How could you? She could hear herself saying. Why? Why? She could hear herself saying. Her face was wet, and he wasn’t answering and when he did, it only made things worse.
“I just thought…” he said. “I just thought if I had someone too, then you and Blake could be happy. I thought…”
Then the world was full of white noise, and she was screaming at him about nothing, nothing at all, and Blake had hold of her, was pulling her away because God she hated Jamie—hated him hated so much just hated him, for being this stupid.
Chapter Seventeen
She thought of odd things, idly. Like—now that everyone was dead and the zombies were all gone, she could safely go and get a bunch of books. Ones that she’d always intended to read, like Anna Karenina and Great Expectations. She could lie in the sun and wile away the years on nothing but books.
She could go and find Kelsey’s body, too. Yeah, she thought of that all right. Go and get it and bury it and say sorry. Go and find her sister and say sorry for that, too. There were a lot of things she could go and do, but she didn’t feel like doing any of them.
Instead, she stood by the front door, and listened to Jamie out on the porch, noodling around on his guitar. The song was almost unrecognizable, but after a moment of just standing there taking it in, she thought she had it. She dredged it up from the bottom of her memory, somewhere.
Hit Me Baby One More Time. That’s what he was playing. Weird, that it sent chills up her spine when he got to the line my loneliness is killing me. Maybe it was his voice, which had a low, strange wavering quality about it that somehow made everything upsetting, even when it was only some dumb, bubblegum, pop song.
It made her wish she didn’t need to go out for a run. Every morning since the incident on the mainland, he’d sat out on the porch right before Blake said hey, you coming for that run? Then Blake took off out the front door, and she knew he expected her to, too. And wouldn’t it be so weird if she took the back door and ran all the way around just so that she didn’t have to see Jamie?
It was obvious he was sitting out there, waiting for her to talk to him. It made her feel like a weird, disturbed crazy person to not want to. He hadn’t really done anything wrong, after all. In fact, he’d done something really, painfully right in a way that made her eyes sting every time she thought about it, and oh Lord, maybe that was it. Maybe if she had to speak to him, her heart would just ache until it melted inside her.
Heart melting seemed like the last thing anyone would want. Especially when he was playing my loneliness, my loneliness, my loneliness and she still hadn’t explained to him. Hadn’t said what was true above all other things.
She almost managed to get right past him. Almost. But then her mind went elsewhere and her body took control and her body wanted to turn just after the steps and speak. It wanted her to say—
“Why is it always pop songs?”
Apparently, her body wasn’t very smart when in control.
He ran his thumb along the strings, making one last long note. It made her realize he was good at it—the guitar. He really was and didn’t that make the question reasonable, after all? He wasn’t like Blake with the wooden horses. He could actually do this and do it well, so why didn’t he?
She watched him lean over the instrument to speak to her—probably to say something that wasn’t about pop songs and would definitely hurt her in some way.
“Honey, I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. I didn’t know you would feel like that.”
She thought of that one sweet note. The birds beating their wings against the sky.
“Why is it always pop songs?”
He leant back then, against what had probably once been a park bench. It made her remember the man with his paper skin and his staring eyes and how he’d just sat down, like a real person.
“I can play something else if you want me to,” he said. “Come on up here, and I will.”
She knew what he was doing—luring her in—but she went to him anyway. And not just because she wanted to hear. There were other things in there, too—the need to talk to him, just talk to him about anything, again. The need to be near him after feeling so strongly that he might be dead.
But oh no, oh no, she knew what he was playing. The other songs all came back to her slowly, but this one didn’t. It was clear right off, and he wasn’t even playing the verse that rambled on about religion and other things that meant nothing to her. He was doing the other one.
The one that went on about a brotherhood of man and loving everybody and Lord, she was shaking before he’d even gotten to the part about sharing all the world. Before she could even think about everybody gone, gone, and how there was just them to share all the world. Just them.
It was like a sudden brutal instinct. Like shoving out when one of them got hold of you and you just had to fight and fight in order to carry on living. Her body started shuddering and the wetness just poured down her face like some stupid knee-jerk reaction to John Lennon. Like some stupid knee-jerk reaction to Jamie, because man alive he could really, really sing and she could hear he meant every word.
It was almost a relief when he stopped. She could feel all the crying and the feeling in her like a great pressure, threatening to break out. She needed him to stop before she started sobbing because of John Lennon.
“See,” he said. “This is why I don’t play anything but ridiculous pop songs.”
But she couldn’t respond to that. She had to say the only thing that had ever been in her, instead. It came out all mingled with the laugh she wanted to make because he’d said something so Jamie, and the sob she wanted to let out too because it was so terrible and wonderful all at the same time.
“How is that I’ve found you guys at the end of the world? How? Out of all the people left, it’s you two. It’s you two.”
She wasn’t even sure what that meant. He didn’t seem to know, either—he just looked at her for a long time, filled with a kind of nakedness. When he put the guitar down, she knew he wanted to put his arms around her, but she got there first.
He smelled like cinnamon and safety and home. She felt him press his face into her hair, and that was even better.
“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything, you know, June. I love you enough to scare me. But I want you to be happy; I want you to be with who you want to be with, not who you have to be with.”
Lord, but he was dumb. He was so dumb that the first words she heard Blake say after he’d finished panting and leaning against the rail by the stairs were—
“You’re an idiot.”
She wasn’t even sure when he’d gotten there. He must have cut his run short, but when she managed to squirm around and look at him she kind of knew why. His expression was all tension—probably because he was as big an idiot as Jamie was. They both spent so much time talking to each other, without ever really saying a word about the truth of things.
“Come on,” he said. “Can’t you tell she loves you more?”
As though he just wanted to prove all her “Jamie and Blake are dumb” thoughts right.
She threw up her hands then. Startled them both. Blake even took a couple of step back down to the ground, in case she was thinking of attacking him, maybe.
“I don’t love anyone more. Are you guys serious with this? You skulk off in the middle of the night and run off into Zombie Land because you think I love one of you more than the other?”
They had the decency, at least, to look contrite.
“Do you know how amazing you both are? I would have killed to have someone even half as fantastic as either of you before this happened, and I find it incredible daily that you’re the ones who seem to insist that I don’t love you on an almost constant basis.”
It was weird, how saying something so shot through with incredulity made her upset, suddenly. Though she suspected that John Lennon and Jamie’s declaration and all the near death experiences had something to do with it.
&nbs
p; As did Blake suddenly sitting down next to her to put an arm around her shoulders.
She wanted to tell him not to, but instead found herself pressing against him, the way she’d done to Jamie only a few moments earlier. God, they were just so exhausting, so exhausting—didn’t they get it?
“Listen, June,” Blake started, and she felt pretty sure she wasn’t going to like how it finished. “We both just want you to be happy. And…well…happiness more generally means choosing.”
Yeah, she definitely didn’t like how it finished. Or what Jamie added to it.
“Three people are typically called a love triangle.”
She put a hand over her eyes. Pushed away from Blake, just so she could have some space to get out the words she need to.
“We’re not a love triangle,” she said. Of course she could have made it a question—is that what you think we are? A love triangle? But no, no. She wouldn’t give him the chance to take an idea like that and roll with it. “We’re a love…a love…”
God-dammit. How was she supposed to convince either of them when she couldn’t even think of a good adjective or noun to go with the word “love”? Her mind kept throwing up the word “square”, but that sounded even more stupid than triangle. They weren’t a love square, for God’s sake. A love square would mean they’d found another person and had started bonking them, too, which was just overkill, frankly.
“Go on,” Jamie said, which was good because it meant he wanted to hear the rest. Then Blake added the words it’s okay, and they further aided her progress into this no man’s land.
Only…only…
“I don’t know what kind of love thing we are, okay? I don’t know! I just…I just love you the same. The same, but different.”
She was relieved to finally get it out. And it sounded right, too. Strong.
She loved them the same, but different.
“Different like how? Different like one of us gets a box of chocolates for Christmas and the other gets a bunch of flowers?” Jamie said, and oh she knew he was grinning before she even managed to peel her hand away from her face. He’d leaned back against the bench he was sitting on, loose and casual suddenly. Everything pained gone from his gorgeous face.
And when she glanced at Blake, he looked calm, too. Settled, she thought, in a way he hadn’t seemed for a while.
“Different like one of you gets a bite and the other gets a scratch,” she said, at which Blake laughed. He really laughed.
She slid an arm around his middle for that laugh, but something happened when she did. A look flashed across Jamie’s face, and for a moment she was sure everything couldn’t be cool. Not ever. One would always want what the other had—even when it was something as simple as an arm around the middle. And it would all build until tensions got impossibly high, and people couldn’t bear it anymore, and finally—
Sudden runs into the deathzone.
Only Jamie then said—
“So what do I get?”
So casually and full of good humor that she could hardly stand it. It sung through her, as brilliantly as John Lennon had.
“For what?” she asked, though she knew.
“For the arm you’ve just put around him.”
Blake made a chuffing, rolly-eyes sort of noise next to her, but it only added to the slow release of tension.
“Oh, I see. So now I’ve got to make sure that you’re equal in everything?” she asked, and Jamie’s grin broadened.
“What can I say? I’m high maintenance, baby.”
God, he was a demon. A demon in man-form.
“Good thing I enjoy maintaining you. Apart from when you run off and get yourself killed. Then I hate you.”
His expression straightened out, then. Sparking eyes suddenly serious.
“Guess I’ve got some making up to do then, huh?”
She let out a breath then, long and slow. His voice sounded so familiar, so back to being himself again. And she could feel the rightness of things, too, in the way they’d shaped themselves around her—Blake leaning back so she could rest against him, Jamie finding her hand before she found his—everything comfortable and easy, now.
So much so that it struck her when she least expected it to, like something long forgotten and now remembered.
They’d made a circle. That’s what she should have said. A circle—not a triangle or a square or any other ridiculous shape that didn’t make a single lick of sense. Like the outline she’d imagined around herself when she’d first come to this place—only with both of them inside it, too.
And as long as there was that, she could carry on living. She could be. Everything was awake and alive again—not dead and empty, like the world beyond—because they were here, together, on this island, with each other.
They were together in the circle, and all was well.
About the Author
Charlotte Stein has been writing for over ten years, and perving on hot dudes for even longer than that. However, it’s only recently that she’s had the courage to pair the two together and pen some critically acclaimed, steamy-hot erotic romances. She lives in Brit-land with her very own hunk of manbeef, and their imaginary dog.
You can find her and her other releases at www.themightycharlottestein.blogspot.com, usually in the middle of rambling about nonsense, squee-ing over her totally unexpected life as a writer, and generally lusting after seriously sexy men.
Charlotte loves to talk to her readers and can be found at: www.themightycharlottestein.blogspot.com.
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