by Meg Cabot
"Yes," I said with absolute certainty. "Because he has. In the past."
"No, he hasn’t, Suze," Paul said with equal certainty.
"Yes, he has, Paul. You don’t even know—"
"Yes, I do know. Jesse could never possibly have risked his own life to save yours, because in all the time you’ve known him, he’s been dead. So he hasn’t been risking anything, all those times he’s saved you. Has he?"
I opened my mouth to deny to this, then realized that Paul was right. It was the truth. A screwed-up version of the truth, but the truth just the same.
"What have you got to be so bitter about?" I demanded instead. "You’ve always gotten everything you’ve ever wanted your whole life. You’ve only had to ask for it, and it was yours. But it’s like it’s never enough for you."
"I haven’t gotten everything I’ve ever wanted," Paul said pointedly. "Although I’m working to correct that."
I shook my head, knowing what he meant.
"You only want me because you can’t have me, Paul," I said. "And you know it. I mean, my God. You’ve got Kelly. All the guys in school want her."
"All the guys in school," Paul said, "are idiots."
I ignored that.
"You would be a lot better off," I said, "if you’d just be happy with what you have, Paul, instead of wanting what you’ll never get."
But Paul kept right on grinning. Grinning and rolling back over so he could sleep. "I wouldn’t be so sure of that, if I were you, Suze," he said in a tone that sounded way too smug to me.
"You—"
"Go to sleep, Suze," Paul said.
"But you—"
"We’ve got a long day ahead of us. Just sleep."
Amazingly, I did. Sleep, I mean. I hadn’t expected that I’d be able to. But maybe Dr. Slaski was right. Traveling through time DOES wear you out. I don’t think I’d have fallen asleep otherwise . . . you know, given the hay, the horses, the rain, and, oh yeah, the hot-but-totally-deadly guy lying next to me.
But I laid my head down, and next thing I knew, lights-out.
I woke with a start. I hadn’t even realized I’d been asleep. But there was light streaming through the slits between the wood planks that made up the sides of the barn. Not the gray light of dawn, either. It was full-on sunlight, revealing that I’d slept way past 8:00. . . .
And kneeling in front of me was Paul, with breakfast.
"Where’d you get that?" I asked, sitting up. Because in Paul’s hands was a pie. A whole pie. Apple, from the smell of it.
And it was still warm.
"Don’t ask," he said, pulling, of all things, two forks from his back pocket. "Just eat."
"Paul." I could hear movement below. Paul had been speaking in hushed tones. I knew why now.
We were not alone.
A man’s voice said, "Git along there." He appeared to speaking to the horses.
"Did you steal this?" I asked, even as I was taking the fork and digging in. Time travel doesn’t just make you sleepy, It makes you hungry, too.
"I told you not to ask," Paul said as he, too, shoveled a forkful of pie into his mouth, Stolen or not, it was good. Not the best I’d ever had, by any means—I don’t know if, out in the Wild West, they really had access to the best sugar and stuff.
But it satisfied the rumbling in my stomach . . . and soon made me aware of another urge.
Paul seemed to read my mind.
"There’s an outhouse behind the barn," he informed me.
"A what house?"
"You know." Paul grinned. "Watch out for the spiders."
I thought he was joking.
He wasn’t. There were spiders. Worse, what they had to use as toilet paper back then? Let’s just say that today, it wouldn’t be considered fit to write on, let alone . . . you know . . . anything else.
Plus I had to hurry, so no one would see me in my twenty-first-century clothes and ask questions.
But it was hard because once I’d slipped out of the barn, I was flabbergasted by what I saw. . . .
Which was nothing.
Really. Nothing, in all directions. No houses. No telephone poles. No paved roads. No Circle Ks. No In-N-Out Burger. Nothing. Just trees. And a dirt track that I suppose passed for a street.
I could, however, see the red dome of the basilica. There it was, down in the valley below us, with the sea behind it. That, at least, hadn’t changed in the last 150 years.
Thank God plumbing has, however.
When I crept back up to the loft, there was no sign of Mr. O’Neil. He appeared to have taken his horses and gone off to do whatever it was men like him did all day in 1850. Paul was waiting for me with an odd look on his face.
"What?" I asked, thinking he was going to tease me about the outhouse.
"Nothing," was all he said, however. "Just . . . I have a surprise for you."
Thinking it was another food-related item, although I was quite full from the pie, I said, "What? And don’t tell me it’s an Egg McMuffin, because I know they don’t have drive-through here."
"It’s not," Paul said.
And then, moving faster than I’d ever seen him move before, he took something else from his back pocket—a length of rope. Then he grabbed me.
People have, of course, tied me up before. But never somebody whose tongue was once in my mouth. I really wasn’t expecting Paul to do something so underhanded. Save my boyfriend’s life so I’d never meet him, yes. But hog-tie my hands behind my back?
Not so much.
I struggled, of course. I got in a few good elbow jabs. But I couldn’t scream, not if I didn’t want Mrs. O’Neil to show up and go running for the sheriff or whatever. I wouldn’t be able to help Jesse from jail.
But it appeared I wouldn’t be much help to him for the time being, either.
"Believe me," Paul said as he tightened knots that were already practically cutting off my circulation. "This hurts me a lot more than it hurts you."
"It does not," I said, struggling. But it was hard to struggle when I was on my stomach in the hay, and his knee was in the small of my back.
"Well," he said, going to work on my feet now. "You’re right, I guess. Actually, this doesn’t hurt me at all. And it’ll keep you out of trouble while I go find Diego."
"There’s a special place for people like you, Paul," I informed him, spitting out hay. I was getting really sick of hay.
"Reform school?" he asked lightly.
"Hell," I informed him.
"Now, Suze, don’t be that way." He finished with my feet and, just to be sure I wouldn’t get it into my head to, I don’t know, roll out of the hayloft, he tied one end of the rope to a nearby post. "I’ll be back to untie you just as soon as I kill Felix Diego. Then we can go home."
"Where I’ll never speak to you again," I informed him.
"Sure you will," Paul said cheerfully. "You won’t remember any of this. Because we won’t have gone back through time to save Jesse. Because you won’t even know who Jesse is."
"I hate you," I said, really meaning it this time.
"You do now," Paul agreed. "But you won’t when you wake up tomorrow in your own bed. Because without Jesse, I’ll be the best thing that ever happened to you. It’ll just be you and me, two shifters against the world. Won’t that be fun?"
"Why don’t you go—"
But I didn’t get to finish that sentence, because Paul took something else out of his pocket. A clean white handkerchief. He’d told me once that he always carried one because you never know when you might need to gag someone.
"Don’t you dare!" I hissed at him.
But it was too late. He wadded the handkerchief into my mouth and secured it there with another piece of rope.
It I had never hated him before, I did then. Hated him with every bone in my body, every beat of my heart. Especially when he gave me a pat on the head and said, "See ya."
Then disappeared down the ladder to the barn floor.
chapter fifteen
&
nbsp; I don’t know how long I lay there like that. Long enough to start wondering whether I could just close my eyes and shift home. Who knew where I’d end up? Somewhere in the backyard, anyway. Possibly in a big bunch of poison oak, since there was no barn there now. But anything had to be better than lying in a very cramped position on the floor of a hayloft, with who knew what crawling through my hair and the blood pounding in my temples.
But a world without Jesse? Because that’s what I’d be guaranteeing myself if I gave up now. A world without my one purpose for living. Well, more or less. I mean, I know women need men like fish need bicycles, and all of that. Except . . .
Except I love him.
I couldn’t do it. I was too selfish. I wasn’t going to give up. Not yet. There were still plenty of hours of daylight left, or at least, there had been when Paul had left. The shadows, I couldn’t help noticing, were growing longer.
Still, if Mrs. O’Neil had told Paul the truth, and Jesse was expected that night, there was still time. Paul might not find Diego. He might have to come back with his task unaccomplished. And when he did, and he untied me . . .
Well, he was going to learn a lot about pain, that was for sure. Because this time, I’d be ready for him.
I don’t know how much time passed while I lay there, plotting my revenge on Paul Slater. Death was too good for him, of course. An eternity as a ghost—floating shiftlessly through this dimension and the next—was what would suit him best. Give him a little taste of what it had been like for Jesse all of these years. That ought to teach him . . .
I could do it, too. I could pull Paul’s soul out of his body and make it so that he could never return to it . . .
. . . by giving that body to someone else. Someone who deserved a chance to live again . . .
But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t kiss Paul’s lips, even if I knew it was Jesse inside them, kissing me back. It was just too . . . gross.
It was as I was lying there thinking this that I heard it, a sound my ears had become so finely attuned to over the past year that I could have been at the Super Bowl, a million rows away, and I still would have heard it.
Jesse’s voice.
He was calling to someone. I couldn’t hear what, exactly, he was saying. But he sounded, I don’t know. Different, somehow.
He was getting closer, too. His voice, I mean.
He was coming toward the barn.
He’d found me. I don’t know how—Dr. Slaski hadn’t said anything about ghosts being able to travel through time, But maybe they could. Maybe they could, just like shifters, and Jesse had done it, he’d come back through time looking for me. To save me. To help me save him.
I closed my eyes, thinking his name as hard as I could. This worked, more often than not. Jesse would materialize in front of me, wondering what on earth was so urgent.
Only he didn’t. Not this time. I opened my eyes, and . . . nothing.
Only I could still his voice below me. He was saying, "No, no, it’s all right, Mrs. O’Neil."
Mrs. O’Neil. Mrs. O’Neil could see Jesse?
The barn door opened. I heard it creak. Then . . .
Footsteps.
But how could Jesse have footsteps? He’s a ghost.
Wriggling as far toward the edge of the hayloft as I could, I craned my neck, trying to see what I could only hear. But the rope Paul had used to tie my feet to the post wouldn’t let me wiggle more than a few feet from my original position. I could hear him now, though—really hear him. He was speaking in a soft, soothing tone to . . . to . . .
To his horse.
Jesse was talking to a horse. I heard it whinny softly in reply.
Which was when I finally knew. This wasn’t Ghost Jesse, come to rescue me. This was Alive Jesse, who didn’t even know me. Alive Jesse, come to meet his fate in my room tonight.
I froze, feeling pins and needles all over—and not just because I’d been lying in such a cramped position for so long. I needed to see him. I needed to see him. Only how?
Then he moved and I turned my head, following the sound . . .
. . . and saw, through a chink in the floorboards of the loft, a spot of color. His horse. It was his horse. I saw his hands moving over the saddle, unstrapping it. It was Jesse. He was right beneath me. He was—
Why I did what I did next, I’ll never know. I didn’t want Jesse to know I was there. If Jesse found me, it could throw off everything. Who knew, he might not even be murdered that night. And then I’d never get to meet him.
But the urge to see him—alive—was so strong, that without even thinking about it, I banged my feet as hard as I could on the hayloft floor.
The hands moving over the saddle grew suddenly still. He’d heard me. I tried to call to him, but all that came out, thanks to Paul’s gag, was gnnh, gnnh.
I banged my feet harder.
"Is someone there?" I heard Jesse call.
I banged again.
This time, he didn’t call out. He started climbing the ladder to the loft. I heard the wood strain beneath his weight.
His weight. Jesse had weight.
And then I saw his hands—his large, brown, capable hands—on the top rung of the ladder, followed, a second later, by his head. . . .
The breath froze in my lungs.
Because it was him. It was Jesse.
But not Jesse as I’d ever seen him before. Because he was alive. He was . . . there. He was so solidly and unquestionably there, taking up space like he owned it, like the space better get out of his way, as opposed to the other way around.
He wasn’t glowing. He was radiating. Not the spectral glow I was used to seeing around him, either, but instead an undeniable aura of health and vitality. It was like the Jesse I had known was a pale replica—a reflection—of the one I was looking at now. Never had I been so aware of the way his dark hair curled against the back of his tanned neck; the deep brown of his eyes; the whiteness of his teeth; the strength in those long legs as he knelt down beside me; the tendons in the back of his brown hands; the sinews in his bare arms, . . .
"Miss?"
And his voice. His voice! So deep, it seemed to reverberate down my spine. It was Jesse’s voice all right, but suddenly, it was in surround sound, it was THX, it was . . .
"Miss? Are you all right?"
Jesse was gazing down at me, his dark eyes filled with concern. One of his hands moved to his boot, and the next thing I knew, a long and shiny blade was gleaming in his hand. I watched in fascination as the blade came nearer and nearer to my cheek.
"Don’t be afraid," Jesse was saying. "I’m going to untie you. Who did this to you?"
Suddenly, the gag was gone. My mouth was raw from where the rope had cut into it. Then my hands were free. Sore, but free.
"Can you speak?" Jesse’s hands were on my feet now, his knife neatly slicing through the ropes Paul had tied me with. "Here."
He laid the knife aside and lifted something else toward my face. Water. From a flask. I took it from him and sucked greedily. I’d had no idea how thirsty I’d been.
"Easy," Jesse said in that voice—that voice! "I can get you more. Stay here and I’ll get help—"
On the word help, however, my hands, as if of their own volition, dropped the flask and flew out to seize his shirt-front instead.
It wasn’t the shirt I was used to seeing Jesse in. It was similar, the same soft, white linen. But this one was higher at the neck. He was wearing a vest, too—a waistcoat, I think they were called back then—of a sort of watered silk.
"No," I croaked and was startled at how raspy my voice sounded. "Don’t go."
Not, of course, because I was worried he was going to go and get Mrs. O’Neil, who’d recognize me as the strumpet she’d found wandering around her front parlor the night before. But because I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving my sight. Not now. Not ever.
This was Jesse. This was the real Jesse. This was who I loved.
And who was goin
g to die shortly.
"Who are you?" Jesse asked, lifting the flask I’d dropped and, finding it not quite empty, handing it back to me. "Who did this—left you here like this?"
I drank what was left of the water. I’d known Jesse long enough to see that he was outraged—outraged at whoever had left me like that.
"A . . . a man," I said. Because, of course, Jesse—this Jesse—wouldn’t know who Paul was. . . . Didn’t know who I was, clearly.
His eyebrows furrowed, the one with the scar in it looking particularly adorable. The scar wasn’t as obvious, I noticed, on Live Jesse as it was on Ghost Jesse.
"And did this same man put you in these outlandish clothes?" Jesse wanted to know, looking critically at my jeans and motorcycle jacket.
Suddenly, I wanted to laugh. He seemed like a different Jesse entirely—or rather, a hundred times more real than the Jesse I had known—but his disgust with my wardrobe? That hadn’t changed a bit.
"Yes," I said. I figured it would be more believable to him than the real explanation.
"I’ll see him horsewhipped," Jesse said as matter-of-factly as if he had people horsewhipped for dressing girls up in odd outfits and leaving them tied up in haylofts every day of the week. "Who are you? Your family must be looking for you—"
"Um," I said. "No, they aren’t. I mean . . . I doubt it. And my name is Suze."
Again the dark brow furrowed. "Soose?"
"Suze," I said with a laugh. I couldn’t help it. Laughing, I mean. It was so wonderful to see him like this. "Susannah. As in 'Oh, Susannah, Don’t You Cry for Me.'"
It was what I had said to him, I realized with a pang, back in my bedroom, the very first time I’d met him, the day I’d arrived in Carmel. I hadn’t known then what I knew now—that that moment had been a turning point in my life—everything before it was BJ: Before Jesse. Everything afterward, AJ: After Jesse. I hadn’t known then that this guy in the puffy shirt with the tight black pants would one day mean more to me than my own life. . . . Would one day be my everything.
But I knew it now, just as I knew something else:
I had it wrong. I had it all wrong.
But it wasn’t, I knew, too late to fix it. Thank God.
"Susannah," Jesse said, as he sat beside me in the straw. "Susannah O’Neil, perhaps? You are related to Mr. and Mrs. O’Neil? Let me get them. I know they’ll want to see that you’re safe—"