Knew I wasn’t lying when I said this—this place, this magical place—made me content.
And that made me happy because it meant I wasn’t like my mother at all. Not even a little bit. Because every day the sun woke me up, I was grateful. Every night I went to bed, I was thankful.
I didn’t need anything more.
All I needed was this very moment where Jacob kept me prisoner with my necklace and the forest cradled us from civilisation.
My heart pounded as Jacob licked his lower lip.
“You are the simplest, most sweetest person I’ve ever met,” he whispered. “You are… fascination and fearlessness all wrapped up in gratitude.”
I swallowed hard as his body brushed against mine.
“If you were anything like your mother, Hope Jacinta Murphy, then I would still be afraid to try. Too shit terrified to be your friend. You don’t love possessions or money or superficial things. What you love is life. You love the one thing that can be taken away so damn easily, and that makes you the bravest person I know.”
I wanted to reply.
To burst into tears.
My chest swelled with so, so much emotion. So many feelings that had no words or descriptions. Jacob had stripped me bare and kept me safe all at the same time, and I no longer just loved him.
I needed him.
I needed him to be free like me.
His head bowed, and the faintest graze of his nose on mine zigzagged a lightning bolt deep into my belly. His grip on the chain around my throat tightened, pulling me closer against him.
I swayed into him, parting my lips, offering up everything.
And I waited.
I waited and prayed and got on my knees for him to accept what I was ready to give him, but he just sighed torturedly, smiled tormentedly, and pulled away. Letting my locket go, he gave me a look born from heartache and hope.
Hope.
Like me.
There was hope he might one day love me…even if it was the tiniest speck.
But even if he could…his heartache would rule him forever.
“Sorry.” He cleared his throat from sand and ash and turned away.
* * * * *
“You did well today,” Jacob said, breaking the silence that’d kept us company along with the crackling fire, occasional scurry of something furry in the bushes, and an owl hoot or two.
“Thanks. It was fun.” I snuggled deeper into the sleeping bags we’d spread on the yoga mats close, but not too close, to the fire.
All day, I’d locked down the desire he’d invoked by clutching my locket. I kept my eyes far from his, threw myself into camp tasks, and pretended I wasn’t a shaking mess every time he came near.
Even the chore of gathering firewood with him sent goosebumps decorating me. A guided tour of this piece of paradise made my stomach clench. A simple dinner of packet pasta and squished blueberry muffins made my heart swoon at the domesticated bliss.
I fell into the daydream that we were a couple, and the tent we set up didn’t require the two separate nests on either side of the central pod.
That we’d sleep in one.
Together.
Touching.
Kissing.
Confessing that this friendship wasn’t enough anymore…for either of us.
But that hallucination was dashed as Jacob finished erecting the tent with ease and practice, then stepped inside the three-room shelter. The air changed, his back stiffened, and his attention locked on the right wing as if it were a portal to hell.
He froze in the gathering twilight, seeing monsters I couldn’t imagine.
Ice slithered down my spine.
Had this tent belonged to his parents’? It was too big for a solitary traveller, but it was well used.
Used by a family perhaps.
A trio who’d become a duo.
I backed up, climbing over the zipper door, leaving Jacob to his ghosts and horrors.
Whatever had happened in that tent had irrevocably changed him, but I didn’t know how.
Curiosity chewed at me, although our tentative connection whispered I had no right to ask.
I didn’t say a word when Jacob decided to put our mats and sleeping bags by the fire instead of in the tent, and we skirted the topic of death with fire-roasted marshmallows until my fingers were sticky and sugar dusted my lips.
Jacob interrupted my thoughts. “Reckon you could survive a night out here on your own?”
His voice, rough and gravelly at this time of night, threatened to tear my secret from my chest.
I love you.
Shaking my head clear, I clutched my hands together for support. “Not without someone preparing a backpack for me with everything I need.”
He laughed quietly, his eyes mirroring burning flames.
Why did he have to be so handsome? So brilliant? So wild?
My heart physically hurt. It wrapped itself up in a blanket of thorns, bleeding with need just to tell him.
To say thank you.
I love you.
Don’t be afraid.
Ugh.
I glared at the sky where gleaming stars mocked me from above.
“You adapted well enough.”
“I had a good teacher.”
He cleared his throat. “You’re a good student.”
My body locked down, the sleeping bag unable to eradicate the chill in my bones for denying what I most needed.
I needed his arms around me.
His lips on mine.
Get a grip, Hope.
You are his friend.
F.r.i.e.n.d.
Friend.
“It’s so quiet out here.” My tone was waspish and loud as if the wooded serenity was an inconvenience and not a privilege.
“Yeah. The silence has a way of making your thoughts unavoidable.” He shifted beside me, his forehead furrowing.
I wanted to agree, but I daren’t admit my thoughts were all about him. His were most likely on dead fathers and dying grandfathers while mine were on more trivial things.
Things like unrequited love.
Trivial because they were pointless and only hurting myself.
Silence fell.
A shooting star ripped up the inky vastness in blazing suicide.
Jacob’s voice once again crept into my ears, making my heart quicken. “What do you want from life?” He kept his eyes firmly on the masterpiece above us, but his hands fisted on his sleeping bag.
For a while, I struggled with an answer.
It was a question that could seem blasé, but in that infinite moment, alone and linked with the cosmos, it was the most important thing I’d ever been asked.
My cheeks warmed for no other reason than honesty. “Everything that everyone else wants, I suppose.”
Don’t do this, Hope.
Secrets like this shouldn’t be shared while alone in the forest.
“And what exactly is that?”
I pressed my lips together, fighting the urge. But I was weak. I was pushy. I couldn’t help myself. “Family…someone to love. A best friend to laugh with. A house. A home.” I squirmed, embarrassment and fear skipping down my skin. “Those kind of things.”
If you took away wealth and hierarchies, in the end, that was all anyone ever wanted. The general consensus of life: two-legged, four-legged, feathered or scaled.
A mate.
A hearth.
A belonging.
Jacob sighed. His voice barely audible with charred edges, as if the fire had scorched his throat. “I don’t know if I do.”
I stiffened, doing my best to seem unaffected.
“I’ve tried really hard the past month,” he whispered. “Really damn hard. I’m glad I’ve made my mother smile more, and Grandpa John feels he can touch me without me ripping his hand off. But…”
He slung an arm over his eyes, blocking his face from view. “I’m still so goddamn afraid. I was hoping that fear would go away, but it’s only grown worse.
” His voice blackened with coal. “I’m sick of being so fucking screwed up.”
I didn’t know if he expected a response or if this was purely to ease the bleeding of his soul. Taking a gamble, I breathed, “It’s okay to be afraid. You’ve been blessed with the best family in the world. It’s unthinkable to lose something so precious. You’re so aware they can be gone in an instant.”
He groaned under his breath. “Death shouldn’t have scarred me this permanently. You lost a parent, too, but I don’t see you breaking because of it.”
“That’s different.”
He stiffened. “No, it’s not. The fact is, you’re much stronger than I am. I keep letting everyone down. I keep waiting for the pain to go, for the fear of loss to vanish so I can be brave enough to care. But it just…never happens. I still picture them dead. I still steel myself against their touch. Pieces of me lock down whenever I try to love them. I-I can’t control it.”
I couldn’t handle his rawness, his openness. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it, but he’d shown me every dark, haemorrhaging secret, and I couldn’t lie there without touching him.
Crawling from my sleeping bag, I slotted my body along his. “It’s okay. We’re all different. It’s not something you—”
“Shut up, Hope.” He sucked in a harsh breath, his entire form locking down. “I don’t even know why I told you. Just…forget it.”
He didn’t push me away but his entire body bellowed for me to back off.
I should let him go.
I should give him space.
Instead, I slung my arm over his waist and nuzzled into his chest.
His temper sizzled, making my hair stand on end.
“Let me go.”
“No.” I shook my head, inhaling the leather and sweet smell of hay and sunshine clinging to him. “Talk to me. Get it out. I won’t tell anyone. I swear on my mother’s grave, whatever you tell me stays out here, just between us.”
“I’ve said everything I shouldn’t.”
“Well, I’m here if you want to say more.”
“I don’t.”
“We have all night.”
He jack-knifed upright. “Wrong.” Shoving the sleeping bag off him, he stood over me, silhouetted by fire and starlight, and for a second, I was afraid.
Afraid of him, his anger, his damaged, screwed-up soul.
But then his shoulders slouched, and the night air washed the fear away. “I’m eh…going for a walk.” With one hand buried in his hair, he gave me a look full of eternal misery. “I’m sorry…for what I said.”
“Stop apologising.”
“Just…go to sleep.”
I sat up, hugging my knees to my chest. “I’ll wait until you get back.”
He smiled sadly. “You might be waiting a while.”
I cocked my head, wishing he’d finally see that when it came to him, I was already committed to waiting. I’d wait for the rest of my life. I’d wait until my heart stopped beating. “I don’t mind.”
“You don’t mind if you have to wait all night?” He raised an eyebrow almost condescendingly.
I merely nodded with conviction and utmost truth. “A single night is nothing. You’re worth a millennium of nights.”
He sucked in a grunt as if I’d punched him in the chest. Giving me one last look, this one full of confusion and uncertainty, he turned around and vanished into the tree-hidden darkness.
* * * * *
I had a dream.
A dream about a girl and a boy and a shadow.
A shadow that refused to let the boy care for the living, because the dead already owned him.
In my dream, I offered the boy an ice-cream. I tried to coax him back into happiness. But the shadow wouldn’t let him go. It whispered lies. It said I would die and leave him. It spoke of genocide and homicide and death, death, death.
And the little boy nodded.
He agreed with the darkness and accepted its black, black cloak, then turned his back on me.
He accepted a life of loneliness as payment to never endure loss again.
And the little girl just stood there…waiting.
* * * * *
I opened my eyes to dawn.
A silvery, ashy dawn that barely made it from treetops to forest floor.
I’d waited for as long as I could. Well past midnight when creatures grew bold and the sensation of being watched by predators and prey chased me into the tent.
I sat in my sleeping bag, ears pricked for Jacob’s footsteps and not some hungry beast. But my eyes had steadily grown heavier, my mind fuzzy, until my body tumbled into sleep.
And I’d been harassed by dream snippets and nightmare wisps until a twig snapped, wrenching me upright.
He’s back.
Crawling from the tent, I swallowed hard as Jacob covered the dying fire with a kick of dirt and turned away from curling smoke. With a quick look at me, he nodded, then grabbed his backpack and began dismantling our night in the woods.
Without a word, I went to help him.
Like usual, we worked harmoniously, him focusing on one chore and me on another. A dance really. A choreographed routine that said we were used to working side by side, even if we weren’t used to talking.
Once the tent was back in its nylon carrier and the sleeping bags rolled up, we headed from the clearing and back on the overgrown path.
Jacob handed me a muesli bar, his fingers grazing mine as I took it.
We flinched.
He gritted his teeth.
I swallowed a moan.
Our morning as strained as last night.
But neither of us knew how to fix it, and it wasn’t until Cherry River came into view that I finally found the courage to whisper, “Nothing happened. Nothing was said. You have my word.”
He paused, his dark eyes lingering on the empire he toiled over. “I didn’t mean to say those things. I love my family. I don’t want you thinking I don’t.”
“I know you love them.”
He stood taller. “I’m lucky. Very lucky to have them.”
“You are.”
Catching my gaze, he murmured, “Summer is almost over.”
And in those four words, I knew what he was saying.
He’d agreed to let me help over summer.
Soon, he wouldn’t need that help.
Autumn was coming.
And when it arrived, he expected me to be gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Jacob
* * * * * *
“I’M PROUD OF you, Jacob. Immensely proud.”
I placed the chipped coffee mug in front of Grandpa John—no coaster required on this dinged-up, well-used family dining table. The steaming hot chocolate smelled overly sweet, and I craved a splash of whiskey to put in mine.
I’d need it.
I already wanted to bolt from the farmhouse and pretend this conversation never existed.
I wasn’t mentally prepared for this. I was still messed up from camping with Hope two days ago. I hadn’t slept. I’d forgotten what it felt like to live a normal life where my heart didn’t skip a beat whenever I saw Hope or my stomach didn’t plummet whenever I admitted I was falling in ways I couldn’t.
It pissed me off.
It petrified me.
On a minutely basis, I cursed my idea of being friends with her.
Why the hell did I take her camping?
At least before that night, I’d been able to pretend things were survivable.
Now, I could barely speak without wanting to attack her. The violence in my blood was confused. It wanted to kiss her, but it also wanted to strike her.
To hurt her so she left and never came back.
Gulping a mouthful of chocolate and focusing on my grandfather instead of my torment, I asked, “Why are you proud? Because we made more money this season than any other, or because I’ve helped Cassie break in three extra horses?”
He chuckled. “Both.”
“You ca
n thank Hope for the grass return.”
And then you can say goodbye because she’s leaving soon.
I was glad at the thought of her gone.
I was eager to see her go.
I was suicidal to admit I’d miss her.
So fucking much.
“I have.” He grinned. “She’s been an asset to this place. I’m so glad you two have been getting along so well.”
“Yeah.” I stared into my drink, wanting to talk about anything other than Hope.
I’d stupidly thought by eliminating the stress between us and becoming friends, we’d be able to work in peace. That my body wouldn’t have such highs and lows of irritation and affection.
I’d thought I could handle a friend.
That I would find comfort in company.
But no.
I’d only condemned myself to a living hell.
A hell that didn’t stop, that tortured me with images of her alive in my bed and then dead at my feet. The devil mocked me with a future of her by my side, sharing the care of Cherry River, and being family instead of just a friend, but in the same breath, he tore her away, delivered that undoubted pain, and crushed me beneath certain despair.
I hurt.
All the goddamn time.
“I’m also so proud of the way you’ve let us be closer to you. That letter you gave me was much appreciated.” Grandpa John leaned forward, his intensity searing into me. “We’ve missed you, Jakey. I was worried. Very worried. Ren wouldn’t have liked seeing you so closed off.”
I tore my eyes away, staring at the melting marshmallow in my mug.
I supposed I should say the customary thank you, but there was nothing to be proud of.
What he saw were lies.
Only I knew the truth.
The bitter, brutal truth.
Before, I’d been honest with my pain.
But now, I lied and hid it.
I was worse.
So, so much worse.
Grandpa John cleared his throat, changing the subject as if he sensed my unravelling. “So, have you decided to go ahead with your plan for the orchard expansion?”
My muscles clenched. I appreciated his olive branch, but I wasn’t there to talk about trivial stuff. He’d asked me here to discuss his illness. The subject we’d been avoiding since that fateful day at the hospital. My back was healed. My concussion no more. Yet Grandpa’s sickness hadn’t gone. It was still there, eating him alive. “You’re seriously going to talk about the farm?”
The Son & His Hope Page 33