Hopefuls (Book 1): The Private Life of Jane Maxwell

by Jenn Gott

  Not Clair.

  Never Clair.

  In the morning, they didn’t speak. Their clothes had dried, and they took turns getting dressed. Amy spent the morning on her phone, typing and reading in a manner to indicate that she was texting someone back and forth. They checked out at the front desk in silence, walked to the docks in silence, took the ferry in silence.

  Cal was already waiting for them. SUV idling in the parking lot, windows rolled up tight. Cold air and heavy beats pounded against Jane as she opened the door. Jane climbed in, clicking her seatbelt firmly in place.

  “Morning,” Jane made herself mumble. After so much silence, it was hard to speak at all. Jane’s tongue felt awkward in her mouth, like it was going to trip over itself if she attempted whole sentences.

  Cal grunted. His fingers stretched and then gripped the steering wheel harder. His eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses, despite the cloud layer still hanging fat and threatening across the morning skyline. Jane turned away from him, feeling oddly chastised.

  He drove them back to the Maxwells’ house. Amy disappeared inside without a word. Jane tried not to watch her go, and failed. Amy’s skirt was wrinkled from the rainstorm, and her hair had dried in wavy chunks. Light and hope seemed to disappear with her, the sky darkening even more as the door shut in her wake.

  “Come on,” Cal said gruffly. “We’re behind schedule.”

  He spun his keys around his finger before tucking them into his pocket, like some cowboy showing off as he holstered a gun. He rounded the house, heading for a different entrance.

  Jane had no choice but to follow. She jogged to catch up; Cal wasn’t waiting for her. Around the back of the house, he followed a narrow set of cement steps hidden behind a hydrangea bush. A secure metal door stood at the bottom, with a keypad that Cal punched the sequence into—never before had Jane seen someone take so much aggression out on a number pad. She worried that he would fritz something out, but a moment later the light on the keypad turned green, and the door clicked open.

  He tore through the hallway, past the bunkers, to the weapons testing room that they’d been using as a gym. He gathered a set of paddles and tossed Jane some hand wraps. A moment later he was poised and ready, and he gave her a curt nod. “Begin.”

  For a while, Jane tried to ignore his odd mood. They needed to focus, after all. The fate of their lives, and perhaps the whole city, hung in the balance—it was hardly the time or the place to be worried about personal issues. And okay, maybe guilt at having wasted the day before was gnawing at Jane, just a little.

  So Jane focused on the familiar moves. The punches, the dodges, the bursts of light to distract Cal from landing his occasional counterattack. It felt good to use her muscles, to work up a sweat. To shut down her conscious thoughts for a while. Jane couldn’t claim that she had forgotten about the shame and embarrassment of the night before, no, but it had, at least, retreated to a smaller corner of her mind.

  “No, no, no!” Cal said, as Jane’s fist connected with his paddle. “You’re still throwing yourself off-balance as you punch. How many times, Jane? You want to plant your feet, and use your whole body.”

  “Right,” Jane said. “Sorry.”

  “ ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to save your life,” Cal snapped. “What if you’re jumped in the streets, huh? What if you need to defend yourself, and you can’t, because you’re not paying attention?”

  “Okay, okay! Jesus, Cal. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Right,” Cal said with a huff. “Like how disappearing yesterday wasn’t a big deal.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you have any idea how frantic I went, looking for you? You vanish without a note, without a text, without a word, and I’m—”

  “I didn’t vanish. I was with Amy.”

  “I didn’t know that!”

  “Oh, well.” Jane crossed her arms. “Excuse me, mother, I didn’t realize that I needed to inform you when I left the house.”

  “That’s not the point,” Cal said. “This is a dangerous situation, and I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you are!”

  “Yes—okay, I get that. But, honestly, what do you really think is going to happen to me here? It’s like the safest place in the country.”

  Cal sneered. “Safe. You think you’re safe? You think that Jane didn’t think she was safe?”

  “I—” Jane started, but then she bit down on what she was going to say, and shook her head instead. “That’s different.”

  “How? Because she had even more training than you do? Because her powers were even stronger than yours? She wasn’t able to protect herself. Think about that, Jane!”

  Jane jumped back. In Cal’s frustration, he’d ripped off the paddles and thrown them across the gym floor. He wasn’t looking at her. He just stood there, breathing hard, grabbing fistfuls of his short hair until it stood up all on its own.

  Jane opened her mouth. Shut it again. The waves coming off Cal—Jane would almost be tempted to describe it as dread, if she didn’t know him better.

  She cleared her throat. Tried again. “Cal . . . I don’t—”

  “Do you have any idea how worried I was?” He looked up now, his gaze pinning her in place. There was something in the way that he was watching her, the turn at the corner of his eyes . . . naked fear splayed across his Hollywood features, more raw and real than anything Jane remembered seeing from him since they were kids.

  Jane tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear as she looked away. It was in this momentary distraction that Cal rushed forward. She did not see him, not until he was right there. Not until he was pushing her back, not until he was literally in her face. He shoved her against the wall, and kissed her hard.

  The shock of it held her in place for a moment. A deep mammalian instinct, of fear, locking up her thoughts. She felt out-of-body. She saw the scene as if she was watching from the shadows: the empty gym stretching out around them, paddles discarded on the floor; Cal and Jane, off in the corner of the frame, pinned as if in a lovers’ embrace.

  Rage sprang forth from somewhere deep in Jane’s core. Power ripped through her, harder than she was used to, as she blasted him away. Her hands were stinging as he staggered back—he tripped over the paddles, falling to his ass, his mouth open in an O of surprise.

  “What the hell, Cal?”

  Jane’s hands glowed as she wiped her mouth off, perfectly illuminating every crease of disgust upon her face.

  “What do you mean, ‘What the hell’?” Cal asked. He sprang to his feet. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Wrong with me?”

  “Yes!” Cal said. “You’re acting like we’ve never done that before.”

  “Because we haven’t!”

  Cal frowned. “Well . . . no, I suppose, technically—I mean, not you and me, but . . . but . . . I mean, your Cal—”

  “Oh God,” Jane said. Dizziness overwhelmed her, and she had to crouch down, tucking her head between her knees just to keep from passing out. An image of the birth control pills that she’d found in her bathroom flooded her mind. The idea of her double being straight was bad enough, but Cal?

  Cal snorted. “Way to flatter a guy, Jane,” he said, as if reading her mind.

  Jane forced down the knot in her gut as she stood up. “Cal, listen to me: whatever you had going on with this Jane . . . I mean, it’s none of my business, but—”

  “Of course it’s your business. You’re her, she’s you.” Cal stepped closer, and Jane’s blood pressure spiked. She raised her hands, still wrapped from her training session, but Cal ignored them. He stepped right between them, as he brushed back the stray lock of Jane’s hair with the back of his fingers.

  “Jane,” he said, “don’t you see? We’re meant to be together.”

  “No. We’re not.”

  Cal smirked. Undeterred. He lowered his voice as he leaned in, somewhere halfway between a purr and a growl. “How can you say that?”


  “Because I’m a fucking lesbian, for one!” Jane said. She shoved him again, though this time he was prepared, planted in front of her. Her efforts did nothing.

  Cal threw his head back. A bark of laughter bounced off of the gym ceiling. He was already grinning when he looked back at her. “No you’re not.”

  “Yes,” Jane said, “I am.”

  A single moment, frozen in time. A whole page, just Cal’s blank face. He stared at her, his lips slightly parted, as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t quite form coherent sentences. A speech bubble, empty save for an ellipsis.

  Finally, he blinked. “Wait, are you serious?”

  Jane nodded. She crossed her arms, hugging herself. A wave of sympathy passed through her at the thought that she’d just crushed his dreams—then a flare of irritation rode in on its wake, that she’d fallen prey to the societal idea that she needed to apologize for not having interest in a man.

  Cal shook his head, like he couldn’t quite process this. “That’s . . . This is . . .”

  “A fact?” Jane offered.

  “—so hot,” Cal finished. He caught her eye again, a grin splitting his face. “Hey, do you think that maybe once we find the real Jane, the two of you could . . . you know . . . ?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Cal shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for dreaming.”

  “Actually, I can.” Jane stared at him in disgust. She needed a shower, just to get the pervy off her.

  She started to turn away, but Cal caught her by the elbow. “Aw, come on. You can’t mean to tell me you’ve never made out with a girl to impress a guy.”

  “Cal!”

  “What?”

  “I don’t . . . I can’t believe you right now! Do you even hear yourself when you talk?”

  Cal scowled. “Don’t be such a prude, Main Jane. I’m not asking much. Just, you know, a bit of a show. Maybe tops off? Nothing serious.”

  “Oh my god,” Jane said. She turned away, starting to storm off. Cal was already on her heels, wrapping his fat man-fingers around her arm. “Get off of me!”

  “No. After all I’ve done for you, you owe me. I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”

  A surge billowed in Jane’s chest. “Fuck off!” she shouted, her powers coursing through her so hard that it left a ringing in her ears.

  Except, that’s the thing: it wasn’t just ringing in her ears. In the instant just before she spoke, a current of rage had exploded out of Jane, pulsing through the air. The speakers of the gym buzzed, her voice amplified and pounding out of them with a squeal like it was from a microphone. Their phones chimed in their pockets, the control panel on the wall for the security system beeped rapidly, and a laptop that Cal had sitting on a nearby bench flicked on, as every screen in the room, right down to Cal’s smartwatch, displayed two repeating words: fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck—

  “Holy shit,” Jane breathed.

  Cal laughed. He pulled his phone out, turning it around for Jane to see the words repeated there, too.

  Jane stepped back, uncertain. “What . . . what just happened?”

  “It worked,” Cal said with a grin. He rolled his eyes. “What, did you think I really meant all that crap? You wound me, Main Jane.” He put his hand over his heart in mock-pain. “No, I just needed to get you good and pissed. I’ve been thinking about it, and that’s how our Jane’s powers kicked into higher gear. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”

  “Wait, that was . . . ,” Jane sputtered, as she pulled her own phone out, the same fuck off message filling her screen. “Holy shit.”

  Cal clapped Jane on the shoulder. “Welcome to the big league,” he said, still grinning. “Now. How about we head back to Grand City and kick some UltraViolet ass?”

  * * *

  They returned to headquarters, back in Grand City. Amy took her own car, the one that she’d driven up to the islands, while Cal and Jane rode back in uncomfortable silence. Cal hummed along to the music, tapping his hands, offering Jane the occasional stop for a bathroom break or a cheap burger, all of which Jane declined.

  She stared out the window nearly the whole time, but what she saw wasn’t the passing landscape. Instead, she was lost in her own memory. She kept going over what had happened in the gym: the smack of her fists against the paddles, the kiss that had startled her into action, Cal’s leering face as he’d said all those horrible, perverted things. Okay, so he claimed that he hadn’t meant any of it, but . . . how much of “it” hadn’t he meant? That he and Jane had been together? That he wanted her to make out for his own entertainment? Or just how pushy he was about it?

  Grudgingly, though, she had to admit that his technique had been effective. Every time that Jane remembered it, she could feel another piece of her powers itching to come back to life. She still wasn’t ready to try using it again—and didn’t know how good of an idea that would be, anyway, in a moving vehicle on the highway, one that was modern and full of electronics—but she knew that, whatever had awoken, it wasn’t a fluke.

  Traffic was light, so the trip took less time than usual. Jane breathed a sigh of relief as they pulled into the underground parking garage. She scrambled out of the car before Cal even finished cutting the engine.

  They were scheduled to meet in the command room. Amy’s car was already there, though Amy herself was gone. Still, Jane hurried up the elevator, leaving Cal behind to catch the next one. It wasn’t until Jane saw the empty car that she realized how badly she wanted to talk to Amy. Which probably didn’t make any sense, given what had happened between them, but . . . old impulses die hard.

  The elevator reached the top, and Jane pushed herself through the doors as they were still opening. Amy was a distant smudge at the end of the hall, shuffling along with her shoulders slumped.

  “Amy! Wait up!”

  There was probably no reason for Amy to listen, but she did anyway, slowing and then finally stopping as she waited for Jane’s footsteps to catch up.

  They picked up side by side. Silence ran taut between them.

  “Listen,” Jane said finally, “I’m sorry about—about what happened at the B&B. I didn’t—”

  “Don’t. It was as much my fault as anything. It’s . . . it’s just hard sometimes. You have all these memories of the two of us, and . . .” She let out a nervous laugh. “I guess I’m jealous. Isn’t that weird? My Jane never felt that way about me, but God, I did. I never told anyone that before. But I did.”

  Jane looked down. Her wedding ring was on the wrong hand, but still there, a touchstone that Jane could retreat to any time she needed it. Her memories, too—for so long, Jane felt the pain of them whenever she looked back, but now she realized how much better it was to have them. This other life, this other version of herself . . . Jane couldn’t even imagine it. Loving Clair had been the foundation of Jane’s entire existence. She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t love Clair.

  “You’re sure that your Jane doesn’t feel the same?” Jane asked.

  Amy snorted. “Oh, I’m sure. Though, actually . . . ,” she trailed off, shook her head.

  “What?” Jane asked.

  “Nothing—never mind.”

  “Amy.”

  “I said, ‘Never mind.’ ”

  Jane reached out and touched Amy’s shoulder without thought or planning. The gesture came as natural as breathing, and it stilled the two of them in their walk.

  “You know that you can tell me anything,” Jane said. “Don’t you?”

  A sad smile crossed Amy’s face. She avoided looking at Jane as she said, “You really don’t want to hear it.”

  “Then that’ll be my problem. Now, tell me.”

  Amy looked down, staring at the lines of her fingers as they poked out from her fingerless gloves. She shrugged, like it didn’t even matter.

  “It’s just that I’ve always assumed that I was in love with Jane, but in fact . . . I realized a few years ago that it was more the idea of Jane that I was i
n love with. Who she could be. I used to have these dreams about her that were just—oh, they were perfect. She was perfect. Then I would wake up, and she’d be different, and eventually I realized that the woman from my dreams wasn’t really Jane, and I had to accept that. No matter what, I had to accept that.”

  Amy fell silent. She turned her hands over, her trapped palms making the gloves damp with sweat.

  “The thing is . . . ,” Amy continued, still not looking up. She hesitated, half a breath waiting on her lips. “Ever since you got here . . . the more I get to know you . . . It’s not my Jane that I dreamed of.”

  The words hit Jane like the pummeling force of Windforce’s gusts. She closed her eyes, turned away. She didn’t want to, but—dammit, she couldn’t help it. The last twenty-four hours had been filled with so many emotional wringers, so many different pulls of her heart, that she just didn’t know if she could take it anymore. She wanted to curl up in bed, not go to this meeting. Wanted to pull the covers over her head, snuggle down, block out the world until there was nothing left but the safety of her dreams.

  Her dreams . . .

  “I’m sorry,” Amy was already saying from behind her. Her words tumbled out fast, tripping over each other. “I know that this isn’t anything that you want to hear, and I can only imagine how painful this must be for you, I just—I just can’t keep it to myself any longer. And I’m not expecting you to reciprocate, I mean, I get it, I’m not Clair. So it’s okay, you know, if you’d rather—”

  “Dreams,” Jane said, as she opened her eyes. She turned back, her heart racing. Why hadn’t she seen it before?

  A pert little frown was wrinkling Amy’s brow. “What?”

  “You said that you saw me in your dreams. Me-me, not your Jane. You saw my life?”

  “Um . . . sort of. Well, really just you, but . . . Why?”

  “Come with me,” Jane said. She took Amy’s hand, guiding her down the hallway.