Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
CALEB
It’s not real.
It’s not real.
I clung to the words, but they faded as Jesse rose from the risers and jogged down the stone steps. He strode past Nin, jaw set like he was going to yank me from the chair and carry me out of the chamber.
But he wouldn’t. I knew that now. Nin had already shown me. She’d shown me so many things—none of them good.
This version of Jesse collapsed at my feet. His legs jerked, and urine spread around his hips as a slash appeared across his throat. The wound gaped, blood spraying over his T-shirt. Gurgling sounds emerged from his mouth. Bubbles appeared in the gash as he tried to speak.
Nin observed everything with glowing gray eyes.
Blood spread toward my shoes, the gruesome lake carrying bits of bone and skin. Jesse’s legs kept jerking. Metal sang, and his foot separated from his body. It flopped through the blood and thudded against my shoe. I jerked my leg away, and the chamber vanished.
Now it was only me and Jesse.
It’s not real.
On the ground, Jesse turned his head and looked up at me. His lips moved, and the open halves of his throat moved, too, twin mouths moving in unison.
“She’ll kill me when she’s done with you. She’ll take me apart piece by piece.”
She wouldn’t.
“This is your fault,” he said. “You killed me.”
Nin drew a sword from somewhere. She slashed, severing his right hand. Blood sprayed my face.
“Stop!” I yelled, bile burning my throat.
Nin slashed again. Jesse’s other hand tumbled across the ground. He writhed, the wound across his neck opening and closing.
The chamber door banged open. My father charged inside and rushed down the steps.
His face was mottled red. Purple fingerprints circled his throat, and one eye dangled from its socket on a knot of pink tissue.
Bloody spittle flew from his mouth as he screamed, the sound ricocheting off the old stone walls.
“You’re no son of mine!”
My mother sobbed in the front row of the risers, her hands over her face. She lowered them, and her mouth was all wrong. Her lips stretched too wide, her smile extending from ear to ear.
She stood, eyes round and smile intact. “Caleb,” she said in a singsong voice. “You were supposed to get the clothes from the dryer.”
And, suddenly, I was out of my chair standing at the bottom of the basement stairs with a laundry basket in my arms.
Jesse waited in front of the dryer. He faced away, but I knew it was him. I’d know him anywhere.
“Jesse,” I said.
He turned, and his face was gone, skin scraped away like someone had run a cheese grater from his forehead to his chin. His eyeballs bulged, and his lipless mouth moved but no sound emerged. He stepped toward me, one hand extended.
I stumbled backward and into my chair. My wolf surged forward. Pop, pop, pop! My bones cracked, a pistol firing inside my head.
It’s not real.
But it was. My jaw throbbed. My eyes bulged as my bones began to rearrange themselves. Colors and noise spun around me. I was losing it, and I couldn’t because losing it meant losing Jesse.
Not here. Not in front of them.
Sweat stung my eyes. I blinked, searching through the colors for a sign of Jesse.
The real Jesse with his dark eyes and ball cap and inexhaustible supply of apple slices.
The Jesse who’d gotten on his knees in the forest and talked me through every broken bone of my first shift. The one who’d cried afterward.
I’m so damn proud of you.
He was the only one. He was the only one who mattered.
And we still had so much left to do.
“What do you want to do first?” he asked.
The colors parted like a sea. Like Moses splitting it right down the middle. Jesse stood in the gap, sunlight in his hair and a slightly impatient look on his face. Trees rose behind him. The scent of grass and car exhaust hit my nose. In the distance, a man tossed a frisbee to a golden retriever.
“Caleb?” Jesse prompted, pulling my gaze back to him. “You said you were hungry. I know a great noodle place in Midtown.”
“Yeah,” I said. My voice emerged raspy, and I cleared my throat. “I could eat.”
He smiled.
The scene shifted.
We walked side by side through a marketplace. The sun was hotter now, but it was the good kind of hot, like stepping from an air-conditioned movie theater into the steam of July. Scents swirled around me: smoke and cooking meat and olive oil. Spanish drifted from every direction.
Jesse pulled ahead, his eyes on a painting propped against the side of a wooden cart. His black tank top clung to his ribs. He bent, and his shorts rode up.
Jesus. Since when did he go with a two-inch inseam?
Still in a crouch, he looked at me over his shoulder. One side of his mouth lifted. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
I snorted. “Do you write these down so you don’t forget?”
“You’re the one staring.”
“Yeah, because you bought those shorts at Baby Gap.”
His laugh cut through the noise of the market.
The scene shifted again.
Waves crashed against a beach. Sand shifted under my feet, and the taste of salt lingered on my tongue. Seagulls dipped over the water. I carried a football, the laces hard under my fingertips.
Jesse walked beside me with his hands in his pockets. The wind tugged a piece of dark hair across his forehead.
I reached over and shoved it back into place. “There.”
He smiled. “Happy?”
“Yeah.”
His smile spread, crinkling his eyes at the corners. “What do you want to do next?”
“Everything,” I said, and we were suddenly in the backseat of his SUV with the steam of our sweat fogging the windows. He’d looked at me and said he was all in, wolf and man.
Colors swirled. The scent of damp stone and ancient wood intruded, but it couldn’t touch us.
“Everything,” I repeated, my voice overlapping his. The echo continued as I took his face in my hands. “I want everything with you.”