by W Winters
Neither of them understand. At this point, all I want is to be seen with her.
Let them all see. They need to know she’s mine.
I’m drawing the line here, hoping it keeps her beside me regardless of what happens.
Bethany manages to take two steps by the time I’ve closed the distance between us. She’s hesitant even as I wrap my arm around the small of her back.
A sharp hammering in my chest beats faster than my shoes thud on the pavement to get her in my car and away from this situation.
The feeling of failing her, of her knowing and seeing who I truly am grips me and in turn, I hold her closer. I’ll never forget the way she looked at me before running off.
“It was a mistake,” I mutter beneath my breath, but the tension in her body doesn’t lessen and she doesn’t look up at me in the least.
Seth’s quick to get out and open the door for us. I’m only grateful she doesn’t pause before slipping inside.
The door shuts with a resounding click as another gust of wind blows.
“You all right?” Seth asks me and I look him dead in the eyes to answer him. “No more fucking questions.”
I don’t have the answers to give him. None that I’m willing to give, anyway.
The bitter cold from outside doesn’t carry into the back of the car. The warmth is lacking nonetheless as we leave the police department behind in silence.
The dull hum of the car doesn’t last long. “Nothing will happen to you. I promise you.” My words are quiet, but I know she hears them.
Her hands stay in her lap and she answers while still looking out of her window, “Thank you.”
I didn’t expect this distance between us. I didn’t expect the damage to be so obvious. Regret urges me closer to her, leaning across the leather seat to grip her chin between my thumb and forefinger and forcing her to look at me.
She doesn’t resist, but uncertainty lingers in the depths of her hazel eyes and her breathing becomes unsteady.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I should never have let you see that.”
She only swallows, the sound so loud in the quiet space between us.
“No, you shouldn’t have. But I shouldn’t have run.”
“It would have been better if you hadn’t.” There’s no fire, no fight, nothing except hurt. “I know it scared you.”
It’s the way she hesitates before answering. The strained way she breathes in when she looks into my eyes. She doesn’t trust me.
“I don’t know what to think right now. I’m going back and forth.”
“Back and forth?”
“Whether or not I’m capable of standing beside you. Of demanding you tell me what the fuck happened.” Her voice drops as she adds, “And whether or not I can stomach the truth.”
It’s been a long damn time since I’ve felt the sense of losing someone. Of feeling them slip through my fingers. I can feel it; I can fucking see it. I just don’t know how to change it.
“Marry me.” I let the idea slip out, but keep my composure. I can’t lose her. I fucked up, but everyone fucks up at some point. She’ll get over it. I just need time. “They can’t make you testify if you’re legally married to me.” The excuse comes out easily enough.
Her eyes widen as I lean back in my seat. I thought about it every second we sat outside the department. She needs to be my wife.
“You’re fucking crazy to think I’d take that proposal seriously.”
“If something happens--”
“I’d go to jail,” she cuts me off, her fire blazing as the irritation grows in her eyes. “I’d rather go to jail than marry someone because I accidentally saw something I shouldn’t have.” She eyes me as if I’ve lost it, and maybe I have. “I’ll stick to my story that I don’t know how any of it happened and I don’t have anything else to say. Thank you very much,” she says, and her final quip comes with the crossing of her legs away from me. She stares out the window again and it’s then I realize where the term ‘cold shoulder’ comes from.
“I had a moment, Bethany. Don’t hold this against me.” My voice is calm and like a balm it visibly soothes her prickly demeanor.
She’s slow to look over her shoulder, peeking at me before saying, “Everyone has moments, but it scared the fuck out of me, Jase.”
“I’ll apologize again, I’m sorry-”
“I don’t want an apology.” Her entire tone changes, and a different side of her I’ve never seen presents itself. She’s calm, receptive, concerned even. “What the hell happened?”
I’ve never spoken about Angie to anyone so openly. Not even my brothers know all the details. Not Seth. No one.
I repeat forcefully, “I had a moment.”
She pauses, considering me, but returns to the cold condition she had moments ago as she says, “I want to go home.”
“No.” I answer her with more force than I intended.
“Yes,” she snaps back. “You can have your moment. But if you aren’t going to tell me what the hell happened, I’m not going back to your place right now so I can have my own damn moment.”
I shouldn’t be so turned on by her anger.
“You still owe me twenty-seven days.” I remind her of the only card I have to play, leaning closer and daring her to fight me. The tension in the car thickens and heats.
“Fuck you,” she retorts far too casually, pulling the sleeves of the large white sweater she was given in the department down her arms. It’s a simple plain sweatshirt material, and it does nothing to show off her figure. I had Linders offer it to her since her own shirt was confiscated… and now incinerated back at The Red Room like it should have been initially. Before she ran.
“Did you forget about our deal?”
She ignores my question and replies, “I had three hundred thousand in cash in the back of my car.”
“They destroyed it.”
The question’s there, lingering in her gaze. “I’m well aware of that,” she says, then swallows loud enough to hear. “Is it really about a debt for you?”
“Would I ask you to marry me if I only cared about a debt?” I question her unspoken thoughts.
Time pauses and it feels like I have her back, like she’s close enough to hold on to forever so long as I don’t slip up.
“The suggestion wasn’t asked, it was told. In order to save me from having to testify… It’s not the same.”
When she speaks, she’s careful with every word. “I don’t want to be under your thumb, Jase,” she admits. “That’s all this is. I’m playing into your hands over and over. I think I have control in situations when I don’t.”
I’m just as careful with my reply. “I know I fucked up. I shouldn’t have let you see me like that--”
“Why?” she cuts me off. “Why wait there for me to see? You had to know I would.”
And just like that, she’s slipping away again.
I can’t fucking breathe. This damn shirt feels like a noose around my neck; I clutch at it, unbuttoning my collar.
“I need you right now.” The words fall from me and I’m not even aware that they have until she threads her fingers between mine and squeezes.
“You can tell me,” she whispers.
How do I tell her the truth: I killed a man who hurt a woman I barely knew and it doesn’t feel like it was enough? How do I tell her I can’t get what happened years ago out of my head and the sight from that night will never leave me? How do I share that burden with anyone?
Let alone with her, a woman I can’t lose? I’m barely conscious of it myself.
“Jase, I deserve to know.”
My gaze drifts from hers and finds Seth’s in the rearview mirror.
“I don’t have answers right now.”
“That’s becoming a theme for you, isn’t it?” she bites back, pulling her warm hand away from mine. Leaning forward she places her hand on the leather seat in front of her. “Seth, please take me home.”
There’s no room fo
r negotiation in my tone. “You’re coming home with me.”
“The hell I am--”
“You belong with me!” The scream tears from me before I can stop it. Chaos erupts from hating the blur of failure around me and the uncertainty.
I feel insane. The stress of everything that’s happened is driving me mad and I’m losing the only person who can keep me grounded. I can’t look her in the eyes, knowing how badly I’ve failed her but she makes me, her fingers brushing the underside of my jaw until my gaze lifts to hers.
“I didn’t say that I wasn’t still with you. I didn’t say I don’t belong to you.” She pauses, halting her words and seemingly questioning her last statement.
I won’t allow it. She can’t question that. Above all else, she needs to believe with every fiber in her that she belongs to me.
My fingers splay through her hair as I kiss her. With authority and demanding she feel what I can’t say. She meets every swift stroke of my tongue with her own demands.
Reveling in it, I remind her of what we have.
This won’t come around again. I can feel it in my bones. What we have is something we can’t let go of. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life as I am of this.
It takes her a moment to push me away, with both hands on my chest. It’s a weak gesture, but I give it to her and love how breathless I’ve left her.
Barely breathing, she alternates her stare between my lips and my eyes before nipping my lower lip.
The small action makes me feel like everything will be okay. I’m all too aware that’s exactly what it’s intended to do.
“Come home with me.” It’s not a command; I’m practically begging her.
She doesn’t say no, but she doesn’t say yes either. “You scare me. This,” she says and gestures between the two of us, “scares me.”
“Do you think it doesn’t scare me too? That fear doesn’t have a grip on me sometimes?”
“I didn’t ask for this,” she answers and when she does, her voice cracks, the emotion seeping in.
“I didn’t either, but I’m not afraid to make known what I want. I won’t let fear do that to me.”
“I’m not saying this isn’t what I want. I’m saying I need to breathe for a minute. You need to take me home.”
It’s then that I realize the car has stopped at the fork that determines which way we’ll go.
“Take me home.” Bethany whispers the statement like it’s a plea. Seth waits for my order and when I nod, the car goes right, heading toward her house.
“I’m giving you space, Bethany. But it’s temporary.”
She doesn’t let me off so easily. “Are you willing to tell me whose blood was on my shirt?”
I shake my head, but offer her a question in its place. “Are you willing to seriously consider my offer?”
“Offer?” The fact that she’s forgotten so easily hurts more than I’ll ever admit.
“Marry me.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Say yes.” Neither of us budge, neither of us give anything more than the gentle touch of our fingers meeting on the leather seats.
“When I marry someone, it will be because I never want to be away from them. Not because I involved myself with someone who doesn’t trust me, who keeps secrets from me. Someone I know I shouldn’t be with and who’s giving me every reason to run.”
I can’t come up with an answer. I have nothing. Words never fail me like this.
“Everyone’s entitled to a moment. But if you’re going to keep it to yourself, prepare to be by yourself.”
All I can give her is a singular truth as the car slows to a stop in front of her house. “I won’t be by myself for long, Bethany.”
“You will if you don’t figure out how to answer my questions, Jase. I’m not in the habit of helping those who don’t want to help themselves.”
Bethany
The Coverless Book
Twentieth Chapter
Jake’s perspective
“She’s a healer. She’ll help you get better.”
“I’m fine, Jake,” Emmy pleads with me. I know she’s scared to be in the woods searching out a woman some call a witch, but I won’t let her die.
Staring at the dried herbs that hang from a line outside the leather tent, Emmy hesitates. “It’s nearly twice a week,” I tell her and my fingers slip through hers. She’s lost weight and she looks so much paler than she did nearly a month ago when we ran away.
“The farmer’s sister is nice, they’re all nice, but she’s not helping you.”
We’ve been staying in a small cabin on the back of a farm in exchange for labor. It would be perfect this way… if Emmy didn’t get sick and spit up blood so often.
“Please. Do it for me.”
Her eyes are what draw me to her. She can’t hide a single thought or feeling. They all flicker and brighten within her gaze. Her lips part just slightly but before she can kiss me or I can kiss her, a feminine voice calls out to our right, “Are you ready?”
Emmy immediately grabs me and hides just behind my left side. She doesn’t take her eyes from the woman though. Shrouded in a black cloak, it’s harder to see her among the shrubbery, but as she unveils her hood and walks toward the fire, the light shows her to be nothing more than human.
“Jake…” Emmy protests.
“For me,” I remind her, squeezing her hand after prying it from my hip and following the woman under the various tanned hides that protect her potions and remedies.
“I know what ails you, but tell me what you think, my dear?” The healer doesn’t look at me; she doesn’t speak to me at all. Emmy’s quiet, assessing at first, but quickly she speaks up.
I only watch the two of them taking a place in the corner, quietly praying to whatever gods may be listening, to help Emmy. I can’t lose her.
“When I’m with him, I’m invincible.”
The healer’s smile wanes as she places her hand just above Emmy’s but quickly takes it away, snatching a bag of something dried… flowers maybe? “Take these,” she says as she hands the bag to Emmy. “You like soup, don’t you?” The chill of the night spreads under the tent, the wind rustling everything inside. “It’ll take the pain away.”
“When I’m with him, I’m invincible.”
I keep dragging my eyes back to that underlined line. She’s changed. Emmy’s changed. When did she need Jake to be invincible? And more importantly, why did he let that happen?
I have to remind myself that it’s fiction. With that thought, I put down the book and force myself to face my own reality. I’m sure as hell not invincible. Not with Jase Cross and not without him either.
Laura’s never going to believe me.
It’s funny how I keep thinking about telling her what happened as if it’s the worst hurdle to overcome at this point.
Telling your friend you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars they loaned to you… or gave to you, whichever... the thought of telling her that makes me feel sick to my stomach.
I have to rub my eyes as I get up off the sofa, The Coverless Book sitting right in front of me, opened and waiting on the coffee table. I couldn’t close my eyes last night without seeing Officer Walsh, the blood on the floor, or Jase’s intense gaze and the demons beneath that darkness.
Rest didn’t come for me last night, no matter how badly I prayed for it.
Beep, beep, beep. Gathering my mug of hot-for-the-third-time coffee, I promise myself I’ll remember to drink it this time as I test the temperature and find it acceptable to drink.
The last time I burned the tip of my tongue.
My cell phone stares back at me. The book stares back at me. The door calls to me to go back to Jase.
And yet all I can do is sit back on my sofa, stretching in the worn groove and staring across the room at a photo of my sister in her high school graduation cap with her arm wrapped around a younger, happier version of me.
Life wasn’t supposed to turn o
ut this way.
She was never supposed to go down that path and leave me here all alone.
“I still hate you for leaving me,” I speak into the empty room even though I don’t believe my own words. “But damn do I miss you.” Those words are different. Those I believe with everything in me.
I wish I could tell her about Jase and the shit I’ve gotten myself into.
If only I had my sister back.
There are multiple stages of grief. I had at least three courses that told me all the stages in detail. I had to take all three to work at the center. If you’re going to work with patients who are struggling with loss, and a lot of our patients are, you have to know the stages inside and out.
Acceptance comes after depression. It’s the final stage and I’ve heard people tell me that they can feel it when it happens.
I used to think it was like a weight off their shoulders, but a woman told me once it was more like the weight just shifted somewhere else. Somewhere deeper inside of you, in that place where the void will always be.
Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining.
Depression.
Acceptance.
The five stages in all their glory. I’ve read plenty about them and at the time I associated each one with how I felt when my mother died, but maybe every death is different. Because this feels nothing like what I felt with her.
There are so many reasons to explain the differences. But one thing I can’t make sense of is how I feel, with complete certainty, that I’ve accepted Jenny’s death too soon. A month since she’s been missing, weeks since her death.
I’m not ready to accept I’ll never see her again, but I have. How fair is that?
“Do you hate me for it?” I ask the smiling, teenage version of my sister, with her red cap in her hand. “Can you forgive me for accepting you’re gone forever so soon?”
Wiping harshly under my eyes, I let the exasperated air leave me in a sharp exhale. “And now I’m going crazy, talking to no one.” I swallow and sniff away the evidence of my slight breakdown before confessing. “Not the person you were in the end, but the real you. Could the real you forgive me?”