“I’ve told you that already. But it is getting stronger.”
“I know, but I still haven’t gotten used to the feelings thing. It’s . . .” I wrinkled my nose, trying to think of an adequate word.
“Weird,” he finished for me. “You’ve mentioned that.”
I kissed his cheek enthusiastically. “It’s already been an incredible vacation, and we’ve only been here a few hours.”
“I want this to be the best vacation you’ve had so far.”
“Mission accomplished,” I whispered, running my nose along his cheek.
“I’m going to trip over something if you don’t stay away from my ear.” He chuckled.
“I doubt that,” I said, nibbling his earlobe. I’d only meant to tease him, but a quiet moan escaped with his sigh.
“Nina, please don’t.”
“Does someone have an ear fetish?” I taunted, grazing the edge of his ear with the tip of my tongue.
He abruptly set me on my feet. I pressed my lips together and tried not to burst out in laughter.
“Well. That’s something you didn’t tell me on our first date.” I giggled.
Jared tried his best to be annoyed with my teasing, but his face twitched until a grin broke out across his face. “That’s probably because I didn’t know then.”
I grimaced, knowing he would add this to the list of rules. “One more thing I’m not allowed to do.”
He scooped me up into his arms. “I’m already fighting with myself every second I’m alone with you, Nina. You in this dress as beautiful as you are . . . Not to mention feeling how happy you are with me, in this place . . .”
He sat me on my feet again, and I realized we were already at my casita. I looked over to see Cynthia note our return. Satisfied, she blew me a kiss and retreated inside for the night.
It was only then that I realized my mistake. “You’re going to make me sleep alone, aren’t you?”
Jared tenderly touched my face. “If I had my way, you’d sleep in my arms every night for the rest of our lives.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” I said, unable to hide my relief at his answer.
“I’m going to take a quick shower. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”
I had to work to keep the bounce out of my step as I pranced up the stairs into my room. Jared watched me until I turned to wave at him from the inside of my screen door, and then he disappeared behind the foliage.
~*~
The next morning, I woke up with a thin sheath of perspiration covering my body. Jared was lying next to me, but much to my chagrin, his arms were nowhere near me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, handing me a large glass of ice water.
“Why are you over there?” I pouted, taking a large gulp.
Jared smiled. “No air conditioning. I had to track down a fan,” he said, nodding to the corner. A fan sat beside the futon, oscillating slowly.
I frowned. “You left?”
“I keep it cool in the loft to compensate for you having to sleep with an electric blanket. Even on the particularly cold nights, I kept the heater off until morning so you wouldn’t overheat. With the heat and humidity here . . .” He frowned.
“You were worried I’d get too hot,” I finished for him, trying to say it in the most diplomatic way possible.
“You did get too hot, so I had to improvise, and you’re still sweating,” he said, clearly dismayed at the situation.
I looked around to see that all the windows were open. “You didn’t sleep last night.”
Jared sighed, frustrated. “You could have suffered heatstroke from sleeping beside your boyfriend, and you’re worried if I got my hour in.”
“You need more than an hour,” I pointed out.
“I slept.”
“Good,” I said, gulping more water down before setting the glass on the bedside table. “I’m going to take another shower, I’m sticky.”
Jared nodded with a guilty expression and then retreated to his hut.
I showered and then dug through my pile of bathing suits. I held up a small piece of fabric, finding what I hoped would render him speechless. Interestingly enough, it was a one piece. It was blush pink, with a dramatic cut out so revealing it might as well have been a bikini. Small gold circles lined the missing piece and a single strap came over one shoulder, leaving the other bare. I stood brazenly at the screen door; hand on hip, waiting for Jared’s reaction.
Jared kept his back turned. “Do I want to know what you’re up to?” he asked, sensing my impish disposition.
“Why don’t you turn around and find out for yourself?”
Jared slowly turned. The second I came into his line of sight his eyebrows shot upward and his lips parted infinitesimally. He struggled with words for a moment, and I beamed with satisfaction.
“Feel like trying out the beach today?” I asked, smiling innocently.
“Wow,” he said, his eyes scanning over every part of me.
“Jared?”
“Yeah?”
“Beach?”
“I’ll get my trunks,” he said, wheeling around to his cabin.
I giggled as I watched him swiftly vanish behind the palms and return within moments. He walked over to me in light blue board shorts, and it was my turn to be impressed.
We spent the morning playing in the water, diving through the waves, and splashing each other. After an hour, Cynthia strolled out of the trees and parked in a lounge chair, laying her book beside her on the sand. She had brought her camera with her and snapped shots of the ocean, of the fishing boats, of me, and of Jared and me. Jared even coaxed the camera from her and snapped a picture of her and me.
Jared handed the camera back to my mother and pulled me off the sand, leading me out to the water.
“You can replace the one on your nightstand with the picture of us together,” I said, thinking of the black-and-white photo beside his bed.
Jared smiled, splashing water my way. “I’ll get another frame. I’m keeping the one I have of you.”
I wrinkled my nose in disapproval. “Why? It’s a surveillance shot, isn’t it?”
Jared’s eyes grew soft as he scanned my face. “I’d been taking some of the pictures that are now in Cynthia’s safe. I snapped that one of you in the same afternoon. I wasn’t sure why at the time.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me through the water to him. “I took that the day I fell in love with you.”
I felt a surprised grin spread across my face as my eyebrows rose. “You failed to mention that.”
“You’ve never asked me to replace it before,” he pointed out, pulling me out deeper into the water.
After another hour, Jared talked me into returning to the sand to borrow the bottle of sunscreen Cynthia had purposely left behind when returning to her cabin.
I sprawled across the lounge chair and reached for the sunscreen bottle. It disappeared from my hands, and Jared squirted a large white dollop into his palm.
“I don’t want you to miss anything,” he said, trying not to smile.
I leaned back, gesturing for Jared to proceed.
He began at the tops of my feet and massaged the lotion up one leg and then the next. I’d had several massages before, but Jared’s hands were different as they pressed into and over my skin with the perfect amount of pressure. I bit my lip when he covered the skin bared by the cutout of my suit with his hands, his fingers occasionally slipping ever so slightly under my suit. He finally made his way to the rest of my body and kissed my lips when he was finished with my face.
“Front’s finished,” he prompted.
His head created a block to the sun that was directly above us, making his face black out and lining him in a brilliant halo of light.
I turned onto my stomach, and Jared repeated the process again, this time beginning at my neck and working his way down. Once he finished with my ankles, I sat up and crisscrossed my legs. “Your turn.”
“I don’t need it.”
&
nbsp; “You’re going to burn,” I warned in a sing-song tone.
“I don’t burn, Nina. Even if I did, it wouldn’t hurt. The redness would go away in seconds.”
I thought about that for a moment and then grimaced, looking out on the water. “Can you drown?”
He rolled his eyes, amused at my question. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“But if you did, wouldn’t that kind of negate the whole you-only-die-when-I-do theory?”
“I’m an excellent swimmer, Nina. And I seem to float easier than humans, so I’m going to say no.”
“How on earth would you know that?”
He grinned proudly. “The Coast Guard guys hated me. I could out-tread any one of them by twice the time and come out of the water as fresh as when I’d gone in.”
“When did you train with the Coast Guard?”
“When I was fourteen,” he answered matter-of-factly.
I shook my head, thinking about him blowing away every trainee at every training facility he’d ever been at, making the recruits crazy with frustration at being outdone by a recent junior-high graduate.
“They didn’t object to a fourteen-year-old joining the ranks?”
“Gabe had more than enough connections to round out our training, not to mention there are a few ha— Hybrids in the military and in the government. They’re aware of our need to train, and that makes it easier.”
I nodded as I contemplated Gabe’s connections, wondering if the soldiers Jared trained beside suspected anything.
Jared rolled his eyes again, this time in real frustration. “Why do you ask me things if it bothers you to hear the answer?”
“It doesn’t bother me. It’s just surreal,” I said, watching the sun glistening off the lotion on my skin. “Don’t you think about your life and who you are and just shake your head at how incredible it is?”
“The only thing that’s surreal to me is that you’re sitting here speaking to me, that I can reach over and touch you,” he said, touching my face, “and that you love me. Sometimes I still can’t believe it’s real,” he said, pulling me off the chair and carrying me to an empty hammock.
Once we were situated inside, swinging lazily back and forth in the shade, I kissed the skin just behind his earlobe. “I’m not the one who has friends mentioned in the Bible. I’m not the one who heals amazingly fast, who can do anything and do it better than everyone else in the world. I’m not the one who’s practically perfection.”
“You’re my perfection. I’m all of those things for you,” he said, shaking his head at what he considered a serious misapprehension. “I exist for you, Nina, this mortal being so precious to the creator of the universe that He allowed my existence. Tell me that’s not incredible.”
Words failed me. The only thought I could form was to kiss him, which I did, over and over. When the kisses became more intense, he gently restrained me, and I smiled to hide my frustration.
We spent our days at the beach lounging and swimming, our evenings dancing and laughing in the village, and our nights in my cabin. While Jared and I swam in the clear water on Wednesday afternoon, the clouds rolled in. The waves were soon the largest we’d seen since our arrival, and when we had to dive into the water regularly to keep from getting pummeled, Jared carried me back to the shore.
When he stepped onto the sand, the rain began to fall. I looked up to the sky and smiled. The light, warm rain was a welcome change from the sharp, icy downpours of Providence. Jared and I raced to my casita—he allowed me to win—and we parted ways to wash off the salt water in our respective huts.
Jared hadn’t returned when I slipped on a pair of white canvas pants and a pink tank top, so I walked to his cabin in my bare feet. I could hear his music as I approached; I thought that he might still be in the shower, so I knocked on the wooden frame of his screen door.
“Come in, Nina.” Jared chuckled. “You don’t have to knock.”
Jared relaxed with his back against the wall, lying on top of his perfectly made bed. He was scribbling in a thick brown book. The screen door whined as I stepped inside, and several small lights caught my attention. Monitors and electrical equipment lined one side of the room.
I raised an eyebrow. “You brought a stereo?”
He shrugged. “I take it everywhere.”
“You couldn’t have brought an mp3 player?”
“I can’t have music blaring in my ears while I’m working.”
I crawled in bed beside him, and he pulled me closer. “I thought you could hear me over a stadium full of people?”
Jared wrinkled his nose. “Okay, you caught me. I don’t like the way those things feel in my ears.”
I bit my lip and leaned into his ear. “I thought you liked things touching your ears,” I whispered, brushing my lips along the ridge of his ear. He pressed his lips firmly against mine, and in the same second, I was flat on my back. His reaction seemed automatic, and I was suddenly hopeful that his weakness was my best chance at changing his mind about waiting.
Just as I settled against him, he pulled away.
“Your lips are different from a pair of hard plastic speakers. Now behave yourself.” He smiled.
“Sorry,” I said unconvincingly, nestling in the crook of his arm. Listening to the rain tap out a soft song on the roof, I closed my eyes and smiled. It was the first time I had ever been glad for it to rain on vacation.
The pages of the book Jared held were full of handwritten words. He had begun at the top of the page, writing in tiny script, using every empty space available.
“What is that?”
“My journal. I thought I’d get caught up. I’m about a month behind. I didn’t want to leave anything out,” he said, kissing my hair.
“You keep a journal?” I asked in surprise.
“What else is there to do for the six or so hours I’m awake at night?” he smiled.
“Do you ever write about me?”
“Nina, most of this book is about you,” he said, as if it should have been obvious.
I sat up. “Seriously?”
Jared grinned, amused at my reaction. “Yes. You don’t believe me?”
“Of course I believe you. I just . . .” I looked down at the thick book and noticed that there was only half an inch left to write in. “That’s a lot of pages.”
His features softened as he scanned my face. “I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”
“You took notes on things I did?”
Jared laughed. “No. Well, sometimes. Mostly I wrote about the way the things you did made me feel, or plans I’d make, how I could get around Jack’s wishes, how I would live without you, how I would make you happy. It’s gotten me through some rough nights.”
“Is there anything bad?”
Jared grinned. “Would you like to read it?”
“No!” I cried. Embarrassed that he thought that was what I wanted, I felt the familiar fire burn under my cheeks. “It’s your journal. It’s none of my business.”
“I don’t keep secrets from you. You know that.”
I looked down at my hands and picked at my fingernails. “It’s private. I wouldn’t want you to read my journal.”
“You don’t have a journal. I probably would have read it if you did,” he said offhandedly.
I looked up at him, shocked.
“I’m kidding!” He chuckled. “There’s nothing I’ve written that I’m ashamed of. I think it would be a good thing.”
He closed the book and placed it in my lap. I was curious to know what the journal contained, but it felt wrong to read it, regardless of the permission I’d been given.
“Nina. It’s okay. Read it,” he said, taking a finger and flipping open the cover to the first page.
I spent the stormy afternoon with my head propped up against Jared, reading his private thoughts. Once I’d pored over the first few pages, the guilt slipped away, and I found myself absorbed in every word. It was an odd sensation reading my
memories from pages written at a time when I didn’t know he existed.
I chewed on my thumbnail as I read through my life from the outside. Jared played with my hair; otherwise, he sat motionless and silent. Halfway through one of his more lengthy entries, I realized it was written the night he’d taken a bullet for me.
Claire extracted the bullet. I’ve been angry, but this time I was furious. I saw that bastard aim at her, and I wanted to tear his head from his neck. I couldn’t end his life fast enough. That’s one less of Donovan’s men who will go after her, but it doesn’t make me feel better. I can’t figure it out. I yelled at Claire to finish so I could go back to Nina. I couldn’t even explain to Claire what I was so mad about, because I didn’t know myself. The need to get back to her was ridiculous because I knew that Dad was with her. She’d gone home by then, but I had to be near her, and I was angry that I felt that way.
It’s as if I’ve been addicted to her, but I didn’t know it until tonight. As if I didn’t already have to be near her to protect her, now I just need to be near her. It’s infuriating.
So now I’m here, watching her talk to Cynthia. I still don’t know what my problem is. For the first time, I was afraid that I would fail. And not just fail—that I would fail HER. Claire accuses me of being a perfectionist; maybe that’s what it is. Or maybe I just didn’t want to let her down. But why the hell should I care? She wouldn’t know either way. I don’t want her to die, but that should be obvious, right? If she dies, I die.
Maybe I just care. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing for me to care about her. She’s a sweet girl. She’s kind to others. She’s intelligent. She’s comically stubborn. She does that cute tuck-her-hair-behind-her-ear thing when she’s nervous. She’s beautiful—unbelievably beautiful. Anyone with any sense would care about her. Spending all this time around her, I guess it was inevitable. But this is more than just caring. If I hadn’t been bleeding all over myself, I would have grabbed her, and I don’t know . . . What am I thinking? She can’t know about me. Maybe that’s what I’m angry about. Maybe I want her to know I’m protecting her. I think a part of me wants her to know. She’s walking around her house and has no idea that I saved her life today. And that should bother me WHY? She shouldn’t know. She shouldn’t know that I protect her or that I care about her or that I think she’s beautiful. Wouldn’t that be ridiculous if I had feelings for her? Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe it’s more than that. I think it’s more than that.
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