“Yeah. The silence has a way of making your thoughts unavoidable.” He shifted beside me, his forehead furrowing.
I wanted to agree, but I daren’t admit my thoughts were all about him. His were most likely on dead fathers and dying grandfathers while mine were on more trivial things.
Things like unrequited love.
Trivial because they were pointless and only hurting myself.
Silence fell.
A shooting star ripped up the inky vastness in blazing suicide.
Jacob’s voice once again crept into my ears, making my heart quicken. “What do you want from life?” He kept his eyes firmly on the masterpiece above us, but his hands fisted on his sleeping bag.
For a while, I struggled with an answer.
It was a question that could seem blasé, but in that infinite moment, alone and linked with the cosmos, it was the most important thing I’d ever been asked.
My cheeks warmed for no other reason than honesty. “Everything that everyone else wants, I suppose.”
Don’t do this, Hope.
Secrets like this shouldn’t be shared while alone in the forest.
“And what exactly is that?”
I pressed my lips together, fighting the urge. But I was weak. I was pushy. I couldn’t help myself. “Family…someone to love. A best friend to laugh with. A house. A home.” I squirmed, embarrassment and fear skipping down my skin. “Those kind of things.”
If you took away wealth and hierarchies, in the end, that was all anyone ever wanted. The general consensus of life: two-legged, four-legged, feathered or scaled.
A mate.
A hearth.
A belonging.
Jacob sighed. His voice barely audible with charred edges, as if the fire had scorched his throat. “I don’t know if I do.”
I stiffened, doing my best to seem unaffected.
“I’ve tried really hard the past month,” he whispered. “Really damn hard. I’m glad I’ve made my mother smile more, and Grandpa John feels he can touch me without me ripping his hand off. But…”
He slung an arm over his eyes, blocking his face from view. “I’m still so goddamn afraid. I was hoping that fear would go away, but it’s only grown worse.” His voice blackened with coal. “I’m sick of being so fucking screwed up.”
I didn’t know if he expected a response or if this was purely to ease the bleeding of his soul. Taking a gamble, I breathed, “It’s okay to be afraid. You’ve been blessed with the best family in the world. It’s unthinkable to lose something so precious. You’re so aware they can be gone in an instant.”
He groaned under his breath. “Death shouldn’t have scarred me this permanently. You lost a parent, too, but I don’t see you breaking because of it.”
“That’s different.”
He stiffened. “No, it’s not. The fact is, you’re much stronger than I am. I keep letting everyone down. I keep waiting for the pain to go, for the fear of loss to vanish so I can be brave enough to care. But it just…never happens. I still picture them dead. I still steel myself against their touch. Pieces of me lock down whenever I try to love them. I-I can’t control it.”
I couldn’t handle his rawness, his openness. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it, but he’d shown me every dark, haemorrhaging secret, and I couldn’t lie there without touching him.
Crawling from my sleeping bag, I slotted my body along his. “It’s okay. We’re all different. It’s not something you—”
“Shut up, Hope.” He sucked in a harsh breath, his entire form locking down. “I don’t even know why I told you. Just…forget it.”
He didn’t push me away but his entire body bellowed for me to back off.
I should let him go.
I should give him space.
Instead, I slung my arm over his waist and nuzzled into his chest.
His temper sizzled, making my hair stand on end.
“Let me go.”
“No.” I shook my head, inhaling the leather and sweet smell of hay and sunshine clinging to him. “Talk to me. Get it out. I won’t tell anyone. I swear on my mother’s grave, whatever you tell me stays out here, just between us.”
“I’ve said everything I shouldn’t.”
“Well, I’m here if you want to say more.”
“I don’t.”
“We have all night.”
He jack-knifed upright. “Wrong.” Shoving the sleeping bag off him, he stood over me, silhouetted by fire and starlight, and for a second, I was afraid.
Afraid of him, his anger, his damaged, screwed-up soul.
But then his shoulders slouched, and the night air washed the fear away. “I’m eh…going for a walk.” With one hand buried in his hair, he gave me a look full of eternal misery. “I’m sorry…for what I said.”
“Stop apologising.”
“Just…go to sleep.”
I sat up, hugging my knees to my chest. “I’ll wait until you get back.”
He smiled sadly. “You might be waiting a while.”
I cocked my head, wishing he’d finally see that when it came to him, I was already committed to waiting. I’d wait for the rest of my life. I’d wait until my heart stopped beating. “I don’t mind.”