but I ignore it, have to ignore it, because right here, right now, this is what matters.
Just as suddenly as he began, he stops, letting go of my arms and taking a step back. In that same frustratingly dispassionate voice from before he says, “Really? Because right there, you pretty much told me how much you love me.”
And then he turns on his heel and leaves.
chapter 35
When I get back to my still-running car, I let the anxiety attack take over. I came here to break up with Kellan and instead kissed him.
I’m not surprised when Caleb taps on the glass, insisting to be let in. I don’t ask how he knew where I was, or how he knew I needed him. I simply sob as he sits nearby, murmuring soft words of comfort. He insists on coming home with me, and I don’t argue. I only wish he was three feet taller so he could be the one driving. He flies me up to my door, reminds me that I’m seventeen and that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, and then leaves when I go in.
Jonah is slumped in one of the living room chairs, Siddartha open in his lap, eyes closed. I wonder if he knows it’s my favorite book, that I’ve read it at least five times, and if it means something to him, too.
Even though I’m tempted to wake him and plead for forgiveness and understanding, I instead go into the kitchen to get myself a drink and take some aspirin for the headache intense sobbing has brought about.
Karl and Giuliana are sitting at the island, playing cards. “Is Kellan back at the house?” Giules asks me, checking her watch.
“I don’t know.”
Both Guard stop so they can stare at me. “Where is he?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I repeat.
“Did he get off the airplane?” she stresses.
I nod, swallowing two aspirin. After much prompting, I let them know I last saw him in the airport parking lot. Giules mutters something in Italian under her breath. Then she grabs her keys, tells us she’s going to go find Kellan, and leaves.
Karl pats the stool next to him, but I do not sit down. “So I take it things didn’t go well?”
I let my sad eyes do the talking, terrified my voice might break.
And then Jonah’s hand is on my shoulder. I turn around, shove my head against his neck, and cry in his arms. Karl discreetly exits the kitchen.
It amazes me that Jonah’s here comforting me, especially since I’m crying because I feel like complete crap for hurting his brother. But he does it anyway, wordlessly until the tears dry up and my breathing returns to normal. And then he leads me up to my bedroom and shuts the door behind us.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
I drop onto my bed in a heap of quivering exhaustion. “I think it’s safe to say I suck at this sort of thing.”
“Breakups are never easy, Chloe.”
“Yeah, but … I pretty much said the wrong thing at every opportunity. I only made the situation worse.” I look down at my hands, still trembling. “He definitely hates me now.”
Jonah sits down next to me. “He doesn’t hate you. He’s angry, and hurt, but he doesn’t hate you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I actually do,” he says, taking my hand.
I give him a wobbly smile. “I told him I love you.”
Jonah doesn’t say anything.
Our fingers look right together, like puzzle pieces that fit. I tell him the truth, because he deserves it. “And … he kissed me. After I said that.”
Jonah sighs loudly, his fingers tightening against mine. I feel like a broken record tonight, apologizing over and over, but I do it again. Time inches by until he finally speaks. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Of course,” I quickly say.
“Don’t kiss him again.”
My stomach twists as I promise him this. I insist it hadn’t been part of the plan, and he knows this. He knows his brother, and he knows me—but even still, I can tell it hurts him more than he wants me to know.
“I love you,” I tell him, crawling up on my knees so I can face him.
“I know. I love you, too, Chloe.”
I lean against him, and he wraps his arms around my waist. “I love you.” There is a small sigh of contentment from him. But I feel the need to drive the point home. “I love you.”
And then I’m on my back, and Jonah is kissing me so fiercely that all traces of sadness or anxiety go flying straight out the window.
Much later, Jonah stands up and stretches. “I should probably go home so I can face the firing squad.”
So not funny. I check the clock. “It’s late.”
“Time stands still for no Magical,” he quips. “Except for possibly a Mover.”
Still not funny. “You really want to go have an argument with him?”
“I never like fighting with Kellan,” he admits. “But I think tonight, it can’t be helped.”
I look at the clock again. “Don’t go home.”
Jonah merely raises an eyebrow.
Why hadn�
�t I thought of this before? It’s the perfect solution. “It’s late, and who knows? Karl may already be asleep.”
“Karl is one of the biggest night owls I know,” Jonah scoffs. “He’s not asleep. He’s probably video chatting with Moira.”
“All the more reason not to interrupt him. Stay here with me tonight.”
Now his eyes widen in surprise.
“Your dad is in Annar, right? So are my parents. Back at your house, you have an angry brother. Here, you have a loving girlfriend who wants you to stay. So … stay.”
“Chloe,” he says gently, sitting back down next to me on the bed, “I have to talk to him sooner or later.”
I reach out and run my fingers through his hair. “I know. And this isn’t about that. This is about me wanting you here tonight. With me.”
Convincing Jonah to stay, though, is far easier than convincing Karl, who, as predicted, is talking to Moira. His initial response is a firm, “No.”
This pisses me off, since we normally get along so well. “What’s your problem? It’s not like you get a vote anyway. I’m merely letting you know as a courtesy.”
He turns a dark red. “You are not having sex tonight!”
Jonah, for his part, says nothing. I, on the other hand, fly off the handle, because I haven’t even contemplated sex as being on the menu. “Are you serious? Tell me you did not just say that. YOU! Who got married at nineteen!”
“You are seventeen!” Karl bellows. “There’s a difference!”
Moira tries desperately on the computer to reason with him, but he’s not having any of it.
“Look,” Jonah says once Karl’s eyes are about to explode out of their sockets, “calm down or I’ll force you to. I’m staying over whether you like it or not. And frankly? If we have sex, it’s none of your damn business.”
And then he takes my hand and leads me out of Karl’s room, leaving our friend sputtering in outrage.
Karl appears in my room ten minutes later, thrusting a T-shirt and flannel pants at Jonah, snarling something along the lines of, “You are not sleeping with her naked.”
“He’s very protective of you,” Jonah says rather approvingly when he’s gone.
I’m glad someone finds this a good thing, because I’m not right now. “I figured that’s Karl’s typical M.O.”
He pulls his hooded sweatshirt off and drops it to the floor. My mouth goes dry in so many ways at the sight of his tanned, perfect chest. “No. I don’t think that’s it at all.”
I am blatantly staring as he pulls Karl’s T-shirt on, hoping I’ll be lucky enough to see the pants exchange, too. But no—Jonah heads into my bathroom to change, leaving the door open to talk to me as I desperately try to get the sudden bursts of heat racing through me under control.
Which, of course, he senses, because when he comes back out in pants way too baggy and long, he flashes me a wicked grin. My cheeks are on fire when I escape into the same bathroom to change into my pajamas.
Despite being exhausted from an overly emotional evening, I’m not ready to go to sleep once we slip under the covers. Instead, I play twenty questions with Jonah, mostly wanting to hear his voice as I lie against his chest, but also because I’m curious about life back in Maine.
Midway through my questions about his old school, I wonder out loud if he’s dated before. He’s had to, right? Because, let’s face it, he’s Jonah, and he’s gorgeous and smart and kind and girls would have to be blind, brain-dead morons to not want to date him. But then, he surprises me by tensing when I ask the question.
Which is not good. I try to act nonchalant. “Did you date as often as Kellan?” I know about these exploits over months of teasing from Karl and Raul.
“I don’t think anyone’s dated as much as my brother has,” he says dryly.
Okay, I so did not want to hear that. “But you did, right? Date, I mean?”
“I guess.” He rolls over on his side so he can see me better. “You don’t really want to talk about this sort of stuff, do you?”
“Why not?”
“Seriously? Because it does no one any good. And I personally do not want to hear about you with any other guy other than me.”
Aw! But I’m not letting him off the hook. “Jonah. Just spill already.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “I dated as much as the next person—well, not Kellan, but … you know. The average guy, I guess.”
“What do you consider average?”
“I don’t know. Not a lot but not a little?”
It’s so cute that he’s flustered by this. “Did you date anyone at your old high school?”
“You,” he says, flashing me his brilliant, dimpled smile.
“Stop trying to distract me with this,” I say, touching his dimple. “You know I meant outside of dreams.”
His eyes suddenly find the ceiling very interesting. “Um … yes?”
“You’re asking?” I tease.
“Yes, then.” When he doesn’t continue, I prompt him for more information. He finally admits, “There was someone I dated at my old high school.”
“How many someones?”
His discomfort expands until it nearly fills the bed. “One.”
I scoff at this. He expects me to believe only one girl was ever interested in him? But I play along. “For how long?”
“Chloe. Really?”
I give him a big smile to assure him this is interesting, not torturous, at least for me. “Yes!”
“We started dating in the ninth grade and broke up about a month before I moved here.”
Wait. WAIT. I’m sorry, but did he just say that he dated someone for THREE YEARS? I jerk into a sitting position. “This,” he says, reaching out for me as I evade his grasp, “is exactly why I didn’t want to talk about it.”
THREE YEARS?
“Chloe—”
And they broke up, what, three, four MONTHS AGO?
He captures my wrists and tugs me closer. “It’s over—completely, one hundred percent over.”
I was missing him, so upset over losing him that I was a mess, and he was DATING SOMEONE ELSE?
“And it doesn’t matter, anyway—”
“Hell yeah, it matters!” I bark. “You were dating this chick even after you found out I was real?”
“Do you really want to go there?”
“Well, if the shoe fits …”
Oops. That was the wrong thing to say. “You dated my brother for two months, even after you knew I was at your school for you! A couple additional months of trying to figure out how to let Callie down easy was nothing.”
Callie.
Images of some faceless yet gorgeous, fabulous girl fill my mind. She had to be amazing, right? For him to date her for so long? What was she like? Sweet, sarcastic, smart, funny, witty, put-together? Sexy? Oh my gods, was she sexy? And if so, did they—
“Chloe, you need to calm down. That relationship was never going to go anywhere in the long run because she’s a non. I always knew that and was reminded of it often by the Old Man.”
I think I’m going to puke. “Do you miss her?”
The look on his face is clear as he lobs a silent question back at me: Do you miss Kellan?
I change tactics. “Do you still talk to her?”
He drops back down against the pillow. “Let it go, Chloe. This isn’t doing either of us any good.”
It’s the oddest thing, because I know I should let this go. Jonah’s proved himself to me—he found out I was real, manipulated his father into moving clear across the country so he could be near me, and has risked his relationship with his brother to be with me. But something in me—a deep, dark possessive streak I didn’t even know I had—digs its heels in. I have to know who’s shared his heart. “Please,” I say more softly. “Just tell me.”
He stares back up at the ceiling. “She’s called a few times since I moved.”
“Recently?”
“Two days ago,” he admits after a beat.
&n
bsp; Sunday. We’d spent all of Sunday together, which means she must’ve called late that night.
“I can’t believe I even have to tell you this, because I’d figured you’d known by now that my feelings for you supersede anything and everyone. Including Callie. You have nothing to be jealous about.”
Jealousy is such a foreign emotion for me when it comes to sharing someone I love. I’ve been jealous in the past, of Magicals who are knowledgeable and content with their paths, of people comfortable in their skins when I’m so often grossly uncomfortable in mine. But I’ve never before felt such strong pangs of jealousy toward another being for daring to love someone who is mine. Which is awful and possessive and radically immature, but for crying out loud, I’m only seventeen and far from perfect.
I ought to be focusing on important things, like honing my craft and finding out more about Annar and my job, but seventeen means still being held hostage by your emotions. And clearly, having a Connection with someone means my emotions won’t even get a ransom request. They’re permanently gone.
So, I persist even when I ought to drop the subject. “What about her? Is she jealous?”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not she is.”
“Did you love her?”
He sighs.
“You asked me the same question,” I point out.
It takes him a long time before he says carefully, “I told you last night that you are the only person I’ve ever truly loved.”
The way he phrases it stings.
“Listen to me,” he says, once more reaching for me. I don’t sidestep this time, nor do I resist when he tugs me back down on the bed. “I love you. I’m going to marry you. I intend to spend the rest of my existence with you. But there was a time in both of our lives, whether we like it or not, where we weren’t sure whether each other was real. So in that time period, even though I was in love with you, I dated several girls. And I know it sounds crazy, but just because I dated them doesn’t mean I ever stopped loving you. Now that I know you are real, and now that we’re together, you have nothing to worry about. There will be no other girls, ever. You’re the only one for me, Chloe.”
Just like that, I’m able to relax against the pillows. “Okay.”
“I think,” he says, scooting closer to me so we’re pressed up against each other, “we’ve talked enough tonight. Don’t you?” He doesn’t give me a chance to answer, because his lips are against mine, his hands are moving across my body, and words no longer exist in my mind.
