She picked the stones up and pondered them silently in her palm. She shivered, then leaned against the edge of the roof, and looked over the ledge. He thought he heard her stifle a sob.
“I don’t want you to forget me again,” she said.
The weakness in her voice hurt him to hear, and he felt helpless to do anything to comfort her as she looked at him with eyes that shined on the brink of tears. He wanted to understand but couldn’t. Why was his lost memory so much harder on her? Obviously, it wasn’t the ideal situation, but she already said that she knew he’d believe her if she came to him and explained it. So what wasn’t she telling him?
“Rylee, I don’t…” Jonathan said. “I don’t want to forget you either.”
She looked away. He wanted there to be something comforting to say, but if whatever they were about to do took his memory, no amount of comforting words would make a difference.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Jonathan asked.
She wiped her eyes, coming close to stand beside him. She took his hand in hers and pulled his glove off to expose his skin. Then she put both stones into his palm and placed her hand over the top of them.
“Lots of things,” Rylee whispered.
Jonathan didn’t know what to do with that answer. When he opened his mouth to say so, she shook her head before he spoke. She reached for his free hand and placed it on the small of her back, then drew in close against him. He felt the warmth of her, and Rylee placed her arm around his neck. For a moment, with their palms up, holding the stones between them, they looked as though they were about to dance.
“Together,” she said.
Rylee searched his eyes, desperately waiting to see something there. Not finding it, she bit her lip, and seemed to come to some decision. She rose onto her toes and pulled his lips down against hers. Her hand tightened down around his, shattering the stones between their palms. When the burning overtook them, they fell to their knees. He didn’t feel her let go of him until the fire was all he knew.
Jonathan didn’t know how he’d come to this place, nor when he had arrived or how long he had been there.
His clothes were gone, and he was crawling somewhere in the open, somewhere warm. He couldn’t make out much at first. His eyes fought to adjust to light that seemed to come from all directions. As he acclimated enough to focus, he found himself in an unearthly fog. It was heavy, pressing in from all around and bright no matter where he tried to look. The only exception he found was when he looked down to the ground—there, he found wooden planks beneath his hands.
Strong winds swept past him. They carried warmth across his bare skin, but seemed to have no effect on the fog surrounding him as he crawled forward. He could only see a few feet in front of him, but when he reached the end of the wooden planks he found a hand rail fencing him in. Then he understood the shape of the boards beneath.
He was on a bridge.
Jonathan stood. He placed one hand on the rail, the other out in front of his eyes, trying to shield them from the light and the wind. In this manner, he inched forward, taking careful steps with bare feet. It felt like he walked forever, or a moment—time was as unclear, here, as in a dream—but he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
Then a form took shape in the fog. He recognized her, even naked and exposed as she now was, once they were closer.
She walked as he did, slow and careful. This place didn’t seem dangerous, being so warm and bright, yet he could tell from how she moved that she did not trust the impenetrable clouds any more than he did. She, like him, feared taking a step before feeling out what she could not see, afraid that she might step off the bridge entirely if it came to a sudden end. Neither wanted to risk dropping into the unknown.
Rylee was struggling a bit more than him. Her long hair was loose in this wind, changing directions on a whim. It was how he saw her first, as she kept one hand on the rail and pushed the black strands out of her eyes. He inched toward her, slowly, not wanting to startle her in the fog.
When they were close enough, she pulled the hair away from her eyes, and saw him reaching for her. At first, she brightened at the sight of him with his hand reaching out for her. Her hand went to take his, but stopped suddenly, just before they touched. She hesitated a moment, stared longingly at his fingertips. A moment passed, and finally he saw her mouth a word he couldn’t hear, and her fingers interlocked with his.
He was aware of the warmth of her body pressing him against the wall, her tongue melting with his between their lips. Memory flooded into him, and a cold slap of disorientation hit his senses, making him unsure whose hands touched him, whose warmth he felt against him.
It had been Rylee so close to him, only a moment ago, hadn’t it? She’d kissed him, without warning—desperately held onto him.
He flinched in alarm, as something more than memory rushed through him, his mind triggering alarms he had never felt before, perceiving an intrusive force within him. It sapped the strength out of his legs, and he staggered against the wall, before his knees gave out.
Strange, foreign emotions flooded his mind as his eyes shut tight, and he heard Leah gasp in surprise. He was painfully aware of his heart beating, his lungs gasping for breath, but as quickly as those sensations presented themselves, they became muffled, somehow far away.
He couldn’t process it all at once—couldn’t find a focus, a place to begin to work his way back. He knew that he was causing Leah confusion, scaring her, but it was all ramming together, and he only felt those things like part of a rising tide. He couldn’t sort himself out, couldn’t understand what he was feeling. What had, somehow, followed him back?
“Jonathan?” He heard Leah’s voice in the distance.
He felt a presence taking shape within him, sensed it colliding with who he was. Its emotions were a whirlwind, a torrent of chaos that seemed incomprehensible, as though his senses had been hijacked and now spoke to him in a foreign language. He felt his body shaking, afraid of that other being, its adrenaline adding to his own mind’s panicked screams that something had stowed away inside him. He forced himself to breathe, grabbing hold of his shaking knees, curling into a ball on the floor. He searched for a calm center in the storm, a part of himself that he could trust was not interwoven with something else.
He knew, then, his mind spitting out the answer as it recognized a truth that seemed obvious now. Rylee—it was she he felt within his mind now. Knowing this, the fear began to calm.
Impressions took shape as his heart slowed—strange things that seemed familiar, pieces of her that reflected parts of himself. There was an exterior face, an outer layer that laughed, that tried to remember what had made her happy once. That playful girl’s smile faltered under the discomfort of a deeper pain. It was only a thin veil she held between herself and the world. He could see that beneath, there was something else.
It was so familiar.
It hid behind the mask of smiles, strength inside her; a will, an anger. It was like feeling his own rage waiting for him to give over control. There was something wrong, though, beneath the veil. He felt that part of her was bleeding to death and nothing within her wanted to help it, wanted to keep it alive. The rest of her just wanted to ignore that she was bleeding. As he tried to endure it, a jolt of knowing took him, and he understood everything. He understood why she’d been so hurt, why she had not tried to tell him, why she’d fled, why she seemed like two different people from one moment to the next.
At her core, she didn’t want this anymore. The isolation had won out, smothered the fight in her with the slow poison of seclusion. She hadn’t known there was anyone else. Not like her. When she’d found him, this part of her had thought there was still a reason to struggle, that there was someone who knew her, fought with her, had felt what it was to be her. She had felt him in her head so intimately, as he now felt her, and she had believed he’d experienced the same, believed he would share it with her.
Then he’d forgotten her. Wor
se, he’d never known her—had nothing he could share.
She couldn’t begin to realize that he was her last, desperate hope—had never thought she would need to. That he hadn’t felt what he felt now, what she’d experienced…. This bond consuming him now. He had promised her he’d come, and she’d waited for him. When he had never come for her, when he hadn’t even recognized her face, it had been the last defeat. The fighter stopped fighting. She felt that something was sending her a sign, a clear message.
Rylee had given herself permission to quit.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before her emotions faded, before he became Jonathan alone again. In a way, he never seemed to finish the transition back to himself completely. There was something more, something permanently left behind. It was something he’d never experienced, didn’t have a word for; he couldn’t imagine that there was a word for it. Her presence within him, an emptiness so intrinsic that he had never even realized he had a hole inside of him—it was as though he’d been obliviously carrying around an empty canteen until it had been filled.
Insights began to strike him as his mind resurfaced, replacing the missing pieces of his puzzle before finally helping him get a better grasp of the picture. He understood why only she had been able to remember him the time before, why the memories only made it back to one of them each time and, as that understanding hit, a powerful urgency rushed into his consciousness.
His eyes shot open and found the worried face of Leah kneeling no more than a foot from him. “I…” he stammered. “I have to go. I have to go right now.”
She flinched in confusion at the sudden words. He hated himself for having said them even before the meaning touched her eyes. She didn’t understand what had happened, and he was pulling away from her, again, without giving an explanation. He didn’t have time to explain that she would survive his abandonment, but that he had a terrible certainty that someone else would not.
He might already be too late.
Leah watched him get up off the floor and leave. Words left her. She hardly knew what to feel. He’d seemed to be where she was, to need her as much as she needed him. Then…
She’d stood on her side of the open doorway. He’d left so fast that he hadn’t even thought to shut the door behind him. He’d looked back at her for a brief moment, and she knew what she saw on his face.
He hates himself, she thought.
His eyes broke contact, and she watched him leave. His urgency increased until he was sprinting, jumping the fence between him and the garage. When he was out of sight, when it was far too late, words finally seemed to reach her lips.
“Don’t go,” she whispered.
Leah stepped back inside and slowly shut the door. A dull feeling of shell-shock made her unsure of what to do now. Moments passed and she found herself still watching that closed door, expecting it to open, for him to come back. Instead, she heard his motorcycle come to life, followed by the rumbling sound of the engine heading out of the driveway and fading away.
What just happened? she thought.
It took a while longer before coherent thoughts started to form.
How was she supposed to react to such a thing? Even if their relationship wasn’t her job, what the hell did a lover do with … that? Had she witnessed a psychological break? No—something had clearly happened to him. Something powerful enough to have put him in the fetal position.
Should I… Leah wondered. Should I be angry?
Wasn’t it real? Wasn’t it real for him? She didn’t have to believe the same act she put on for The Cell. She only felt confused. Jonathan made it so impossible. She knew something outside of her had caused him to leave so suddenly, but there was no reasonable explanation she could even pretend to assume. What was her perspective on this supposed to be the next time she saw him?
She pressed her fingers to her skull, trying to sort out what was real and illusion in a mess of complicated emotions.
Maybe he’d come back with an explanation. Maybe she could choose to believe it? No, Jonathan wouldn’t lie to her. He would simply say nothing, and then the awkwardness would grow between them again, and she couldn’t let that happen.
Her cell phone rang then, and it startled her. She almost ignored it, but she wasn’t allowed to do such things. She picked up the receiver and saw a number from somewhere outside the country. She followed protocol and answered.
“Yes,” she said.
“Hello, I’m calling from Rising Sun—”
“Do you know what time it is here!” she yelled, then hung up angrily.
She held the phone to her neck, still thinking it over. The call was a sham, of course—a way for the team to tell her there was something she needed to be aware of immediately. She doubted it was a coincidence, getting this call in such short order with Jonathan’s strange and abrupt exit. What could Olivia possibly know that she didn’t?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SATURDAY | OCTOBER 8, 2005 | 9:30 PM | SEATTLE
THE THING WAS, Rylee suspected she wasn’t thinking straight. She could feel this poisonous mix of fear and loneliness authoring her thoughts. She knew that, if she could have stepped out of her head for one damn minute, everything going on inside would seem so trivial. But she was trapped in there.
She’d read about depression. These things she felt, she knew they weren’t right—they were far too powerful, for one thing. The problem was, it didn’t matter what she knew, because what she ‘knew’ refused to turn into what she believed. So there she was, trying to think her way back to feeling like a person she recognized, with thoughts that felt hijacked.
This was all to say—the last thing Rylee needed at that moment was a riddle.
She wanted to scream, but managed to make do with digging her fingertips into her scalp. Somehow, she kept running out of breath, though all she was doing was pacing back and forth in her cheap motel room.
A moment ago, Rylee had been calm—or at least she had looked calm.
She’d been sitting in her chair, staring at an orange tube of prescription medication. The tube was still unmoved. It sat on a motel room dresser beside the liquor bottle she had planned to chase it with. Rylee had been calm because she’d been certain that the consequences of her actions no longer mattered to her. There had been a freedom in that certainty, a recklessness in letting go.
At some point during the calmness, the gates had opened, the timing of which she translated as a personal “screw you” message from the universe. She burned through the activation and found herself on the floor beside her chair, forced to get up and fight one of the damn things. She didn’t panic. This would be the last time. She didn’t have to take the pills. The Ferox could save her the trouble. She had opened the liquor and taken a long pull from the bottle before she left. A few minutes later, she’d been right on top of the thing, felt the Ferox pulling closer in her mind, and then…
Then, she was back in the chair, looking down at the dresser again, the orange tube still there in front of her, the bottle of liquor still sealed and untouched.
Now she was panicking.
Grabbing the pills and frantically dumping the contents out on top of the dresser, she began to count. Then she counted twice more just to be sure. None were missing.
Rylee took in a long breath and let the air out slowly, the relief washing over her—which then struck her as odd. Why had she panicked in the first place? Why was she relieved to find she hadn’t done what she still planned to do anyway?
The obvious question cropped up in her thoughts. What’s changed?
She stepped back from the dresser. If she was as ready—as certain—as she thought, why had she been so panicked by the possibility that she’d taken the pills and somehow forgotten? Doubt ate away at her—she could feel it begging for her to see that she’d missed something, that whatever had just happened was not something she should ignore. Why, of all possible moments, was it as she reached for death that the universe interrupted and put
a mystery in front of her to solve?
Why did her thoughts feel more ordered altogether, more familiar, more her own? Why didn’t any of the debilitating and unendurable pressure feel so heavy any longer?
She sat down on the edge of the bed. What were another few minutes to try and understand? Nothing. When she figured out what was bothering her, she could pick up where she left off without any unresolved concerns nagging at her conscience.
Jonathan’s face surfaced in her thoughts—happened a lot since she first felt him. The idea of him had gone from hope to torture in less than twenty four hours. Being exposed to all his raw emotions—to know, for a brief moment, that all her fears and weaknesses were shared by another human being… No one had ever shared what she had experienced, and at first she thought it such an amazing blessing, until she discovered that it had not been shared at all.
She’d wanted to be angry with Jonathan, but what good would deluding herself do? If Heyer had stripped him of their shared memories, then to Jonathan, she had never existed. She had already thought she couldn’t hate the alien more than she already did. Running here, trying to turn the tables like this? What had she been thinking?
Was this how he punished her for it? How could he know that this would hurt her so badly?
How? How could he not remem—
In the middle of asking herself the question—which, frankly, was the same question she had been asking herself since she’d left Jonathan in his driveway—Rylee realized that this time, her puzzle seemed to be missing fewer pieces.
“I. Don’t. Remember…” Rylee whispered. “If I don’t remember…”
Connection struck, and was followed by a sudden bang at her door that caused her to jump.
“Rylee,” he yelled, his voice panicked. “Rylee, it’s Jonathan! Please, open the door.”
Recovering from the shock, she got up and unlocked the door. He was panting, completely out of breath, as though he had come here in a sprint.
The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2) Page 14
