Chapter Thirty-Five
Thirty-Five
I linger, awkwardly, in the room where I was supposed to die.
Adrenaline eases out of my system like a leaky pressure valve, and I feel my mind settle back into my body and take note of the damage.
My ankle aches from my awkward fall, and my head pounds from the welt left by the butt of Robbie’s gun, his punch to my jaw.
My back is soaked, for the second time in less than a week, in somebody else’s blood and possibly brain matter.
I’m starving, having barely eaten in the last twenty-four hours.
And I am so very, deeply, ancestrally tired.
My stare has drifted down at the lump of Robbie’s corpse when a hand closes over my shoulder and makes me jump.
“You okay?” Julian asks, turning me to face him. The look I give him must be withering, because he tugs me into his arms. “I know. Stupid question.”
I burrow into his chest, searching for the comfort of his many elusive fragrances.
But there are no notes of pink pepper or sandalwood or ylang-ylang today, only the smell of laundry detergent and the subtle sharpness of his sweat, and instead of comfort I’m taken by unease.
Julian is warm and firm and his heart is racing and he has just killed a man in cold blood for me.
A man who might have lived many more years, cooking venison stew in a big pot to share with his neighbors, if he’d never happened upon Julian’s now infant sister.
“We’ll wait outside,” Rose says quietly.
Julian doesn’t let go of me, just digs into his pocket for keys that he hands over to his sister.
“Not the RV,” he says cryptically, but she seems to understand, because she takes the keys, nods, and heads out the door.
Just like that, we are alone.
“You’re hurt,” Julian says, in the creaking quiet of the cabin. He trails gentle fingers over the welt on my head, the split in my lip, the bruise I know is blossoming on my chin. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
I hum and lean into his palm. It smells bitter and metallic, like burnt chocolate.
Like gunfire. My chest throbs as I study his face and remember the first time I saw it.
How my jaw quite literally dropped. And to think I had hardly known him then, hadn’t explored the depths of his endless mind, hadn’t felt the fervor of his love.
My favorite thing about him, I realize, is his honesty—ironic, since his lies are what led us here.
But his actions, they have never failed to tell the truth.
I believe that he loves me. I believe that he would fight for me.
I believe that he would give himself up for me, for Claire.
There, I realize, lies the problem.
“Sean.” His voice deepens with worry. “Talk to me.”
Instead I pull him into a kiss. It tastes like iron and salt, like an hours-long drive around a mountain at twenty miles per hour above the speed limit and a panicked sprint to an unlocked back door.
It feels like longing and desperation and a hundred nights we should have had together that we spent apart because he’d hoped to scrub me off his skin.
Julian’s arm around my waist is tight, the press of his chest into mine so firm that it feels like he’s trying to lock us together.
I wind my arms around his neck, kiss him hard, kiss him mad.
A last supper, so much more sumptuous than Leila could have planned.
When we break apart, we’re both panting, and Julian’s eyes shine with veneration, like I am his redemption descending from the skies, and it’s that look that tells me that I’m about to do the right thing.
“I can’t be with you,” I tell him gently. “Not now, at least.”
It is a terrible thing, to watch a person’s heart break.
I can see the moment when Julian’s daze becomes alertness, when he goes from hearing my words to processing them to understanding their repercussions.
There is a future he’s created in his mind, one where he carries me bridal style into a world we build together, that I’ve just dashed away.
“What do you mean?” he says, his voice jagged.
I gesture to the dead man on the ground, in the direction of the door where the other halves of my heart escaped with the Ghoshal siblings.
“This,” I say. “I’ve dedicated my life to giving people as much life as they can grasp. I can’t be okay with taking it away.”
He holds my hands tight between his.
“But I’ll stop,” he pleads. “I have stopped, Sean, for you—”
“I don’t just mean other people’s, Jules,” I say. “I mean yours. I can’t have you sacrifice your life for me. It needs to be for you.”
Julian gapes. I watch as tears spring to his eyes, and he whips his head away to keep them from my view.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
I nudge him back, make his eyes meet mine so that he can see the truth in what I say next.
“I love you,” I tell him definitively. “I’ll probably never stop loving you.
But I can’t be your source of meaning. You can’t decide to live this way because you want to be by my side.
Because I’m not like you, Julian. I’m fully, totally mortal.
I’m fragile, and fickle, and totally fallible.
What if I have a heart attack one day and die?
What if I fall out of love and leave you?
What if you slip up, or Rose slips up, or Leila accidentally enchants someone because she is young now and uninhibited and neither of you has ever raised a child before, and someone comes after my family again to get to yours?
” I imagine Claire, who was apparently so much like me.
How would she have felt, knowing how much wreckage the love of her life had wrought in the wake of her demise?
How many lives were lost or shortened in her name?
“Tell me the truth. If you were too late. If I was already gone. Would you have still abstained? Or would you have been lost again?”
“But I wasn’t too late,” Julian says stubbornly. “We don’t have to deal with hypotheticals. We can do this like you said. Choose each other every day and go from there.”
But I’m shaking my head.
“You don’t know what you’re choosing, Jules.
Pain, suffering, loss…those come in the package.
You get in a car accident tomorrow? You’ll have to spend months, maybe years, healing.
Maybe live the rest of your life with a back that never stops aching and a neck that’s always tight.
You catch the flu? You tough it out. You can’t heal your wounds with a kiss in the dark with a stranger who won’t miss what they’ve lost. It has to all be worth it for you, whether I’m with you or not. ”
It’s a life that Julian has never known and one he can’t promise to me without experiencing it first. One I won’t force upon him out of my own principles, because I will not have this stunning, powerful being be anyone other than who he truly wants to be.
If I didn’t want to sob, I might laugh out loud, because the logic is eerily similar to why I didn’t want to date him when I thought the biggest barrier was his comparative youth.
Under my hand, Julian’s jaw wobbles. A tear creeps from the corner of his right eye, drips down, and settles into the crevice of my palm.
“This…hurts,” he manages. He grips his own shirt, like he’s about to tear his heart out.
“That’s being human for you,” I say. “It has its definite downsides.”
We let out a shaky, simultaneous breath, and I swell with affection for him.
Julian doesn’t push back against my assessment of his readiness, doesn’t try to claim that I’m wrong and that he’s sure, and his self-awareness only intensifies my love for him.
I gather him close, draw myself to the tips of my toes to engulf myself in him more completely.
It feels so unfair, to have to let him go.
To finally feel the fireworks, blockbuster movie kind of love, to finally be seen and cherished and adored, only to have to say, Not yet.
We hold each other for a long time, memorizing the other’s shape.
Julian is the first to pull away. He swallows, pushes his tongue into his cheek, but his gaze is hard with conviction. He holds me at an arm’s length, bending until we are at eye level.
“You’re right,” he says. My favorite words, coming to bite me in the ass.
“I have to want this for myself. I have to choose it for me. So I’ll do as you say.
I’ll do it without you. And I won’t be so selfish as to tell you to wait for me.
But what I will say is that if I do decide that I want to continue living this way, I’ll be back for you.
And I don’t care if someone else is already in the picture.
They’ll have to find some way to make room. ”
I nod. I feel drenched in anguish.
We kiss again, a brief, definitive, hard press of our lips, our unspoken goodbye.
Julian stays behind at the cabin as I hobble back outside.
There are two vehicles waiting outside: a glistening black RV and a small Honda Civic.
The door to the RV opens, and Winona appears on the stairs, a blanket gathered around her shoulders.
Aditya stands uncertainly a few paces from the door, sending her furtive, anxious glances.
“Why the hell are you still here?” I shout, limping toward her. I shoot an accusatory glare at Aditya, who throws his hands up helplessly.
“Don’t look at me,” he says. “I wanted to dip fifteen minutes ago. She refused to leave without you.”
Winona is a cyclone, her thick, dense curls flying around her like a thundercloud, her face twisted in determination. She takes one step, two, then breaks out into a full sprint and launches herself into my arms. I stagger backward with the force of her embrace.
“I fucking hate you,” she says into my ear. “What the fuck happened in there? Why didn’t you come out? I thought you might have died in there. Where did that woman come from, and why does she look exactly like Rosie? What the fuck happened to Leila? A fucking baby?”
Winona has just dropped more f-bombs in the last five seconds than she has for the duration of Sophie’s life, and I loop my arm through hers, rest my head on her shoulder. She’s alive enough to be indignant with me, and this I consider a blessing.
“I’ll explain,” I promise.
“You better,” she warns.
We leave first. Ritika and Aditya swap turns manning the RV with Winona, Sophie, Onix, and me in tow.
Julian, Rose, and Leila stay behind. I try to ask what they plan to do with Robbie’s body, and Aditya assures me not to worry, we’re dealing with experts here, and that response reminds me never to ask questions I don’t want to hear the answers to.
I wait until Sophie has drifted off to sleep, her arms and legs wound tight around my dog, then tell Winona everything. She doesn’t interrupt me, just listens intently to a story that sounds so fantastical to my own ears that I almost stop halfway.
When I’m done, she has one question for me: “Are you going to keep seeing him?”
My chest aches, my heartbreak an open wound.
“No,” I say simply.
Winona’s relief is obvious. She drops her elbows onto her knees, drags both hands down her face, then looks up at me again.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
I laugh.
“No,” I say. “But I will be eventually.”
I dream of Julian one last time that night.
We get home eleven hours later, and the city is uncharacteristically still, as if holding vigil for all the things it has lost. My apartment doesn’t feel like it belongs to me, my bed chosen and made by a woman I don’t think exists anymore.
I fold beneath the comforter and close my eyes and there Julian is, of course he is, because in the hours since I decided to leave him, he has had complete hold of my thoughts.
“Don’t forget me,” he says. He sits at the foot of my bed, too far for me to reach, and his distance only adds to the torment.
“How could I ever,” I whisper.
And then, as soon as he comes, he is gone, and I don’t dream of him again.