Volition (32 page)

“Yes. In a good way, but that’s not what I meant,” I tell him. I unbuckle my seat belt, so I can face him. “I’ve been wanting to say that to Lara for years, but that gave me an occasion to do so. She told me I could have all my money back if I married you.”

“Is that what you want?”

I roll my eyes.

“The money? No. I’ll make it on my own. I’d rather die than live off her charity.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh,” I say softly.

His jaw twitches again, and I know I’ve just made it worse because he was talking about marriage while I was still on revenge.

“What happens if a train comes?”

“We die,” he says flatly.

“Okay, Noah,” I say sarcastically because we just quoted that scene from
The Notebook.

“Oh,
I’m
Noah? I see. I thought he was Noah in this situation, and I’m Lon. I’m Cal. I’m the bad guy. I’m not the guy you end up with in the end, am I?”

Somehow, this is bigger than I thought because being here in Charleston has created a much larger firestorm between us than before.

“Don’t say that,” I whisper because I really don’t want it to be true. I wreck everything for myself.

I climb over the console of the car so that I’m sitting half on it, and I put my hands on either side of Hayden’s face.

“You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach that stays with you, then tears you apart slowly at first, and then all at once shreds every fiber of your being? It’s because you’re contradicting the universe. Everything lines up so perfectly that you couldn’t have imagined it to work out better, but then you have to go and do everything humanly possible to ruin it because you can’t stand to have it go right.”

He nods slightly.

Lightsaber green.

“That’s what I did. I did it because there’s a darkness that surrounds me, and I think I want it there. I want it there so badly. It’s all I’ve ever known, and I’m not used to watching what I say because the words mean something else to another person. I’m used to living for myself. I thought that’s all I’d ever have in this world. But that’s not true. Now, I have you, and I want you here with me, and I want to care. I just need a little more practice. Please let me fix this.”

“He’s not Noah, Tate. He’s not Noah Calhoun. He’s not Jack Dawson. He’s just this phantom limb of your past that you refuse to let go of.”

Everything always comes back to Jesse.

“I’m trying to believe that,” I tell him. By now, I’m on his lap with my back up against the steering wheel. “He’s the reason I left in the first place. But being back brings out the worst in me. He made me want to die.”

“So die. If you’re going to, you might as well do it with me. Right here, right now.”

“Is that why we’re parked on train tracks?”

“Yes.”

“I love it.”

I lean down to kiss him, but his hands go to my wrists before I can lean forward to brace myself.

“I’m serious.”

“I don’t want to die right now.”

“Say it again.”

“I don’t want to die. I want to be here with you.”

“Remember that. I love that darkness inside you, but I don’t want it to be the end. You scare me.”

“You scare me, too.”

“Good.”

Somehow, everything clicks into place, and I feel like we might be okay. We might be as crazy as F. Scott and Zelda, but our crazy might work. We might work—even though a small part of me will always be tied to Jesse, I think it’s more of a cobweb than a grappling hook.

My lips touch Hayden’s, like we’re consecrating the promises we just made.

“Hayden,” I say calmly against him, “there’s a train coming.”

He guns the car forward and starts kissing me again, and the last thing I see before I shut my eyes is the train on the tracks where we were sitting seconds earlier. I feel the wheels on the railroad ties reverberating through the entire car, and I know we’ve just made a choice. I imagine Death sitting on top of the train, clapping at us, because someone flipped the switch, and our metaphorical train took a different turn. We won’t be meeting again for a while.

I’m all in.

He’s all in.

We’re
all in.

Then

I FOLLOWED JESSE up a derelict stairway. There was a flickering light overhead, but other than that, it was dark. I had no idea he lived in this place when he wasn’t at school, and I realized I had no idea who this person was.

There was a part of me that was so deeply attached to him that I didn’t know how to deal with any of it. I hated him, yes, but did I love him, too?

“There’s a shower in there,” he said as he pointed into a small bathroom. It was clean but outdated by half a century or more.

He handed me a towel, and I shut the door.

I looked at myself in the mirror in the yellow light, and I was horrifying. I looked like Carrie, only with mud streaked all over. My hair would probably never be clean again.

The water had two temperatures, lukewarm and freezing. The pressure was abysmal, and I watched as the melted dirt slowly went down the drain, but I knew it wouldn’t all come out after one wash. I would be walking around muddy for days. It was in my ears and in my eyelashes and probably in my entire being by now.

While I was still in the shower, I heard the door open and shut quickly, which either meant a serial killer or Jesse. Or Jesse was the serial killer, and I wouldn’t put it past him. He was dark like me. I just didn’t know how dark.

I peered out and noticed a set of clothing folded on the countertop, which was perfect because I didn’t have any clothes to wear, save for the stiff ones that were more mud than fabric now.

I dried myself off and combed through my waist-length hair with my fingers. My face was naked. I didn’t have all the heavy black that I liked to put around my eyes for dramatic effect. Whatever. It was just Jesse.

The clothes he’d put out were undoubtedly his—a white T-shirt, flannel, and sweatpants. They would be enormous on me, but they’d have to do.

I threw my clothes in the trash and wandered out of the bathroom to find him.

There were only two rooms on this floor, other than the room I’d just exited, so I didn’t have to look far. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, and I stopped in the doorway. He was so far removed from any Jesse I’d ever seen before. He was clearly upset, but I wasn’t sure why. My heart hurt, and I wanted to fix what was wrong because if I didn’t, I would ache all night due to proximity.

I would probably ache all night regardless.

“You live here,” I said as I approached him.

He didn’t move because he knew I was here all along.

“I live here,” he confirmed, more to the floor than to me.

“Why?”

That seemed an insensitive way to ask, but I didn’t know what else to say.

“Where else?”

His head lifted, and I could see years’ worth of pain in his eyes.

“Do you live here alone?”

I also wanted to know if anyone else was here.

“Yes.”

“Did you always?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“Death happened.”

I knew that part, but I wanted to hear it. Sometimes, it frightened me how much we were the same.

“Who?”

“My parents.”

“This was their house?”

“No.”

“Who lived here?”

“My aunt and uncle.”

“Oh.”

I got the distinct impression that all of these people were dead, and they’d left Jesse here alone. This was all he had. He was brilliant, and he would be fine when we grew up because he went to schools that would get him past this life but not yet.

Not just yet.

Now, all he had was pain.

And me.

But he didn’t really have me.

I didn’t tell him I was sorry because I hated that word.
Sorry
was the worst word anyone could ever say. I didn’t want anyone’s apologies for something they had no control over because that was a word society told you to say when you didn’t know what else was appropriate.

I stood there and stared at him, and I wanted to rip my hair out. Here he was, and here I was, but nothing had changed. I wanted so desperately for this to be it, to be a cathartic moment when we’d both burst like a damn romance novel, and everything would be okay because we’d have each other.

I wanted it to be him.

I always wanted it to be him, but I couldn’t force it. It took two, and it also took a certain amount of chemistry that I couldn’t explain. I wanted Jesse’s soul, but I didn’t want it to be inside him. There was something wrong because I wasn’t attracted to him.

He was beautiful to look at in his own way, but my brain and my body wouldn’t have it.

I hated myself.

I hated him.

I hated all of this because he was going to trap me forever, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

He was still staring at me, probably having the same war in his head because he has never done anything about it either.

I was still dating Casper, but that meant nothing in the scheme of things. I didn’t love Casper. I didn’t respect Casper, but he was my boyfriend because life shoved us together, and we didn’t have the courage to part because of what we did for the other person. We had a symbiotic relationship, but that was only going to last for so long. I didn’t count Casper as my boyfriend. It was just a word with an arbitrary meaning.

I had kissed Casper.

I had kissed Jesse.

None of it meant anything, but I wanted it to mean everything. It would never be heart-stopping, would it?

I started to cry, and Jesse stood to hug me, but that was all.

I wanted him to tell me everything would be okay, and I wanted to tell him the same, but we had no guarantee of that. We wouldn’t lie to each other—at least we had that.

“You can sleep in my bed. I’ll take the floor.”

I was sure there was somewhere else in the house he could sleep, but instead, he wanted to be near me. I took small comfort in that, but my heart still ached.

I climbed into the flannel sheets and was immediately engulfed by the scent of all things Jesse. I wanted this. I wanted to love this, and I wanted him beside me, but it just wasn’t right.

He turned the lights off and settled himself on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“Jesse?” I asked after a moment. “Do you hate me?”

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

I woke up alone.

In romance novels, the girl always woke up to a note on her pillow. Or the guy would be making coffee and breakfast for her downstairs. Or he was right beside her, ready for a good-morning kiss.

None of that was the case, not by a long shot.

I woke up alone in Jesse’s bed, and he was nowhere to be found. I wanted to leave him something, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. We would never do anything good for one another.

The house was still dark despite the low autumn sun, and I knew that was how Jesse liked it. Cold and dark.

I walked down the creepy staircase. His car was gone, so I’d have to walk home.

I didn’t even have my phone to call Colin to come get me. That drunken bastard was probably asleep in my bed while I slept in Jesse’s.

I wasn’t entirely sure where I was or how to get back to the Hale house, but I started walking.