by L. L. Muir
His grip tightened on his precious helium balloon. The idea that she could be taken from him so easily, like a string slipping through his fingers, made him freaking insane.
“Listen. Skye. Listen.”
She responded to his desperation and touched his face, trying to smooth the fear that would not smooth away. “What is it? What did I say?”
“Skye. Please. You don’t understand. You can’t leave me. You can’t. I lied. I won’t be able to go on without you. I won’t. It’s not a choice. I have no choice.”
He pulled her face until their foreheads met. He wanted to jump into those eyes, go where she was. He needed to be closer to make her understand.
“I know it, deep down. I know I’m not capable of living through it.”
She sat up then. “Jamie, you don’t know what you’re saying. You must live through it. You are the one who doesn’t understand.”
She hugged his hand to her heart and closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t bear to look him in the eye. She was about to stab him in the heart. He knew it. He tried to brace himself, numb himself for bad news. How else would he survive it?
“Jamie, please, listen to me very carefully. I do have choices. Two choices, but only two. Staying is not one of them.” He tried to pull his hand back, but she held on. “I can put it off a couple more days at most, but by Friday, it’s over. I know what you’re thinking, but where I go you can’t follow.”
“What if I were dead?” The words just jumped out. He hadn’t thought them. Or had he?
“Jamison! Dead or alive, you cannot come.”
He pushed her aside and ran to the bathroom where he puked his brains out. If his mother heard, he didn’t know it. In fact, she could have been standing outside the bathroom, chatting with Skye and he wouldn’t have heard a thing. The bowl was his world. The simplicity of it made him smile as the next wave came up.
A little while later, puffy-faced and feeling green, he laid his head on a pillow made of Granddad’s plaid and shut his swollen, burning eyes. He heard Skye moving around the room. She covered him with a soft and heavy quilt, messed with the wood-burning stove and sat in the old man’s rocking chair. The rhythmic squeaks lulled him toward sleep but he wouldn’t say goodnight.
He was exhausted, too tired think, let alone ask if she would be there in the morning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jamison woke to the sounds of someone stirring in the kitchen. For a split second, he wondered which grandparent was putting on the coffee. So many times when he’d awakened on that couch with the busy fabric and firm cushions, he’d been roused by the odd plop and hiss of the old percolator. He’d find Granddad reading the paper and Grandma digging eggs and things out of the fridge.
And brown eggs. He remembered brown eggs.
No one was cooking that morning, however. There was a lot of sack rustling and bottle shuffling, but nothing sizzled or hissed. Nothing smelled but the cold ashes in the stove.
His belly felt full of them.
His mom’s head had appeared around the corner, but then disappeared again. “Oh, good, I didn’t have to wake you.”
“Oh, you woke me all right.” He felt around his face expecting the whole thing to be swollen. There wasn’t so much as a crust in the corner of his eye.
Wait a minute.
He’d woken up like that before, not many days before, and had a cheerful breakfast with a mother who was never freaking cheerful in the morning.
God, please don’t let my memories be gone!
“Mom?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“Where’s Skye?”
The wait time between the question and the answer was going to kill him.
“Mom!”
She came around the corner, a power bar in her mouth. “Mwah?”
“Where’s Skye?”
Mom held up a finger and chewed. He was going to kill her. She walked over and sat on the edge of the couch, facing him. Serious talk time. Not good. Not good.
“If you don’t spit it out I’m going to scream.”
Her eyes rolled. “She’s going to be here in about twenty minutes. She told me about the fight you two had last night.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. It’s not like I couldn’t hear you arguing, you know.”
He sat up straight and grabbed her arm.
“Relax. I didn’t listen. I was exhausted and at the back of the house. Besides, if you were arguing, you wouldn’t be, uh, doing, uh, other things.” She beamed, proud of her reasoning.
“Unless we then made up.”
Mom frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That you’re having trouble with her family accepting you, of course. Although Lucas and Jonathan seemed to be all right about you two kissing at Daddy’s viewing.” She put her hand against his cheek. “I’m so sorry, honey. She said you two are going to talk to the rest of her family, today, huh?”
“Yeah.” He had no idea what Skye was up to.
“And you’ve agreed to live by what they decide?”
“I have?”
“She said you have. Uh oh. She thinks you’ve agreed. Maybe that fight isn’t over after all.”
“No. I mean yeah, but, I’m not completely awake yet, you know?”
“Jamie, honey. She says that if her family can’t accept you, that you’ll be coming back without her. I’m so sorry.”
The torment he’d been feeling the night before came back full force.
Where I go, you can’t follow.
Oh, it was going to be a long day with all the bawling he had planned. He’d better steal a box of tissue from storage. And maybe a towel.
“I’m fixing enough food for a couple of days, just in case they make you sleep in a barn and won’t feed you.” Mom gave him a hug and headed back to the kitchen.
“A barn?” If they were going off to spend her last days together, where had his mom gotten the impression there would be a barn?
“Yeah, weren’t there barns at that ranch?”
Lanny’s! Hell. If he only had two days left with Skye, at the most, that’s the last place he wanted to go, where they’d be separated and he’d be put to work. His back had just barely recovered.
“Oh, and I forgot to tell you.” Mom came back with a warped pop-tart held with a dirty oven mitt. Yum. “She said you should wear the white clothes they gave you.”
***
Skye wished Lori could come along for the ride, just so Jamison would have to keep his foul mood to himself. If he got too upset, he wouldn’t be able to drive, and there was no way she could. She may not have the adrenaline running through her body to make it shake, but her own mind was in the middle of a freak storm and she could barely walk a straight line, let alone drive in one.
For a farewell treat, though, she should let the sheriff pull her over once more.
That morning, for the second time, she’d said her farewells to the others. She didn’t tell them all where she was going, but Lucas and Jonathan knew. The rest understood only that she wasn’t coming back.
“Where are your bags, honey?” Lori peaked in the back of the car as her son was lifting a large blue cooler into the trunk.
“We live pretty simply. I have clothes at the other place too.”
“Oh. Okay. You drive carefully, Jamison.” His mom kissed him on the cheek and gave him a big squeeze. “You’ve promised to come back, either way. Don’t make me come after you. And call me if you need me,” she whispered into his ear.
As they were pulling away, Skye was kind of glad it was almost over; soon she wouldn’t be wishing for sensations or worrying about the consequences of getting them. She’d never be a Gabriella. It was only phantom emotion currently breaking her non-existent heart.
“Okay. Let’s have it.” Jamison barely glanced her direction before gluing his eyes on the road.
“I’m a coward, okay? I’m taking you to Lanny, so
she can explain everything to you.”
“So she can tell me why you can’t stay.”
“So she can tell you what my choices are.”
“And neither one is to stay.”
“Please don’t be angry. It won’t change anything.”
He veered off the road and stopped the car. They hadn’t yet gone far. The tree arch was still visible in the side mirror.
“I’m angry, because you told me we have a couple of days together, tops, and you want to spend it at the It’s-not-okay Corral! I want to go somewhere where I can hold you. For two days straight, until someone comes and pries my fingers away, I want to hold you.”
Oh, neither one of them was going to be able to drive!
“Okay. I’ll make you a deal. You come to Lanny’s and we’ll leave there before dark, find a hotel, and you can hold me until I...until it’s over.”
“And if she doesn’t let us leave?”
“She will.”
“She didn’t before.”
“I know. She had a message she had to deliver before she could let me go.”
“What message? You didn’t tell me about a message. From who?”
“The Father.”
Jamison looked sick. “You got a message...from God?”
She laughed. “If it helps any, it was an old message.”
He tried to smile, but failed. He was shaking in his boots. “Can you tell me what the message was? No, wait. I don’t think I should even ask. I mean, it wasn’t meant for me, right?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
Jamison relaxed in his seat. “That’s fine.”
“Lanny is.”
***
Skye had to drive the whole way to the ranch.
This time there were no suggestions in the air about turning around and going back. When they bought gas, the attendant paid no attention to two Somerleds travelling together. As the miles flew behind them and the canyon appeared, Jamison got paler, as if he thought he was headed for an appointment with God himself.
“The Father won’t be there, you know.”
His head jerked her way, as if he’d forgotten she was in the car with him for the last two hours, even though he’d held her hand in a death grip the entire time. He looked down at his hand and tried to open it. No go. He started pealing his fingers away from her, wincing as his blood began to flow again.
“Sorry.”
“I’m sorry for you. You’re the only one feeling it.”
He winced again, but not in pain.
“I’m sorry, Jamie. I don’t say it to make you feel bad.”
He gave her a little smile, then looked out his window.
Poor guy. He really was afraid of what he was going to hear. She’d already heard it, of course, and knew just how hopeless it was. He’d have to hear it from someone besides her or he’d never believe her. Understanding would help him get over it. It was the whole point in coming.
Jamison was intelligent. He’d see reason. Surely.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“What in Heaven’s name could you be thinking?!”
Jamison rather thought God Himself might be a kinder, gentler type than Lanny. He was beginning to consider using one of his three wishes, so to speak, to get The Guy Upstairs to save them from her temper. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d read their intent from the freeway and had been working herself into a lather while she waited for them to drive up the long canyon.
They didn’t even get a chance to get out of the car before Lanny was leaning in Skye’s window hissing at her.
“The Somerleds here? My own people? None of them have been told, and you want me to tell him? A mortal child?” Lanny pointed past Skye’s nose at the abomination sitting next to her, which was him. He lifted both arms and flipped down the sun-visor mirror. Still there. Still human-looking. Okay, so she wasn’t Medusa.
“Medusa?!”
Oh, way bad. My bad. I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
He didn’t know if he was apologizing out loud or just really clearly in his head. Either way she’d read it loud and clear and hadn’t been impressed.
He thought about pulling on the steering wheel and snaking his foot over to punch the gas pedal. Half a donut and they’d be headed back onto the road.
“You make one mark on my grass, sonny, and you’ll be planted under it.”
Blank paper. Blank paper. Nothing. Blank paper.
Surely those thoughts wouldn’t get him in trouble.
Lanny snorted.
Good snort, bad snort? Didn’t matter. Blank paper. Blank paper.
Skye shut off the engine, sealing their doom.
Jamison opened one eye; he had no idea when he’d shut them.
Skye was smiling at Lanny. Lanny was freaking smiling back, but when she caught Jamison watching, her nostrils flared and he shut that eye again.
“Come on. She’s teasing you.” Skye’s car door opened and closed. “Coward.”
“No way. No freaking way. I am not falling for that.”
He heard a mature woman’s laugh from the front porch and peeked through slit lids to see Lanny put her arm around Skye’s shoulders and usher her into the house.
“Teasing? Are you kidding me?”
Nope. Not kidding. Yes. Yes teasing. Come. In the house. Even Medusa couldn’t text in someone’s head, could she?
Un. Freaking. Believeable.
Skye stood in a hallway, fidgeting. She waved him to her.
“Do you, um, need anything?”
“I’m good.”
“No, I mean, do you need, um, to use the restroom?”
“If you mean she might make me piss my pants, it’s too late.”
Skye looked at his crotch in horror.
“He’s teasing you, Skye.”
Skye slapped him on the shoulder lightly and he grabbed her hand. He had no intention of letting go, he didn’t care how many cows were stuck in a ditch giving birth.
“Take him in, honey. I’ll just be a minute.” Lanny disappeared behind a door.
Skye walked him to the end of the hall and stopped. “Take off your shoes.” She removed hers and pushed them all against the wall, then pushed on the panel in front of them. It turned out to be a door with no handles and she led him into...Heaven.
Once they were inside, Skye pushed the door closed and turned to him, her face expectant, but nervous; her eyebrows had disappeared under her hair.
“Cool, huh?”
He needed to agree so those eyebrows could come back down.
“Yeah. Very nice.”
“Not me, silly. The room.”
He turned around and kept stepping. The carpet was so soft he felt like he should have to pay someone for the privilege of stepping on it.
He walked over to a mirror and checked his hair. Nothing hanging out of his nose; good. When he glanced over his head, he could see a dozen Jamisons, front to back to front, reflected in the mirrors behind him. The glass was tilted slightly toward the floor so the reflections went on into—
“Eternity.” Lanny sounded amused.
Okay that was cool. But he was nervous again, having Lanny in the room with them. Which personality would harass him this time?
For once, she didn’t answer his thought.
“Look at the light.” Skye bent her head back.
Jamison followed her gaze. A million tiny explosions went off in his head and he looked away, wondering if his eyes were bleeding. He even dabbed at them with the back of his sleeve.
“What’s wrong?” Skye squeezed his arm.
“Mortal eyes, honey. He can’t handle that kind of beauty.”
He looked at the older woman and noticed she’d changed into an odd dress. Like a thick bathrobe over a long tunic. Both white, almost painfully white—or maybe his eyes were just sore.
“Anything else in this room we mortals should stay away from?”
Lanny smiled. “Actually, you’re the first mortal to be allowed int
o this room, so you’re kind of like a guinea pig, aren’t you? You let us know if something terrible happens.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. This is no place for teasing, Kenneth Jamison Shaw. Will you forgive me?”
Oh, the temptation not to. But she was right. There was something about the room that made him see rudeness, not as something funny, but as something unworthy of him. Whether it was the clothes or the room, he finally felt worthy of Skye and he took a second to memorize the moment. In his mind he pushed the old box away and opened a new one, a bright shiny new one in which he would keep only his good memories of Skye.
“Well done, boy.”
Jamison was mortified Lanny had witnessed such a private thing.
“You’re right, of course. Forgive me. I will stay out of your mind while we are in here. Will that do?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“You will not thank me for what Skye wants you to hear, though. I’m sorry.”
Jamison felt his world falling apart, as if the curtains and mirrors were sliding to the floor. None of it mattered without Skye.
He found himself seated across from Lanny, on a chair next to Skye. The object of his affection gripped his hand again, willing him to be tough. For her, he could. For a little while, he could hold it together. Once they were out of there, all bets were off.
“I’m ready, ma’am. What are Skye’s choices?”
“When you two were here last time, I felt, inspired, if you will, to let Skye in on a secret kept from the Final Host.”
“God keeps secrets from his angels?”
“He kept one, that I know of. You see, I’m a Primary, one of the few who negotiated the terms of The Agreement.”
“You mean the one about the Final Host working as angels instead of coming to Earth the old-fashioned way. Then they’d never screw up, so they’d never go to Hell, right?”
“That very Agreement.”
“And what was in the small print?”
Lanny smiled a genuine smile. “You’re a bright boy. Have you got it figured out?”
“Can I speak my mind without getting punished?”