Chapter 43 Jonah - Present
forty-three
Jonah - Present
THE ECHO OF HIM.
I woke with a gasp. I could have sworn I heard something—a banging in the darkness.
I sat up in bed, my pulse thundering. Except it wasn’t dark.
At least, it wasn’t as dark as it should have been.
Through the gap in the curtains, a flickering red and blue light poured into the motel room. Red and blue.
The police.
They’d found me.
They had fucking found me.
All this time on the run and it was for nothing. They were here. It was over.
“Harper!” I whispered, turning to his bed as flashing red and blue illuminated his unmoving silhouette. “Harper!” I dared to call a little louder.
Bang bang bang bang bang
The air in my lungs formed a ball, expanding, too big to fit inside me.
Bigger. Bigger. Bigger. My rib cage constricted.
Crushing inwards. The core of me imploded and exploded simultaneously.
“H-Harper,” I gasped, my trembling hands ripping back the blankets.
My knees betrayed me as I tumbled to the floor.
“Hmmm?” Half-mumbled acknowledgment.
“Harper,” I choked out, more sobbed than spoken.
Bang bang bang bang
“What?” he mumbled, and I wondered how the fuck anyone could sleep through that noise. The sound of the knocking echoed so loud the walls might as well have been shaking.
“P-police.”
“What?”
“Police,” I repeated, the word spoken like a curse.
He rolled over to face me, pale eyes opening, looking to me first then the lights pouring in through the windows. Red and blue lit up the sharp angles of his features, casting looming shadows in the room beyond him. Shadows that twisted and taunted, beckoning me to a darkness out of my reach.
“What the—”
Bang bang bang bang
His question was cut off by an avalanche of sound, my heart beating back just as loud in response, the walls of my chest threatening to crack and crumble from the force of it.
That ball inside me expanded further until it cut off my airways completely, and I couldn’t breathe.
They’d found me. They knew what I’d done. It was over.
Pale brows furrowed in concern. His blankets were pulled back, and bare feet touched the carpet as he stood. No! He couldn’t go out there. He couldn’t let them in.
I grabbed at him as he attempted to pass me.
“No.”
Bang bang bang bang
Harper crouched down until his eye level matched mine.
I sought the mirror of my panic in his eyes and was left wanting.
His were calm. Pale and solid like steel, like an anchor.
“Listen to me.” He spoke, and his voice was firm.
Solid. Reliable. “You’re going to let me go, and I’m going to go look at what’s going on, and nothing bad is going to happen. ”
“You don’t—”
“Nothing bad is going to happen.”
He didn’t know that. He couldn’t. But he spoke like he did. Like there was not a doubt in his mind. So certain. I wanted to believe him.
My hand slipped away, releasing the death grip I had on his shirt, and he stood again. Walking to the entrance. To my damnation.
The lights grew brighter as he parted the curtains. A flood of red and blue. Colors that seared my retinas. A torch to illuminate the ghosts in the haunted house of my soul. Then the lights dimmed as the curtain shifted back into place.
My chest was too tight. My mouth opened as I inhaled, but no oxygen would come to me, only coldness, only shadows. They filled me with nothing. So much nothing.
Then he was back. Harper at my side, each of his hands reaching for mine, his thumbs smoothing over my knuckles. “Jack.”
My eyes burned, my vision blurred.
“Jack.”
That wasn’t me. I wasn’t Jack. I wasn’t who he thought I was, and he was about to find out. I shook my head.
“Look at me.”
I couldn’t. I could see only red and blue, only the shadows between flashes.
“What color are my eyes?”
The question was unexpected, hooking my attention even as I fought it.
“W-what?”
“My eyes. What color are they?”
“B-blue.”
“Are you sure?”
I spared him a glance, but it was hard to tell with the brightness of the lights, his eyes seeming to absorb the color and direct it back at me.
“Blue?” I said again, uncertain. “G-gray?”
“Look at them.” He moved closer until his knees brushed mine. “You decide and tell me.”
I looked closer, trying to figure out the correct color beyond the flickering lights.
A door opened and slammed closed. There were voices outside the door.
“Hey. Don’t worry about that. They aren’t here for us. What color are my eyes?”
“They’re going to—”
“No. Don’t worry about that. Just look at me. Focus on me. Answer the question. Blue or gray?”
I looked between his eyes, one framed by a fading bruise.
The lights flickered red and blue. His eyes were red then blue.
Then white. The flashes of color disappeared as suddenly as they’d flooded through the window and swallowed me whole.
Not quite. A faint reflection of pink from the neon sign across the road.
A hint of warm white from the streetlamp. His eyes were blue.
“Blue,” I answered, more confidently this time.
“Good.” His thumbs traced my knuckles again. “What color is my shirt?”
My eyes flicked to the oversized tee covering his slender frame, the one we’d picked up at a thrift store that he’d said smelled like moths. “Orange.”
“What else is orange?”
Another unexpected question, my mind grasped for answers. Flashes of neon orange pulling from my memories. Becca. “M-my friend. She has orange hair.”
“What kind of orange?”
“Neon.”
“What can you smell?”
Mental whiplash, but I followed his lead, inhaling through my nose, scenting the air. This motel smelled better than the usual ones, but there was still that musty smell that inhabited every cheap motel. “Dust.”
“Explain it to me.”
“What?”
“Explain it to me. What does dust smell like?”
“Umm…” I’d never had to describe the smell of dust before, my mind trying to think of the best words. “Stale? Umm… Old. Earthy? I don’t know.”
“What can you hear?”
Beyond his voice there was silence, and it felt loud and daunting.
“N-nothing.”
“No. There are sounds. What are they?”
I grunted in frustration, but I tried. I listened, tuning into my surroundings.
Distant voices. Distant traffic. The low hum of electricity from harsh lighting.
And no more banging. No more red and blue.
No more police. I inhaled deeply. The ball of panic had receded inside me before I was even aware of it, and I was breathing.
I held Harper’s hands tighter, and they no longer trembled. Feeling safe enough, I turned toward the door. Still dark. Still closed. Still separating us from the rest of the world. “The police—”
“They’re gone,” he told me. “They weren’t here for us. They were next door.”
I breathed deeper. They weren’t here for me. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Would you have believed me?”
I swallowed, because we both knew the answer was no. Panic was louder than reason, fear louder than hope. But I could think properly now. Harper had pulled me back from the edge before I’d even realized that was what he was doing.
I searched his eyes, and still found them firm, not in a way that was cruel but in a way that was certain. Reliable. Strong. There was more to him than I’d originally seen, a strength I hadn’t noticed and relied on more than I wanted to admit.
I pulled my hands back slowly. “I’m okay now,” I told him, waiting for the questions, the demand for an explanation, for him to ask what I’d done.
He didn’t.
He just looked at me like he saw far too much before he nodded, standing again and going to the kitchen area, and returning with a glass of water for me. I didn’t want it, but I took it anyway, a stray droplet running down the side to wet my fingers.
Harper crouched in front of me again, his eyes a weight that oddly felt welcome. I didn’t like being seen like that, being perceived as vulnerable. But he wasn’t looking at me with pity. He didn’t see me as weak. Instead, it felt like he was watching over me.
I thought about the conversation we had last night.
“Maybe I’ll surprise you,” he’d said. Maybe he would.
Maybe he could understand. I’d been keeping so much from Harper.
Even last night I’d cut the conversation when it felt too real, told him I needed to smoke and lingered around the area until I’d thought he must have been asleep before coming back inside.
At least that way I didn’t have to face the guilt that was slowly building over all the things I wasn’t telling him.
It was more than that. Even the things I had told him hadn’t been honest. They couldn’t be. I couldn’t be. Not with him and not with myself.
“My love made him worse.”
It had to be the truth.
Despite not wanting the water, I finished the cup, setting it on the bedside table before finding my feet again, thankful that my knees didn’t betray me this time.
Harper took my lead, standing as well, but as I made my way over to the two-seater table and the chair that held my leather jacket over its back, he slipped back into bed.
“You want to talk about it more?” he asked, smoothing out the blankets.
Yes. But I can’t. “Maybe later? Get some more sleep.”
He nodded, pulling the blankets higher. “Wake me if you need me, Jack. We’re in this together now.”
Would he still think that way if he knew the whole truth?
I slipped my arms into the sleeves, pulled on my boots, then parted the curtains to look over the parking lot.
No police. They hadn’t been here for us—for me.
I inhaled deeply, steadying myself before I reached for the door handle.
The moment felt bigger than it was, like I was opening a seal that kept us safely inside.
But I needed to think, and I needed to do it alone.
Cool night air rushed to greet me.
The wind was eager to carry away my panic, my fear, but I held onto it. Kept it inside me because I needed it. It kept me safe.
Every sound, every movement, heightened my senses. The adrenaline that was crashing built again, fighting the exhaustion that threatened to replace it.
When I was a suitable distance away, I pulled my pack of cigarettes from my pocket. The wind turned to a blade of ice through my inhale as I went for the lighter and found it absent. It wasn’t there—where I always kept it.
My heart clenched, twisted, and warped in my chest in a panic unlike anything I’d felt tonight.
More pointed. More destructive. I frantically searched the other pockets, and warm relief enveloped me as I found its familiar shape tucked in beside my switchblade.
I pulled it free, my thumb tracing the floral engravings.
Everything else I’d left behind or switched out over the year I’d been running.
But there was no replacement for this. This was a part of him I’d never let go.
It was what kept me grounded. Even though it had been there through the worst moments, it was a reminder of what was good.
Of the purpose of it all. The reason. Like childish dinosaur stickers that had witnessed too much but still served as his light.
I’d destroyed those, taken them from him.
I’d safeguard this other piece of his father in penance. This other piece of Dex.
When I was lost, it was his voice that brought me back.
I couldn’t hear it anymore, but I could feel it sometimes.
When my touch smoothed over the engravings that I knew he’d also touched so many times, I could trick myself into feeling the echo of him.
And maybe I didn’t deserve that comfort anymore, but without it I was unmoored. Without it he was gone.