“I’ll talk about whatever interests me.”
“You’re only wasting time. Skirting the real topic.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m easing into it. Is that a crime?”
“It is when it’s taking everything I have to sit here and pretend nothing is wrong.”
He sighed, his beard fluttering with breath. “There’s nothing wrong, Jacob. Everything is how it should be.”
“Oh, don’t give me that crap.” I slouched, crossing my arms. “I don’t need to hear about God’s plan or life cycles. You’re not well. It’s shit. Don’t pretend it’s any better just because you’re okay with it.”
“I am okay with it.”
“Well, I’m not. So spit it out. Tell me how long I have to be mad at you.”
He laughed at my morbid humour. “Chances are, I’ll outlive you, my boy. Hope told me why you were at the hospital that day. Jumping that crazy animal without tack is just asking for an early grave.”
“That crazy animal has my back.”
“Kick you in the back, more like.”
“I’ve never understood why you all hate on him so much. I’ve had him for years now. He’s proven he’s trustworthy.”
He nodded. “You’re right. It’s not fair. We’re holding onto an old bias.”
“I’ll tell him you apologised.”
He chuckled, sipping his hot chocolate.
In the time it took him to swallow, the air switched from strained to outright sinister. The silence hissed about disease, and I stiffened until I was as wooden as the seat I sat on. “So…how long?”
His face lost any hint of humour. “I told you in the car park. A year or so.”
“That’s nothing.”
“I agree. That’s why I’m pleased to announce it’s more like two or three, possibly even five years. The treatments have worked. Bought me more time.”
Neither of us said it, but our thoughts were on Dad. About how he kept chiselling away at time. Just a little more. Just a little more.
Until there was no more.
Taking a sip of my drink, I dared meet the intense gaze of the wizened old wizard I called family. “We’ll find another treatment. Buy you even more.”
“I won’t chase miracles. I’m at peace with that timeframe.”
“So you’re giving up?” I bared my teeth. “Didn’t figure you for a quitter.”
He reached for my hand, but I slipped it off the table and into my lap.
He sighed. “I’m not quitting. I’m accepting. And besides, I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve loved the most amazing people. And if I’m honest, I’m tired. I’m ready to see what else is out there.”
His eyes drifted to a sun-bleached photo of the grandmother I never met. A woman with kind eyes and red hair and a lemon-printed apron carrying a steaming casserole. “I miss Pat. She was the life of my heart. When she went, she took most of me with her. I didn’t wish away the extra time I’ve had with you guys, but I’m also not going to fight to stay.”
“Wow.” I narrowed my eyes. “What a shit thing to say. What about Mom? What about Cassie, Liam, Adam, Chip and Nina? Don’t they get a say in this?”
“What about you?” Grandpa John placed his elbows on the table, studying me. “You’re so worried how others will cope, but I’m more worried about you.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you never got over Ren’s death. You can’t stand hearing someone cough. You—”
“We all have faults.”
He shook his head. “Those aren’t faults, Jakey. They’re phobias.”
“You’re saying I need therapy? Like the rest of the people in this town?”
“No, I’m saying life isn’t black and white, alive and dead, happy and sad. It’s a blend. The only guarantee is today. Not tomorrow or next year. It’s good to plan for the future, but at the end of the day, you have to be content with what you have right now. Otherwise, you’ll never live.”
Anger worked its way down my spine. “I didn’t come here for a lecture.”
“Perhaps you need one.”
“What I need is for you to tell me what’s wrong.”
John leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his considerable bulk. “When I asked you over here, I intended to tell you anything you wanted to know. To list how it will happen. What to expect. To put your overactive imagination to rest. But…”
I sat taller, prickling with unease. “But?”
“I’m not going to.”
“You’re not going to tell me how you’re going to die?”
“Nope.” He stood, taking his empty mug to the sink. “I’m not. Because that isn’t the part that matters.” Striding back toward me, he stood over me, dwarfing me, driving me deeper into the chair like a headmaster telling off a delinquent student. “Listen to me, Jacob Wild, and listen well. I’m alive. Right now. I’m happy. Right now. I’m going to battle for however long I can, and I’m going to love you for always. The end hasn’t changed. It was always going to end with me dead, just like your story will end when you’re dead. Who cares how it happens? It’s not important. What is important is what you do with the days you have right now.”
Patting my shoulder, he squeezed me tight.
Normally, I’d allow him the liberty.
Normally, I’d bite my tongue and swallow my pain and pretend I enjoyed the contact.
Not this time.
Not after he hid his illness.
Not after he dare scold me like an idiot.
He wanted to be honest?
Fine, I could be honest.
Soaring to my feet, I shoved his hand off me. “You want me to live right now? How the hell can I, huh, when all I can think about is attending your funeral? I already feel that pain. Already know what it’s going to be like without you around. How am I supposed to accept right now, when I’d much rather have yesterday? At least yesterday isn’t a surprise. At least the past can’t hurt.”
“The past is what’s hurting you the most.”
“Wrong. The future is.”
John’s face fell. “That’s not normal, Jake—”
“It’s a fact of life. You just said it so yourself.”
“Death is a fact of life, but it shouldn’t be in your daily thoughts, for God’s sake.”
“How can it not when it’s taken so much from me?”
“It’s taken nothing more than it’s taken from other people.”
“And maybe they’re not coping, either. Maybe they’re all screwed up like me.”
John stood to his towering height. “You’re forgetting I’ve lost two people who I loved with all my heart. My wife and then my son. Ren might not have been blood, but he was my son. To bury your partner is one thing, but to bury your child? It sucks, Jacob. It fucking sucks. But you grieve, you remember, and then you move on.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not. It’s the hardest thing in the world.”
“Then why bother? Why put yourself through it?”
John laughed sadly. A laugh full of the same heartache I lived with. “Because the world wouldn’t be the same without love. Humanity wouldn’t exist. The cycle of life wouldn’t exist. Nothing would exist.”
The thought of a barren wasteland was an image I’d imagined before. A world where animals lived singular and humans never paired.
It was one of the saddest things imaginable but perhaps the safest too.
“You shouldn’t block yourself from caring because you already live with the pain of them gone,” John said. “That’s a sure-fire way to drive yourself crazy.”
“Maybe I’m already crazy.”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t make me love you any less.” John reached for me, aiming to pull me into his signature bear hug. “Come here.”
“Hell no.” I dived out of his reach, breathing hard, heart rate pounding against the sky. “Don’t touch me.”
“Someone should touc
h you. Remind you to stay with the living.”
“I don’t need reminding.”
“I think you do. What about Hope? She wants to care for you. She’s a stubborn, patient little thing. Let her care.”
A full-body shudder took me hostage.
Hope.
Goddamn Hope.
She’d snuggled up to me two nights ago when I’d stupidly admitted how I felt. She’d crawled from her sleeping bag to lie against me, and I’d almost broken.
I’d already broken by clutching her locket and pulling her close a few hours before. But having her touch me in return was yet another laceration on a heart already flayed into ribbons.
She’d weakened me, but she hadn’t fixed me.
God, why couldn’t she fix me?
I couldn’t be here anymore.
I couldn’t listen to John or fight with myself.
I needed peace before I went out of my goddamn mind.
Backing away, I beelined for the door.
“Hey. Where do you think you’re going?” John asked. “We haven’t finished.”
“I’m done.”
“Jakey, don’t run away from the first frank conversation we’ve had.”
Wrenching open the door, I threw him a look I hoped was full of love as well frustration. “I’m not running.”
He scowled. “You’ll come back? We’ll finish this?”
Probably not.
Definitely not.
“Maybe.” Slipping from the house, I leaped from the stoop and ran.
* * * * *
Whiskey made everything better.
The smarting, cutting pain from talking to Grandpa John was now a mellow memory as I sat in an empty stable and nursed yet another tumbler of fire.
I hadn’t intended to get drunk.
I’d planned on going for a ride with Forrest and then crashing into the sleep I hadn’t been able to snatch since camping with Hope, but that was before I’d walked through a lonely cabin, stared into a bare fridge, and felt the unnatural breeze of my dead father judging me that I’d had the unbearable desire to run and never come back.
My muscles physically screamed to flee.
To break my promise to Dad. To disappear without a goodbye.
The urge was too strong. Too incessant. Whispering its nasty promises that if I made everyone hate me, then I’d be free from the agony they caused.
I wanted so badly to give in.
To vanish.
But…I couldn’t leave.
I couldn’t hurt those I adored. I would never be that selfish.
But I did need help, and that help came in the form of alcohol.
And that was how I found myself patrolling Cherry River with a rapidly dwindling whiskey bottle before finding refuge with hay and mice, tucked in the stable where no one would disturb me.
“Jacob?”
Fuck.
Of course, she would disturb me.
She would look for me, find me, critique me.
Dragging my knees up, I rested my forearms on them, dangling my drink in loose fingers. There was no point in running. She’d already caught me, and I was too hazy to care.
As I took a healthy swig of burning liquid, Hope’s chocolate-haired head appeared over the stable door. Her eyes scanned the shadowy space before locking onto me in the corner.
I tensed for reprimands. I gritted my teeth against arguments.
But she merely sighed, opened the door, and entered. Without a word, she slid down the wall beside me, crossing her legs and glaring at the almost-empty bottle in my hands.
We sat there for ages.
Silent and strained.
Her thoughts were loud enough to encroach on the fog from my booze, but she didn’t bother me with conversation.
Thirty minutes or so passed before my ass started to ache and my whiskey was no more. The empty bottle mocked me, and I left the realm of fog and slid into blurry exhaustion.
Hope chose that moment to speak. “You’re a farmer, Jacob Wild. You know what that means, right?”
I raised an eyebrow, biting my lip against a world slightly off axis. “No.” I twisted a little to stare at her, our shoulders kissing, our hips touching. She was warm and solid and my friend. It made me want to break down and cry and hurt her all at the same time.
“You are life and death itself.” Her eyes stayed on the opposite stable wall. An unnatural redness on her cheeks made her glow. A slight rasp to her otherwise melodic voice made her wise. “You are a farmer. You plant seeds, so you give life. You cut the grass, so you take life. You rescue horses that need a second chance, yet you put creatures in pain out of their misery.” She twisted to face me, her hand landing on my knee.
I froze, but she didn’t stop touching me. “So you see, Jacob Wild, if you are afraid of death, then be afraid of yourself too. Be afraid of everyone, not just those you love. Be afraid of animals and seasons and calendars and oceans.”
Her fingers dug into my kneecap, imploring me to follow her down this narrow and twisted road. “Do you see? Do you understand? The world is life and death. Every breath is life and death. Every dream. Every afternoon. Every breeze and falling raindrop. You have to accept that. You have to finally give in to life because you’ve already given in to death. We are all givers of life and granters of death—accept that you can’t change that…and you’re free.”
My heart pounded.
The whiskey made me nauseous.
Her touch made me reckless.
Hope watched me as if she was there to break me from my prison and believed words could be the key. But I watched her from that prison, cloaked in darkness that’d been brewing inside me for months. A darkness that came from passion and rage, not life or death.
A passion that stirred and heated and infected my bloodstream the longer she touched me.
Anger added to the sickening mix.
Anger at my fear, my entrapment, my repetitive thoughts.
She made it sound so goddamn easy.
Accept it and you’re free.
It wasn’t that simple.
“Just accept, Jacob,” she whispered, adding another layer of fuel to my already burning temper. “Just accept…me.”
I lost it.
The whiskey thought for me. The alcohol removed my rules. And my hand swooped up to cup her throat.
She gasped as I curled my fingers tighter around the delicate column of her neck. She said I was life and death, and she was right. I could take her life so easily. No one would know or stop me.
Her pulse jumped erratically beneath my thumb. Her skin hot and soft and fragile.
The chain from her locket tickled my fingertips as I pulled her closer.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth, and something ricocheted through me. Something powerful and desperate and greedy...
Yanking her into me, I smashed my lips on hers. The faint taste of blood tainted the kiss as our teeth clacked, and her mouth parted in welcome.
I did what she asked me to do.
I gave in.
I let the liquor cut my morals as I jerked her onto my lap. Our kiss turned hard, deep, fast. Her body lost its stiffness, liquefying. Her lips slipped against mine, and her breath caught as her hands swooped to dig nails into my scalp.
I no longer saw or breathed or existed.
I was merely there.
An inconsequential piece of life, giving in to the natural symmetry of mating…surviving.
My thoughts collided and tangled as her tongue licked mine and her moan encouraged me to take more.
I lost all sense of where I was.
What I was.
Who I was.
Thanks to the whiskey, I did what Grandpa told me and lived right now.
I came alive in Hope’s arms.
No half-life. No cursed life.
Just life.
I slid against the wall, taking her with me, letting gravity feed her to the floor where I sprawled on top of her.
Her legs sp
read, her breath catching as I slotted between them.
Our kiss turned wild and careless. Nips of teeth and curls of tongues.
I was drunk on her as well as whiskey.
Her fingernails scratched either side of my spine, dragging me deeper into her.
And, instead of fighting, I let her control me.
I shoved aside everything else.
All thoughts.
All phobias and pains.
There was nothing.
Just Hope.
“Fuck.” I fisted a handful of her hair, deliberately drowning in her. And she welcomed me to swim deeper, to dive into her heart and sink to the bottom where I would never be alone.
Her hands roamed down my back, dropping to my jeans pockets and squeezing my ass, tugging me forward and into her. Her delicious heat short-circuited everything that made me human.
Her slender strength turned me on. Her fight and stubbornness made me hard.
My body sank lower, crushing her to cobbles and thrusting my vicious need against her. My thoughts scattered even further, leaving me love-starving and chaos-free. It was as if, in her embrace, death couldn’t find me.
Our tongues danced faster.
Our hands groped harder.
There was no finesse or permissions.
Just raw, basic need.
But then fate intervened.
Fate decided to remind me I would never be free.
Mid-kiss, Hope coughed.
And I levitated off her in a single heartbeat.
She coughed again, wincing as she did her best to stop.
Each inhale and cough, she twined electrical wire around my heart and electrocuted me.
Defibrillating the useless muscle until there was no more whiskey, no more desire in my blood.
Just stark, terrified horror.
“Are you sick?” I tripped away, stumbling in my haste.
A cough.
Memories of hospitals and racking fits and medicines that couldn’t cure slithered into my mind.
Threading both hands into my hair, I pulled hard, wishing I could crack open my skull and stop the past.
Hope scrambled to her feet, her lips red and hand reaching for me, imploring me to stay with her. “I’m not sick.”
“Why the hell did you cough then?” I paced the small stable, growing crazed with claustrophobia.
The Son & His Hope Page 34